If Israeli media and public comment is any indication, an early response to the Iranian drone and missile attacks appears likely.
This will have consequences perhaps even beyond those that have followed from the Hamas attack on Israel last October, and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza.
War cabinet said to favor hitting back at Iran but divided over when and how | The Times of Israel
The Iranian attacks followed the Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1st , as well as previous Israeli attacks which were designed, they claimed, to take out the Iranian capacity to launch drone and missile assaults.
The attacks at the weekend and the nature and extent of the Hamas incursion in October suggest that Israel’s much vaunted intelligence network may not be as efficient as it would like people to imagine.
Others have claimed that such lapses conveniently provide the rationale for direct and more extensive military engagement. Which – those people say – can now be used to potentially extend what some claim is already a disproportionate military response currently underway in Gaza as a compensation for the failure to either identify or neutralise the Iranian threat.
The Iranian attack was certainly extensive. They launched 185 drones, 110 ballistic missiles and 36 Cruise missiles. From a military perspective it was almost a complete failure with over 99% of the missiles intercepted, destroyed, or simply failing to reach their target.
But the Iranian gambit was only a failure if the aim was to inflict physical and human damage within Israel. It will not have been a failure if it succeeds in creating a wider confrontation, which is what the Iranian regime most likely desires. Hamas and Hezbollah have undoubtedly been catspaws to this end.
If it does lead to wider conflict involving others then they have their counterparts within Israel. Just, as some would argue, the Hamas leaders who decided to launch the October attacks on Israel knew that this would elicit a large-scale Israeli retaliation because there are people in the Israeli leadership who would also love to have a major confrontation.
Thankfully, as far as can be discerned, none of the major powers who either side might hope to draw in appear to be anything but alarmed over such a prospect. The Russians appear to be happy with the manner in which their Ukrainian venture is proceeding and the Chinese are calling for the UN to take the lead in calming the situation.
This morning Israel is planning some sort of response and the expectation is that the war cabinet will agree on what that might be over the course of today. When it comes it is almost certain to be of a scale and nature that will inflict significant new losses of life, including those of civilians in much greater numbers than any caused by the Iranian venture.
One response, as is being discussed openly, might not be an actual attack on Iran but rather centre on an Israeli assault on the city of Rafah in the south of Gaza. Rafah, it is claimed by some, houses the bulk of any remaining effective Hamas operators. The problem with that is there are more than one million people living in the city of whom an opinion writer for the Hayom news outlet admits “at least some of whom are innocent.”
Not, of course, that this ought to present any sort of a barrier to the Israeli Defence Forces launching an “all out invasion” to take out the “murderous scoundrels.”
The other issue is that Rafah is right on the border with Egypt and is the site of the only direct crossing between Egypt and Gaza. Its population has been massively bloated by successive waves of people fleeing the bombings in the rest of Gaza. Previous Israeli governments have been conscious of the need to avoid embroiling and destabilising Egypt. Not this one, perhaps.
The consequence of any direct attack will be that these people have the choice of staying to be bombed again, or attempting to enter Egypt. The Egyptians currently host some 9 million persons claiming refugee status. Hundreds of thousands of them are Palestinians, and the Egyptians are also wary of the allies of Hamas in the Muslim Brotherhood who represent a constant threat and do not want to take in any more.
None of this appears to bother people at leading levels in Israel. There have been apparently sober public discussions, involving even the current Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, about reducing the population of Gaza from around 2 million to between 100,000 and 200,000.
Assuming they don’t plan to kill all of those people, where are they going to go? Apart from the fact they really ought not be forced to go anywhere. This is where they live and where their families and ancestors have lived, forever.
They can’t go to the wealthy medievalist Islamic states with whom Israeli has basically cordial relations like Saudi Arabia, because they refuse to take them. Nor can they go to those countries closer like Jordan and Lebanon and Syria because they, like Egypt, have more than their share – and in any event Israel would prefer that they move further away. To Europe for instance.
Back to the current crisis. Attempting to prevent an attack on Rafah has been one of the focuses of American efforts. It is noticeable that some of the current Israeli press and other commentary is dismissive of this American caution. Walter E. Brock of Hayom is pleased that Netanyahu’s apparent designs on Rafah would be “co*cking a snook” at Biden, and indeed the US in general which hasn’t had a real war for too long anyway.
So basically, in the eyes of many in the Israeli elite and their allies in the US itself, the Americans ought to allow the IDF to bomb Rafah into oblivion – or launch an attack on Iran which, some hope, the Americans would either feel obliged to join or be forced to join in order to prevent an even worse catastrophe.
Even the more moderate elements clearly regard an attack on Rafah as a plausible alternative to firing missiles at Tehran. Some with a military background also openly regard it as a means to embroil the United States directly. In the Jerusalem Post, reserve Major-General Yaakov Amidror believes that the Iranian attack means that “now is the time to use our international credit.”
Surely if we have learned anything from the past 30 years, it might be that, bad and all as the Islamic regimes and the leftist military Arab regimes were – the latter including Libya, Iraq and Syria – perhaps it might have been best to leave them as they were. Once they do not bother anyone else of course. Which is where the problem lies. Containment rather than regime change.
China has a bloody history and a current record of totalitarian servitude worse than any of them. It also guarantees the survival of the retro Stalinist regime in Pyongyang. Is there any sane person in the leadership of a western power who believes that it might be a good idea to attempt to engineer a war with China or North Korea?
Or that if there was a Taiwanese or South Korean Netanyahu that such a “courageous” co*ck a snooker ought to be encouraged to engage in provocations with that intent? There is a line between defence and aggression fuelled by lunacy. We are dangerously close to that line being crossed, if it has not already been.
The interests of Europeans, as in the peoples of Europe rather than the technocrats of the EU, are in protecting themselves from external threats. It does not help if that threat is potentially exacerbated by the actions of those who are ostensibly their allies. This could be a decisive week.
