Elias Harfoush has an interesting op-ed in Al-Hayat about Gaza. He writes:
"The battle of Gaza has proven, as have before it Israel's wars against Lebanon, that the time of Arab wars against Israel has ended. What we mean by "Arab wars" are those wars which the Arabs fought together, under a single military strategy aimed at reaching a single goal.The war of 1973 was the last of these wars, and it is because it was so that it was able to return some land and some dignity. ...After 1973, the Arabs entered the era of individual peace and individual wars. Individual peace was able to return their lands to each of Egypt and Jordan, as it was able to give the Palestinians a chance of returning their authority, even if limited, to their own land. Individual wars, on the other hand, have often produced disastrous results."
This is an interesting--and more realistic--way of conceptualizing postwar Arab politics than the traditional hagiography of an politically united Arab front against Israel that eroded in the face of power politics. He makes a useful distinction between the united military opposition to Israel and the political dysfunction of the Arab states. This imagined past stands in stark opposition to the reality of the regional and normative power struggles Arab regimes waged against each other and even the Palestinians themselves (the PLO's dustup with Jordan in the late 60s).
That being said, it's hard to see what Harfoush's point is. What would Arab regimes gain if they decided to all gang up on Israel again? Without the Soviet bloc, there would be no military financial, military, or normative support for a step that would surely put them into conflict with the United States and Europe. Harfoush also (very subtly) attacks both Hamas and Hezbollah for their foolishness in knowingly bringing down Israeli wrath on their civilian populations.
I think it's very easy to see that modern insurgent organizations, whatever their political aims, do place their own political survival at the top of their objectives. Especially insurgent groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, who control states-within-states and also are competing in political power struggles against internal enemies. That is why I think Jeffrey Goldberg misses the point in this New York Times op-ed. Yes, Hamas' leaders aren't going to stop hating Jews or wishing for Israel's destruction. But if the strategic situation and Palestinian public opinion changes, they will have to go along with it or be rendered irrelevant.
The challenge is that engineering this political change is not something that is likely to happen with the Gaza operation nor something that is likely to come out of the now-moribund peace process.
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