Israel is a nation not greatly given to following advice, even from its great and powerful friends and guarantors, unless and to the extent it accords with its own judgment of where its national interest lies.
That's partly because it sees itself as being surrounded by enemies, ever in a desperate position, and bound to suffer if it adopts the wrong strategies and tactics. What better discipline, or morale, than understanding that any one of their strategic or tactical mistakes could end their country's existence.
Its population is about a third of Australia's, and although it spends much more per head on defence than Australia, total Australian defence spending is about 25 per cent higher. Australia's GDP is nearly four times Israel's, and the Australian standard of living is about 15 per cent higher.
Now Israel is locked in deep struggle with the fighters of Hamas responsible for a massacre of Israelis after Hamas burst out of its enclave on the Gaza Strip. Israel, claiming a right to self-defence, has declared war on Hamas, and, because they live amid ordinary Palestinians in the crowded city, thousands of Palestinians, including women and children, have been killed by air attacks, bombings and street fighting.
The Palestinian death toll is already 10 times the number of innocent Israelis murdered by Hamas on October 7, but the battles continue in spite of increasingly urgent American and United Nations calls for a cease fire. Even Australia, which was initially fully in support of Israel's right to react, is now strongly in support of a ceasefire.
Israel's political and military leadership are unmoved, and apart from permitting some brief intermissions for food and health reasons, talk of their war continuing for months, apparently until Hamas has been exterminated. Already much of the city has been rendered uninhabitable, even after the fighting stops. Flyers warn residents to move south towards the border with Egypt, but many fear that flight into Egypt, even if it were permitted on any scale by Egypt, would trap Palestinians in the same fix many have been in since 1948 - refused any right of re-entry into Israel.
US President Joe Biden and other world leaders have spoken strongly about the need for Israel to move promptly towards the establishment of a two-state solution. The pressure is increasing, even if the prospect of any sort of intervention to enforce it is low. If there is to be a ceasefire based on a peacekeeping - perhaps peacemaking - presence, it seems unlikely that a path to resolution of the basic conflicts will be found. The problems are close to intractable, particularly because neither Israel nor Hamas wants to deal with each other's just claims.
Biden and others have also implied that the movement to a two-state solution must involve an end to, and disestablishment of illegal Jewish settlements in the old Palestinian lands, and the return by Israel of Palestinian lands on the West Bank, captured by Israel during the 1967 war. Observers fear that Israel, particularly under the pressure of their own religious fundamentalists, will ultimately claim the whole of Palestine for themselves.
Although Israel is heavily dependent on the resupply of its military by an unstinting United States, as well as political support from pro-Israeli lobbies in the US, Europe, Canada and Australia, it has seemed impervious to argument, particularly when there has been suggestion that the Americans will lose patience and withhold further arms shipments. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister, has long proven adept at playing US politics, and support for Israel, particularly concentrated among Republicans, extends beyond a powerful Jewish lobby into religious Christian fundamentalist groups.
But the counter-reaction against Israel has been amazing. Just as the US quickly squandered any moral advantage it gained from the September 2001 attacks on the twin towers, Israel seems already to have dissipated most of the worldwide condemnation of Hamas after the massacres of October 7.
Now it is not only the Israelis being seen as the innocent victims. The attention has switched not only to the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, but to rehearsal of their long catalogue of grievances, including occupation and oppression by the Israeli state. The massacres are coming to be seen as an incident in a long-going tit-for-tat conflict during which many more Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli soldiers or settlers than Israelis terrorised by Palestinians. The public horror at the ongoing fighting, and the reduction of Gaza to rubble, is inviting more questions about the Israeli state, and about its failure to render justice to, or reconcile with Palestinians.
The world reaction has produced a major upsurge in anti-Semitism, most disgustingly exemplified here in Australia by the alleged call to "Gas the Jews". But not all the reaction, and certainly not all criticism of Zionism and the actions of the Israeli state can be properly characterised as anti-Semitism, however much supporters of Israel suggest it. For some zealots on either side, there is no atrocity committed by one's own side that they will not support, rationalise or refuse to criticise. Likewise, there is no action on the other side that is not part of a murderous conspiracy. Many of the players in this drama are simply indifferent to the persons, the personalities and the rights of people on the other side, and think that any person on the other side, even apparently babies, are fair game.
Whether for people of the Jewish, the Muslim or even the Christian faith involved, the trauma and sense of personal assault of events since October 7 cannot excuse the moral blindness of group punishment, disproportionate retaliation, or direct attacks on hospitals on the claim that they are, or may be, harbouring terrorists. The calm assurance by some propagandists that it is legitimate to fire on dwellings or groups of people because some ununiformed terrorists are said to be among them, or because some tunnels are located below them is wrong. These are war crimes, not sanitised by the enormity of the initiating atrocity. Propagandists and spokesmen suggesting otherwise are lying; those weakly repeating them are allowing themselves to be deluded.
