Stratfor
Four years ago on Nov. 4,
while Americans were going to the polls to elect a new president, Israeli
infantry, tanks and bulldozers entered the Gaza Strip to dismantle an extensive
tunnel network used by Hamas to smuggle in weapons. An already tenuous truce
mediated by the Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak had been broken. Hamas
responded with a barrage of mortar and rocket fire lasting several weeks, and
on Dec. 27, 2008, Israel began Operation Cast Lead. The military campaign began
with seven days of heavy air strikes on Gaza, followed by a 15-day ground
incursion. By the end of the campaign, nearly 1,000 poorly guided shorter-range
rockets and mortar shells hit southern Israel, reaching as far as Beersheba and
Yavne. Several senior Hamas commanders and hundreds of militants were killed in
the fighting. Israel Defense Forces figures showed that 10 IDF soldiers died
(four from friendly fire), three Israeli civilians died from Palestinian rocket
fire and 1,166 Palestinians were killed -- 709 of them combatants.
The strategic environment
during the 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead was vastly different from the one
Israel faces in today's Operation Pillar of Defense. To understand the
evolution in regional dynamics, we must return to 2006, the year that would set
the conditions for both military campaigns.
Setting the Stage
2006 began with Hamas winning
a sweeping electoral victory over its ideological rival, Fatah. Representing
the secular and more pragmatic strand of Palestinian politics, Fatah had
already been languishing in Gaza under the weight of its own corruption and its
lackluster performance in seemingly fruitless negotiations with Israel. The
political rise of Hamas led to months of civil war between the two Palestinian
factions, and on June 14, Hamas forcibly took control of the Gaza Strip from
Fatah. Just 11 days later, Hamas kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalt and
killed two others, prompting a new round of hostilities with Israel.
In what appeared to be a
coordinated move, Hezbollah on July 12 launched its own raid on Israel's
northern front and kidnapped two additional soldiers, kicking off the
month-long Second Lebanon War. As Israel discovered, Hezbollah was
well-prepared for the conflict, relying on an extensive tunneling system to
preserve its launching crews and weaponry. Hezbollah made use of anti-tank
guided missiles, improvised explosive devices that caught Israel Defense Forces
by surprise and blunted the ground offensive, and medium-range rockets capable
of reaching Haifa. Hezbollah incurred a heavy toll for the fight, with much of
the infrastructure in southern Lebanon devastated and roughly 1,300 Lebanese
civilian casualties threatening to erode its popular support. Casualty numbers
aside, Hezbollah emerged from the 2006 conflict with a symbolic victory. Since
1973, no other Arab army, much less a militant organization, had been able to
fight as effectively to challenge Israel's military superiority. Israel's
inability to claim victory translated as a Hezbollah victory. That perception
reverberated throughout the region. It cast doubts on Israel's ability to
respond to much bigger strategic threats, considering it could be so confounded
by a non-state militant actor close to home.
At that time, Hamas was
contending with numerous challenges; its coup in Gaza had earned the group
severe political and economic isolation, and the group's appeals to open Gaza's
border, and for neighbors to recognize Hamas as a legitimate political actor,
went mostly unheeded. However, Hamas did take careful note of Hezbollah's
example. Here was a militant organization that had burnished its resistance
credentials against Israel, could maintain strong popular support among its
constituents and had made its way into Lebanon's political mainstream.
Hezbollah benefited from a
strong patron in Iran. Hamas, on the other hand, enjoyed no such support.
Mubarak's Egypt, Bashar al Assad's Syria, Jordan under the Hashemites and the
Gulf monarchies under the influence of the House of Saud all shared a deep
interest in keeping Hamas boxed in. Although publically these countries showed
support for the Palestinians and condemned Israel, they tended to view
Palestinian refugees and more radical groups such as Hamas as a threat to the
stability of their regimes.
While Hamas began questioning
the benefits of its political experiment, Iran saw an opportunity to foster a
militant proxy. Tehran saw an increasingly strained relationship between Saudi
Arabia and Hamas, and it took advantage to increase funding and weapons
supplies to the group. Forces from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds
Force, along with Hezbollah, worked with Hamas to expand the group's weapons
arsenal and build elaborate tunnels under the Gaza Strip to facilitate its
operations. Israel soon began to notice and took action toward the end of 2008.
