[March 6, 2017] An informative article was recently published by Caroline Glick, entitled Lessons of the Hamas War.1 What she has done is to articulate the background to Israel’s war with Hamas in the summer of 2014 and interplay between strategy and tactics. I recommend you read it in its entirety because it shows how a government (in this case Israel) can be tactically correct and strategically wrong. Here are some of the key points that she addresses.
First, she writes that Israel’s problem in the aftermath of the war was to misinterpret the strategic issues confronting it and thus will fail to learn important lessons. The lesson that any government can veer off-course from its strategy should make us all take notice. Her information comes from Israel’s official State Comptroller’s report on Operation Protective Eagle (the war with Hamas).
“Israel’s problem with Hamas wasn’t its tactics for destroying Hamas’s attack tunnels. Israel faced two separate challenges in its war with Hamas that summer. The first had to do with the regional and global context of the war. The second had to do with its understanding of its enemy on the ground.”
Second, she notes that the Israeli government miscalculated the support it would receive from the U.S. White House under president Obama. This was a serious misread of past statements and actions of the U.S. government and John Kerry of its State Department. In fact, the U.S. supported Hamas (a Palestinian Sunni fundamentalist group) against the Israel nation (an historical close ally).
“America’s support for Hamas was expressed at the earliest stages of the war when then secretary of state John Kerry demanded that Israel accept an immediate ceasefire based entirely on Hamas’s ceasefire terms. This demand, in various forms, remained the administration’s position throughout the 50 day war.”
A key component of the ceasefire that was supported by the U.S. was that Israel accept Hamas’ desire to be reconnected to the international banking system and open access to the sea. Current monetary restrictions and reduced logistical support have led to less funding for terrorism and falloff of terror attacks instigated by Hamas.
Third, Glick also writes that U.S. diplomatic support for the Muslim Brotherhood (a transnational Sunni group) is consistent with their support of Hamas. These two groups are opposed to the Sunni governments in several Middle East countries, including Saudi Arabia, and are supported by Iran (Shia). This means that Obama aligned the United States with Iran against most Middle East nations.
“Since the Egyptians were hosting the ceasefire talks, Egypt was well-positioned to blunt Obama’s demand that Israel accept Hamas’s ceasefire terms. In a bid to undermine Egypt, Obama and Kerry colluded with Hamas’s state sponsors Turkey and Qatar to push [Egyptian President] Sisi out of the ceasefire discussions. But due to Saudi and UAE support for Sisi and Israel, the administration’s attempts to sideline the Egyptians failed.”
The article by Glick is well done and informative to Americans who should read it for it cogent analysis of how a nation like Israel could learn the wrong lessons from a war it recently fought. Her conclusion is that nearly three years after the war, official Israel doesn’t understand what happened that summer because of their focus on the tactical situation. War however, like most things governments are involved in, is always strategic.
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