Gaza: Battlefield Victory and Political Defeat
By Michael Kleiner exclusive to AFSI
In the aftermath of the Gaza war, Israel has two winners and two losers. The obvious winners are Zahal and the right wing bloc. The two losers, yet to be clearly identified as such, are the state of Israel and the Kadima party.
No one denies the smashing victory of Zahal but it’s not necessary to wait for the judgment of history to realize that the victory was limited to the battlefield. Zahal was blessed with a chief of staff that reminds one of old times and a minister of defense who knows how to conduct a military campaign. Zahal had the strong support of the public and was properly prepared -- the result of lessons learned in the second Lebanon War. It succeeded in carrying out activity in enemy territory, like that in Lebanon, with only minor casualties. Motivation was high and the functioning of its chain of command has inspired pride. That the Israeli government was unable to convert the victory in battle into a political victory is a great pity. The army won and the state has lost.
Here is a partial list of the military objectives that the political leadership did not define and failed to achieve:
1) The Philadelphi access is not in our hands.
2) Hamas remains in power.
3) Gilad Shalit is in captivity.
4) Hundreds of tunnels for the smuggling of war material remain active.
5) The Kassam rocket launchers and their squads continue to threaten the peaceful life of the settlements in the south.
And here is a list of costs that were unanticipated on the political level:
1) A wave of anti-Semitism in the world.
2) A wave of dangerous and humbling proposals by the European meddlers.
3) Episodes without precedent of collision with the American administration.
4) And most serious of all, at the end of the day they will open again the passages between Gaza and Rafiah. Hamas will have snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. .
In a state in which the army is the heart it is difficult to understand the difference between a military and a political victory. One is therefore likely to attribute to Israel the victory in Gaza. However, logical examination of the results of the war point to a military victory which has camouflaged a bitter political loss.
It is a loss which has a mother despite the fact we usually attribute failures to a male parent.
With poor English and with body language that demonstrated an appearance that shifted between arrogance and neurosis, Tzipi Livni appeared time after time before the microphones, alarming the world. A foreign minister in a war has two choices; diplomatic sweet talk while the army hits hard or an attack without restraint on the hypocrisy of a world that has ignored eight years of missile attacks on Jewish communities and exhibited a double standard when reacting to any legitimate step of Jewish self-defense. Mrs. Livni selected the path of aggressive apologetics which is a definite recipe for eating rotten fish while acquiring an expulsion order from the city.
While Ehud Barak took his stand with the soldiers on the battlefield, Livni abandoned her post when she abstained from acting in the UN -- preferring a triple press conferences with both Ehuds (Barak and Olmert). In a war which is conducted in the midst of an election the public accepts the media exposure given a politician that results from the performance of her appointed tasks but it does not tolerate one who abandons her post and leaves the country exposed to a damaging Security Council resolution while she grabs another photo opportunity.
The complete opposite to Livni’s media exposure during this war is the disappearance of Benjamin Netanyah from the media. There were people who asked where has Bibi disappear to? It is not pleasant to relate that the chairman of the opposition spread a publicity umbrella over the failing activity of the foreign minister’s head. Relieving Livni of her job of appearing in the media and explaining Israel’s position, Netanyahu did that for her, as if he were a lowly soldier in the lines. With this he has proven that sometimes a private soldier may function much better than the public relations chief of staff. The Israeli public appreciates the lowering of one’s media profile and giving support to the government from the benches of the opposition. That is one of the reasons the Likud under Netanyahu’s leadership held its place in the polls while Kadima under Livni is faltering.
The entire right wing bloc was strengthened by the war in Gaza with almost everyone acknowledging that the right had been correct when it warned that Oslo would bring katyushas upon Ashkelon and when it warned that the one-sided evacuation signals weakness and invites aggression from the Palestinian side. It is recognized that it was correct that any retreat from territories of Eretz Yisrael would put more and more citizens in the line of fire. Personally I cannot restrain myself from relating that the successful military action by Zahal in Gaza was carried out according to the detailed program of the Herut Party at whose head I stood - a program that I proposed even before the founding of Herut - which called for the following; the bombardment of military targets in Gaza by air, leafleting Gaza with an evacuation warning, and entry of ground forces into the territory to cleanse it from war material and military activists.
The left which has by its slovenly performance led us into this war has carried out military activity that comes out of the workshop of the “extremist right,” -- the “hallucinating right". The successful campaign came into being because the right was proved correct and the campaign was carried out according to our methods. The public understands and knows who to reward. This is why the right wing bloc gains strength and support for the government wanes. The public is sick of governments hungry for political agreements which cast to the wind the achievement of the army and invite the next round of violence, placing Israel in an ever more difficult starting position. The public looks for a government that will take the battlefield victory and convert it into a political victory for the Jews.
Michael Kleiner is currently on the Likud list for the Eighteenth Knesset.
He is the former chairman of the Knesset’s Land of Israel Committee
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