Israel’s pager attacks raise human rights questions. The effectiveness is also questionable. The conflict could become further complicated.
- Israel is admired or viewed with awe by observers for his pager attacks, but also has human rights consequences.
- In the long term, such attacks could lead to radicalization and more resistance – and thus even more threats to Israel.
- Other factors further complicate the situation in the Middle East.
- This article is available for the first time in German – the magazine first published it on September 24, 2024 Foreign policy.
Beirut – When Israel last week Hezbollah attack by causing a series of synchronized explosions in Lebanon and in Syria The initial reaction of many observers, regardless of where they stood on the geopolitical spectrum, was awe.
Enemy and friendly nations alike marveled at the level of sophistication required to accomplish this. The agents working for Israel not only had to pay tiny amounts Explosives in pagers and walkie-talkies, but also get them into the hands of an arch-enemy.
This feat is a reminder of Israel’s long history of technical and operational sophistication, which included defeating a coalition of Arab armies in the 1967 Six-Day War, storming Uganda’s Entebbe airport to free hostages captured in the 1976 hijacking of a commercial airliner, and the deployment of booby-trapped cell phones to attack militant groups, dating back to the late 1990s.
“Very likely war crimes”: Israel’s pager attacks cause damage to civilians
As impressive as the recent attacks were on a technical level, they should raise numerous objections. On the one hand, they caused devastating damage to the civilian population. The pagers belonged to Hezbollah members, but the explosions, which killed at least 40 people and injured more than 3,000 others, endangered many non-combatants.
Imagine what would have happened to the passengers in a car or the children at the dinner table if the driver or a relative had been carrying one of the devices. Video footage shows some exploded in markets and on street corners.
The political scientist Michael Walzer wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Timesthat the explosions, which targeted Hezbollah operatives who were not actively involved in combat operations at the time of the attack, were “very likely war crimes.” Even Leon Panetta, a former US defense secretary and CIA director, said he “considers it undisputed” that the attacks were a form of terrorism.
Pager attacks for strategy? Effectiveness against Hezbollah unclear for Israel
My concerns about recent Israeli tactics in Lebanon, including an escalating air war against Hezbollah positions in the south from which rockets have been fired at Israel, go further. As soon as the smoke from the exploding pagers cleared, analysts began asking whether Israel had gained strategic advantages from the attacks. This remains unclear. The same applies to Israel’s almost year-long offensive Gaza against the Hamas. There, a fundamental question remains unanswered: What does Israel do when its military operations are over?
What connects these two campaigns is Prime Minister’s obvious view Benjamin Netanyahuthat Israel can achieve lasting security through a policy of military superiority combined with uninhibited offensive operations. The United States tacitly support this position through their weak criticism and the almost unlimited supply of weapons to Israel.
As is evident in Gaza – and as another war with Lebanon, if it comes to it, will likely confirm again – this approach amounts to devastating the earth in neighboring countries in the false hope that Israel will kill enough “bad guys.” can, regardless of collateral damage, achieve peace.
Radicalization because of violence? Israel could create new enemies
The first obvious flaw in this approach is that any military operation risks generating new enemies and perpetuating hostility between Israel and its neighbors. Israel’s complete military control over Gaza, for example, does nothing to ensure much-needed political and territorial rights for Palestinians.
In fact, the hopelessness and dominance of the area ensure that it new forms of resistance against Israel in the future will give. Likewise, an Israeli push into southern Lebanon would merely create a new frontier for hostilities between the two countries, just as the death and destruction of the campaign would drive more Lebanese toward violent retaliation against Israel.
But my biggest concerns go beyond that and concern the strategy of the United States as well as that of Israel. In recent decades, the two allies have viewed Iran as the ultimate source of violence and instability in the Middle East.
But with the exception of international efforts to persuade Iran to act on the Development of nuclear weapons To forgo it, the United States – not to mention Israel – has shown almost no creativity in engaging Iran politically. (Unrealistic preconditions for engagement, such as demanding that Tehran first change its political system or recognize Israel’s right to exist, do not count.)
No One Leaves the Sacred Land: Religious Background to the Israel-Palestine Conflict
What makes addressing the problems in the Middle East particularly difficult is that both Israel and Iran are embodiments of ancient civilizational and religious identities. Many people in the West know that Israel is the land of the Bible and that many Jews legitimize their support for Zionism in part on the basis of the existence of an ancient Israel, whose stories form the core of the Old Testament. What is less known outside the field is that Iran is also the heir to traditions of language, culture, identity, empire and statehood that go back far into antiquity.
In response to the seemingly endless violence in Gaza, many people have raised their voices and urged that there is no substitute for recognizing that neither Jews nor Palestinians will ever disappear from the lands where they are currently divided by conflict . This means that lasting peace requires that people – and ultimately states – on both sides of this deep divide recognize each other’s needs and interests.
This also applies to Iran. A policy of demonizing a country of 90 million people will not make it disappear. In fact, the West’s attempts at isolation only serve to make Iran even more determined to establish and maintain relations with non-state proxies such as Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen Russia and China to deepen.
Nuclear weapons complicate conflict in the Middle East
A key concern of the West, as well as Israel, is Iran’s nuclear program and the prospect that Tehran could soon break out of its lengthy research and refinement phase and develop operational nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, the global record of disarming states capable of nuclear weapons is extremely promising. Ukraine is one of the few examples of a nation disarming its Soviet-era nuclear weapons, and this has unfortunately left it vulnerable to Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
For example, years of Western and Asian diplomatic efforts on North Korea have not resulted in Pyongyang giving up its nuclear program. Whether we like it or not – and I don’t like it – this is because the North Korean regime feels fundamentally uncertain about its future. Furthermore, it is widely known that Israel has had a nuclear arsenal for decades, although the country has not officially confirmed this.
Concerns about Iran’s nuclear program should not be an obstacle to talking more with Tehran and finding ways to defuse hostilities in the region. We will likely find that the only way to ensure comprehensive security in the Middle East, including for Israel, is to somehow bring Iran into closer contact with the West and eventually address its security concerns – along with those of Israel , other states such as Saudi Arabia and the Palestinians. The sooner the West can start doing this, the better.
To the author
Howard W French is a columnist at foreign policy, Professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and long-time foreign correspondent. His latest book is called “Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War.” X: @hofrench
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on September 24, 2024 in the magazine “ForeignPolicy.com“ was published – as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.
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