Operation Cast Lead
Hamas was operating in a
difficult strategic environment during Operation Cast Lead. Hezbollah had the
benefit of using the rural terrain south of the Litani River to launch rockets
against Israel during the Second Lebanon War, thereby sparing Lebanon's most
densely populated cities from retaliatory attacks. Hamas, on the other hand,
must work in a tightly constricted geographic space and therefore uses the
Palestinian population as cover for its rocket launches. The threat of losing
popular support is therefore much higher for Hamas in Gaza than it is for
Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. At the same time, operating in a built-up urban
environment also poses a considerable challenge for the Israeli military.
During Operation Cast Lead,
Cairo did little to hide its true feelings toward Hamas. Though Egypt played a
critical role in the cease-fire negotiations, it was prepared to incur the
domestic political cost of cracking down on the Rafah border crossing to
prevent refugees from flowing into Sinai and to prevent Hamas from replenishing
its weapons supply. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, then in the opposition,
took advantage of the situation to publicly rally against the Mubarak regime,
but its protests did little to change the situation. Hamas was boxed in by
Egypt and Israel.
The rest of the region largely
avoided direct involvement. Turkey was focused on internal affairs, and Saudi
Arabia remained largely aloof. Jordan's Hashemite rulers could afford to
continue quietly cooperating with Israel without facing backlash. The United
States, emerging from an election, was focused on shaping an exit strategy from
Iraq. Many of Hamas' traditional wealthy Gulf donors grew wary of attracting
the focus of Western security and intelligence agencies as fund transfers from
the Gulf came under closer scrutiny.
Iran was the exception. While
the Arab regimes ostracized Hamas, Iran worked to sustain the group in its
fight. Tehran's reasoning was clear and related to Iran's emergence as a
regional power. Iraq had already fallen into Iran's sphere of influence (though
the United States was not yet prepared to admit it), Hezbollah was rebuilding
in southern Lebanon, and Iranian influence continued to spread in western
Afghanistan. Building up a stronger militant proxy network in the Palestinian
territories was the logical next step in Tehran's effort to keep a check on
Israeli threats to strike the Iranian nuclear program.
In early January 2009, in the
midst of Operation Cast Lead, Israel learned that Iran was allegedly planning
to deliver 120 tons of arms and explosives to Gaza, including anti-tank guided
missiles and Iranian-made Fajr-3 rockets with a 40-kilometer (25-mile) range
and 45-kilogram (99-pound) warhead. The Iranian shipment arrived at Port Sudan,
and the Israeli air force then bombed a large convoy of 23 trucks traveling
across Egypt's southern border up into Sinai. Though Israel interdicted this
weapons shipment -- likely with Egyptian complicity -- Iran did not give up its
attempts to supply Hamas with advanced weaponry. The long-range Fajr rocket
attacks targeting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the current conflict are a
testament to Iran's continued effort.
The Current Geopolitical
Environment
Hamas and Israel now find
themselves in a greatly altered geopolitical climate. On every one of its
borders, Israel faces a growing set of vulnerabilities that would have been
hard to envision at the time of Operation Cast Lead.
The most important shift has
taken place in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood carefully used the momentum
provided by the Arab Spring to shed its opposition status and take political
control of the state. Hamas, which grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood, then
faced an important decision. With an ideological ally in Cairo, Egypt no longer
presents as high a hurdle to Hamas' political ambitions. Indeed, Hamas could
even try to use its ties to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to achieve
political legitimacy. When unrest spread into Syria and began to threaten
Iran's position in the Levant, Hamas made a strategic decision to move away
from the Iran-Syria axis, now on the decline, and to latch itself onto the new
apparent regional trend: the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist
affiliates across the Arab world.
This rise of the Muslim
Brotherhood spread from Egypt to Syria to Jordan, presenting Israel with a new
set of challenges on its borders. Egypt's dire economic situation, the
political unrest in its cities, and the Muslim Brotherhood's uneasy
relationship with the military and security apparatus led to a rapid
deterioration in security in Sinai. Moreover, a Muslim Brotherhood government
in Cairo on friendly terms with Hamas could not be trusted to crack down on the
Gaza border and interdict major weapons shipments. A political machine such as
the Muslim Brotherhood, which derives its power from the street, will be far
more sensitive to pro-Palestinian sentiment than will a police state that can
rule through intimidation.
In Syria, Israel has lost a
predictable adversary to its north. The balkanization of the Levant is giving
rise to an array of Islamist forces, and Israel can no longer rely on the
regime in Damascus to keep Hezbollah in check for its own interests. In trying
to sustain its position in Syria and Lebanon, Iran has increased the number of
its operatives in the region, bringing Tehran that much closer to Israel as
both continue to posture over a potential strike against Iranian nuclear
facilities.
