The history of the modern state of Israel is one of short wars with long consequences. For the first fifty years or so, until the millennium, that worked out largely to Israel’s benefit.
In the year since the brutal attacks — replete with cold-blooded murder, rape and hostage-taking — by Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tried to wring long consequences from the wars against Hamas, Hezbollah and possibly Iran.
This column argued last month that the strategic priority for Israel should be the expansion of the Abraham Accords; the creation of a new Middle East in which Israel and its Arab neighbours, including Saudi Arabia, would be able to contain Iran and its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, and find some sort of workable governance solution for Gaza and the West Bank. It was the vision that Netanyahu presented at the United Nations just weeks before the Hamas attacks.
The Israeli government, in the recent attacks on Hezbollah, has taken a different approach. Netanyahu’s government is seeking to contain Iran and its proxies on its own by force. If that is successful, it is reasonable to expect that Iran’s Arab neighbours would be grateful for Israel degrading the Iranian threat. That thinking appeals to Israel’s history of short wars with long consequences.
Israel was attacked at its birth by its Arab neighbours. Israel prevailed in that initial war, 1947-48, and enlarged its frontiers. The initial UN plan for Israel put the new state in precarious borders. The war resulted in a larger Israel, more defensible. The Arab powers would have been better off if they had agreed to the original UN plan, as Israel had done.
Then came the Suez crisis of 1956. Israel took the Sinai Peninsula, but was forced to withdraw by the Americans. Nevertheless, the war resulted in the opening of the Straits of Tiran between Sinai and Saudi Arabia, a critical strategic gain for Israel.
The Six-Day War in 1967 was a triumph of biblical proportions for Israel, vanquishing Egypt, Syria and Jordan, and taking Sinai, Gaza, West Bank, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, including the Old City. Israel had never controlled more territory, or been more secure.
Too powerful perhaps, as the triumph of 1967 led a significant number of Israelis to dream of a greater Israel. Perpetual rule over Palestinians would be the price of that.
In 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked on Yom Kippur and came close to victory in the initial days of surprise and shock. (The Hamas attacks last year were timed to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War.) Israel rallied and repelled the Egyptians.
The aftermath of the war marked an earthquake in Israel. Prime Minister Golda Meir was gone in 1974, and the long-ruling Labour Party was defeated in 1977. In 1979, then Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, the same who launched the attack on Yom Kippur, made peace with Israel, a peace that has endured forty-five years.
Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to eject the Palestine Liberation Organization of Yasser Arafat. Israel got the PLO out, but ended up staying itself, a long and costly fight that did not end until 2000. The northern border was secure.
The Gulf War of 1991 to eject Saddam Hussein from Kuwait did not engage Israeli forces, but it changed the regional dynamics. The PLO had backed Saddam, angering the Saudis and the Gulf states, and when he was defeated, the Palestinians were in a weak position. The 1993 Oslo Accords followed. The PLO would recognize Israel and accept partial sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza. An Israeli-Jordan peace treaty would follow in 1994.
The short-war-long-consequence pattern delivered an Israel at peace with its neighbours, secure in expanded borders and with an apparently feasible solution to the Palestinian question.
What followed after 2000 was a never-ending series of wars without lasting consequences: the second intifada (2000-2005), the second Lebanon war (2006), four wars in Gaza after the Hamas takeover (2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021). Iran created an ongoing threat to Israel on its borders. Conflict in Gaza and Lebanon was persistent, and the Israeli Defense Forces were operating constantly in the West Bank to prevent a Hamas takeover there.
The Abraham Accords of 2020 created by diplomacy, not war, new dynamics for peace and security. Might an Arab-Israeli alliance against a common threat, Iran, leading to lasting consequences without recourse to war, short or otherwise?
That the Iran/Hamas attacks and hostage-taking of October 2023 would bring forth a massive Israeli response was known. Iran/Hamas calculated that such losses would be acceptable in order to forestall the new Middle East that would emerge if Saudi Arabia joined the Abraham Accords.
Netanyahu’s gamble is that Israel can achieve through war against non-state proxy actors what it achieved in previous wars against neighbouring states. It is not obvious that it will be so. State armies can be defeated in battle. Proxy terror networks are never totally eliminated.
A year out from October 7, the same question from 1947 remains. Will Israel’s neighbours accept that it should exist in peace and security? The consequence of repeated wars led an increasing number of Arab states to agree.
Iran has opted instead for a long proxy war against Israel. This first anniversary should not create confusion that this war is only a year old. The proxy war has been going on for 18 years, since the second Lebanon war in 2006. It’s been a long war with few consequences — yet.
National Post