The death rate does not suggest collateral casualties, or regrettable deaths while visiting justice on someone later accused of being a terrorist. That does not mean that only supporters of Israel are to be criticised. Many supporters of Hamas, or justice for Palestinians, are equally reluctant to criticise the killing of innocents.
Israel's moral position is also undermined by the fact that Israel largely sponsored the rise and power of Hamas itself to undermine and diminish the power of the Palestinian Authority, or PLO, the alternative political group of many Palestinians. This sort of own goal is not unlike the way in which the terrorist group responsible for September 11, al Qaeda, was built up and armed by the US when it was resisting Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
It is obvious that the problem will not resolve itself. It is equally obvious that the world, and probably significant sections of the Israeli population itself, will not permit total ethnic cleansing, or eliminating the Palestinian population.
Two months into a bitter and bloody struggle Israel has yet to outline its actual military objectives; how it will measure success, its plans for the future of Gaza, including its autonomy and its rebuilding, and the measures it proposes for military justice for Hamas prisoners. So powerful is the spotlight upon it, despite high casualty rates among journalists, that such matters cannot occur in the shadows. The Israeli courts and justice system are already under a cloud because of Netanyahu's attempts to nobble them. The courts will want to show their independence.
Biden is being firm in his assertion of Palestinian rights. But he has seemed unwilling to suspend resupply, no doubt for fear that it will be used against him by Republicans with reflex loyalty to Israel. But Biden is facing other pressures that might impel him to act.
The Republicans are again playing party games with his budget, particularly his Defence budget. Many Republicans are showing signs of impatience with progress in the Russia-Ukraine war. Some of the reaction comes from a new isolationism espoused by Donald Trump, or by Trump's expressions of admiration for Vladimir Putin of Russia. Others, seeing America and Europe increasingly enmired in a struggle from which it will be hard to disengage, are asking for clear definitions of war aims, for progress indicators, and for frankness about the inadequacies of Ukraine, not least in widespread corruption and mismanagement in the distribution of military aid. Some European members of NATO have become disenchanted with the struggle against Moscow, and since entry into the European Community usually involves unanimity, there are doubts as to whether it will ultimately give membership, or allow Ukraine to join NATO. Russia sees letting Ukraine join NATO as a hostile act.
It seems clear that a much-mooted Ukraine offensive, designed to win the war, has petered out, without much in the way of strategic victories. In eastern Ukraine, Russian military defences are dug in, supported by extensive trenches and landmines and, finally, a more professional and imaginative form of miliary leadership.
As against the Germans over much of the same terrain in WWII, the Russians have the advantage of far greater reserves and resources that can be thrown into the struggle. Ukraine forces may have the home advantage, but it is becoming clear that previous gaps in Russian morale and training are no longer as significant; there is some evidence, surprisingly, that the war is becoming more popular in Russia itself and that Putin plans to draw it into his re-election campaign. Economic sanctions against Russia are not inhibiting his power to fight, or his capacity to buy arms from nations including China, North Korea, Iran and India.
MORE WATERFORD:
Meanwhile, America's capacity to pour arms into Ukraine is being hampered by problems with budget authorisation, and by competing demands from Israel. The handing over of some weapons systems, and accompanying ammunition and stores, has already caused shortages in the American military, which must maintain stocks for other contingencies, including conflict with China.
The supply of arms from Europe has slowed, and some countries, such as Hungary, are now openly hostile to the war. The impact of an anti-immigration mood in the Netherlands, Poland, Italy and Austria, and problems in the United Kingdom suggest that Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will find it increasingly more difficult to bluff, bully and shame NATO countries into providing him with high-quality weapons, or improved training.
American military leaders are openly canvassing the impact of military stalemate, and the virtual inevitability of negotiations and a political, rather than a military settlement. That suggests pressure on Ukraine's politicians to accept by treaty the status quo, with the loss of much of East Ukraine as well as the Crimea peninsula. That may be a bitter pill to swallow - the more so if an ultimate settlement limits Ukraine's access to European markets, or its capacity to be a forward outpost of NATO, uncomfortably close to Moscow.
It seems unlikely that an American pivot towards Asia, or a fresh focus on tensions with China, are to be US priorities during an election year. Or much in the way of progress on AUKUS.
Jack Waterford is a former editor of The Canberra Times.
Jack Waterford is a former editor of The Canberra Times.
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