To Israel's east, across the
Jordan River valley, pressure is also growing on the Hashemite kingdom. An
emboldened Muslim Brotherhood has been joined by disillusioned tribes from the
East Bank in openly calling for the downfall of the king. High energy costs are
severely blunting the kingdom's ability to contain these protests through
subsidies, and the growing crisis in Gaza threatens to spread instability in
the West Bank and invigorate Palestinians across the river in Jordan.
Beyond its immediate
periphery, Israel is struggling to find parties interested in its cause. The
Europeans remain hostile to anything they deem to be excessive Israeli
retaliation against the Palestinians. Furthermore, they are far too consumed by
the fragmentation of the European Union to get involved with what is happening
in the southern Levant.
The United States remains
diplomatically involved in trying to reach a cease-fire, but as it has made
clear throughout the Syrian crisis, Washington does not intend to get dragged
into every conflagration in the Middle East. Instead, the United States is far
more interested in having regional players like Egypt and Turkey manage the
burden. The United States can pressure Egypt by threatening to withhold financial
and military aid. In the case of Turkey, there appears to be little that Ankara
can do to mediate the conflict. Turkish-Israeli relations have been severely
strained since the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident. Moreover, although the Turkish
government is trying to edge its way into the cease-fire negotiations to
demonstrate its leadership prowess to the region, Ankara is as wary of
appearing too close to a radical Islamist group like Hamas as it is of
appearing in the Islamic world as too conciliatory to Israel.
Saudi Arabia was already
uncomfortable with backing more radical Palestinian strands, but Riyadh now
faces a more critical threat -- the regional rise of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Islamist political activism poses a direct threat to the foundation of the
monarchy, which has steadfastly kept the religious establishment out of the
political domain. Saudi Arabia has little interest in the Egyptian Muslim
Brotherhood encouraging Hamas' political rise, and Riyadh will thus become even
more alienated from the Palestinian theater. Meanwhile Gulf state Qatar, which
has much less to lose, is proffering large amounts of financial aid in a bid to
increase its influence in the Palestinian territories.
Iran, meanwhile, is working
feverishly to stem the decline of its regional influence. At the time of
Operation Cast Lead, Iran was steadily expanding its sphere of influence, from
western Afghanistan to the Mediterranean. A subsequent U.S. military buildup in
the Persian Gulf and an intensifying U.S.-led economic warfare campaign slowed
Iran down, but it was the decline of the al Assad regime that put Iran on the
defensive. An emboldened Sunni opposition in Syria, backed by the West, Turkey
and the Arab Gulf states, could spill into Lebanon to threaten Hezbollah's position
and eventually threaten Iran's position in Iraq. With each faction looking to
protect itself, Iran can no longer rely as heavily on militant proxies in the
Levant, especially Palestinian groups that see an alignment with Iran as a
liability in the face of a Sunni rebellion. But Iran is also not without
options in trying to maintain a Palestinian lever against Israel.
Hamas would not be able to
strike Tel Aviv and Jerusalem with long-range rockets had it not been for Iran,
which supplied these rockets through Sudan and trained Palestinian operatives
on how to assemble them in Gaza. Even if Hamas uses up its arsenal of Fajr-5s
in the current conflict and takes a heavy beating in the process, Iran has
succeeded in creating a major regional distraction to tie down Israel and draw
attention away from the Syrian rebellion. Iran supplied Hezbollah with Zelzal
rockets capable of reaching Haifa during the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Hamas was
limited to shorter-range Qassam and Grad rockets in Operation Cast Lead but now
has Iranian-made Fajr-5s to target Israel's most cherished cities.
Hamas is now carrying the
mantle of resistance from Hezbollah in hopes of achieving a symbolic victory
that does not end up devastating the group in Gaza. Israel's only hope to deny
Hamas that victory is to eliminate Hamas' arsenal of these rockets, all the
while knowing that Iran will likely continue to rely on Egypt's leniency on the
border to smuggle more parts and weaponry into Gaza in the future. The Hamas
rocket dilemma is just one example of the types of problems Israel will face in
the coming years. The more vulnerable Israel becomes, the more prone it will be
to pre-emptive action against its neighbors as it tries to pick the time and
place of battle. In this complex strategic environment, Operation Pillar of
Defense may be one of many similar military campaigns as Israel struggles to
adjust to this new geopolitical reality.
Stratfor,
november 19, 2012
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