The Wrongologist

The Daily Escape:

Fall colors, Ophir, CO – October 2023 photo by Chirag A. Patel

Welcome to our Saturday Soother. The problem is that getting soothed today may prove difficult. Israel’s military said Friday night (local time) that its “ground forces are expanding” their operations in Gaza. The decision to expand ground operations was made by the Israeli War Cabinet after talks on a possible hostage release reached a stalemate.

More from Axios:

“The IDF’s expansion of its operations comes nearly three weeks after Hamas killed 1,400 people in the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel. Since then, more than 7,000 Palestinians have been killed amid Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip, according to the Ministry of Health in Hamas-run Gaza.

Hamas is holding more than 220 people hostage, according to Israeli officials. Most are Israeli, but the group is also holding Americans and other foreign nationals….Israeli officials have said the goal of a ground offensive is to “dismantle” Hamas infrastructure and completely “destroy” the militant group…”

GZero Media reminds us that we should keep in mind the political dimension: Since Hamas invaded Israel and conducted killings and kidnappings on Oct. 7, Netanyahu’s government has promised to exert maximum pressure on them. But Israel’s intense air campaign has only yielded the release of four hostages.

This new raid will certainly jeopardize the hostages, but it could be a political necessity for a government under pressure because of its intelligence and security failures prior to the Hamas attack.

But how Israel will take some or all of Gaza is daunting. Just ask veterans of Fallujah or Huế what urban combat is like: Then add in 2.3 million civilians with nowhere to run and a network of underground tunnels the enemy has been gearing up to defend for years, and you’ll get the idea.

If Israel goes all in, there’s no way to avoid intense, chaotic fighting and massive bloodshed. More from GZero:

“What’s more, the international pressure on Israel is mounting. The US…is urging Netanyahu to delay while it moves air defense assets into the region in case Iran or its proxies expand the conflict.”

The US objective is to avoid a widening war in the region or a long war involving Israel. It isn’t in Israel’s interest to engage in a long war either. Hamas and its friends have better plans than they have had before. Two examples:

• Israel’s seaports are under constant attack. Ashkelon, which is in range of Gaza, has been closed. Eilat may have been the target of a Houthi missile strike (Yemen). Ashdod, which accounts for about 40% of incoming and outgoing Israeli seaborne trade, and Tel Aviv port have been targeted. The result is a tenfold increase in war risk insurance costs for vessels and cargoes, and the curtailment of international vessel movement in and out of the Israeli ports. Reports say that shipping is down 30% in Ashdod compared to pre-war.  Evergreen, the Taiwanese container shipping company, declared force majeure for Ashdod on October 17, diverted one vessel to Haifa, and halted future shipping into both ports.
• Israel’s offshore Tamar gas field (operated by Chevron) has been shut down. It produces 70% of the gas required to fuel Israel’s electricity generation needs. Israel is at risk of losing its principal energy source to drone or missile attack.

Taking another big picture view, the indirect economic impacts of a prolonged war may become serious. The leading Israeli export revenue earners are diamonds ($9 billion/yr.), and tourism which peaked at $8.5 billion in 2019. Taken together, diamonds and tourism amount to more than 40% of the state’s export earnings.

And given the internal political situation in the US, we’re in no position to fight a war against Iran. We will not be in a strong position to resupply Israel if they get stuck in a Gaza quagmire. The longer this war goes on, the worse it will get for Israel economically. Fitch Ratings has lowered Israel’s outlook to negative after only two weeks.

Can Israel afford to have so much of their workforce in uniform for a protracted period? In the past their “wars” have been short campaigns where they attack somebody for a few weeks. When ammo gets short, they halt the fighting and get the US to restock their weapons.

The US has to look carefully at what is a fast-growing and dangerous situation. Steve Coll in the New Yorker reminds us how difficult it has been to manage our relationship with Israel:

“In Barack Obama’s White House, there were two schools of thought about managing the US’…alliance with Israel. Defense Secretary Robert Gates privately called the relationship “all give and no get,”….according to Dennis Ross, a Middle East hand who…wrote an eyewitness history of US-Israeli relations….as Ross summarized it, then-Vice-President Joe Biden argued for “drawing the Israelis close to us,”…to gain greater influence, even amid bitter disputes with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.”

More:

“Since the end of the Cold War, US Presidents have tried to steer toward a durable peace accord between Israelis and Palestinians—a negotiated “two-state solution” that would birth an independent Palestine, including Gaza. These days, many Palestinians and Israelis regard that project as futile, if not dangerously delusional.”

Our strategy of the moment seems to be to engage in saber-rattling to prevent international intervention in the Gaza invasion by Iran. What should be the end game for the US? The US is in no position to fight a war against Iran. The belief that it can, or should, is only neocon arrogance.

Biden and the Pentagon need to remind Americans that we have a real risk in this Gaza incursion. We have few friends in the Middle East, and Russia is on the side of Iran, Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Our relationships could get much, much worse if Israel doesn’t follow the rules of war in Gaza.

That is the biggest question in Israel’s move into Gaza. War is a rule-based activity, and that means the fighters have to weigh factors like the necessity of the military action, and whether the expected civilian harm is proportionate to the expected military gain.

Proportionality is a central concept in just war theory. There are two proportionality principles in just war theory, jus ad bellum, which governs the reason to go to war, and jus in bello, which governs conduct on the ground in war.

Today we’re worried about jus in bello, meaning what Israel does in Gaza should be proportional to the expected gain. Jus in bello restricts attacks to targets of military significance, a restriction that is difficult to meet when Hamas is hiding among civilians, hospitals, and mosques.

You can be certain that jus in bello considerations are part of the conversations that Israeli military and political elites are having with one another, along with the US and the rest of the world.

At some point, the disparity of casualties between what Israel has experienced and what happens in Gaza will become too much even for Biden, if not for the Israeli war cabinet. The Israeli deaths during the Hamas attack along with deaths of hostages must be weighed against the deaths in Gaza caused by Israel.

We can’t allow the US to be complicit in disproportionate civilian harm by Israel. That would be a permanent black eye for US foreign policy. Let’s close with a philosophy discussion between that noted anti-war activist, Dr. Hawkeye Pierce from the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) and the unit’s Chaplin, Father Mulcahy:

“Hawkeye: War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.

Father Mulcahy: How do you figure that, Hawkeye?

Hawkeye: Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?

Father Mulcahy: Sinners, I believe.

Hawkeye: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them — little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.”