From Beirut to Gaza - Opinion

On a warm summer night in early June of 1982, two assassins from the Abu Nidal terror group - financed and hired by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein - waited in the darkness on Park Lane in London. When the Israeli Ambassador to the Court of St James Shlomo Argov - my father - emerged from a dinner in the Dorchester Hotel, he was shot in the head. His grievous injury served as the casus belli for Menachem Begin’s Israeli government to declare war on the Palestine Liberation Organization and invade Lebanon the very next week with the stated goal of destroying the PLO’s ability to attack Israeli targets in the Galilee. Ironically, the attack on my father was arranged not by the PLO, but by an Iraqi leader determined to damage that organization and help position himself as the unchallenged leader of the “axis of resistance” against Israel.

The first Lebanon war bears a tragic resemblance to events in Israel and Gaza today. In 1982, Begin’s defense minister Ariel Sharon lobbied for an Israeli invasion; moreover, he never fully disclosed to Begin his plans - code-named “Large Pines” - to bring Israeli forces to the gates of Beirut and occupy the Lebanese capital. The war precipitated a costly and bloody eighteen-year Israeli presence in Southern Lebanon, and it was not until the year 2000 that Prime Minister Ehud Barak withdrew Israeli forces from the “security zone” it occupied adjacent to the international armistice line. The war was a direct cause of the rise of the movement that is today known as Hezbollah, which possesses over 150,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israel and is now waging a war of attrition along Israel’s northern border in support of Hamas in Gaza. The 1982 conflict also created significant and damaging tension with the Reagan administration, including temporary suspension of arms deliveries to Israel. Then as today, Israel’s invasion failed to envisage a feasible “day after” scenario which would preserve any Israeli gains. Instead, Israel encouraged the fantastical idea of cultivating Lebanon’s Christian Maronites as the rulers of the country (that mirage was short-lived as Lebanese president Bashir Gemayel was assassinated in September of 1982, less than a month after taking office).

Fast forward to 2024. Hamas - financed by Qatari cash with the full knowledge and tacit support of a Netanyahu government in thrall to its messianic hardline settler wing which remains inimically opposed to any action which would confer legitimacy to the Palestinian Authority (PA), has been tragically and exquisitely successful in maneuvering Israel into a strategic impasse. Hamas’ barbaric and heinous attack on October 7th - designed to take advantage of an Israel it perceived to be divided and polarized in the wake of almost a year of internal strife - caused the Netanyahu government to declare a war designed to bring an ephemeral and ill-defined “total victory”.

At the same time, Netanyahu is incapable of agreeing to support the creation of a coalition including moderate Sunni Arab states and Palestinians who are not affiliated with Hamas (and who by definition are therefore affiliated with the PA). Such a coalition is a necessary prerequisite to build a functioning local government that is able to provide basic social services to Gaza’s over two million residents and is not an arm of Hamas.

Just as it did forty-two years ago, Israel’s government is today engaged in shockingly shoddy wishful thinking and unable to craft a set of policy choices that might have ended the war months ago, introduced a credible replacement civil authority to Gaza, hastened Israeli recognition by Saudi Arabia and possibly brought home additional hostages.

Henry Kissinger famously commented that “Israel has no foreign policy, only domestic politics”. There can be no better example of this myopic behavior than the fact that even when presented with the tantalizing prospect of Saudi recognition (and doubtless of subsequent recognition by the world’s largest Muslim countries including Indonesia, Malaysia and perhaps even Pakistan), Netanyahu remains consumed by his need to preserve the current hardline coalition, prevent the early elections that a large majority of Israelis clearly favor and maintain his grip on power and therefore delay his ongoing trial on corruption charges.

Sadly, Netanyahu’s insistence on “total victory” without defining what that means in practical terms has now put his government on a collision course with an American administration even more supportive of Israel than was Reagan’s four decades ago. Before the Gaza conflict it would have been inconceivable for American pilots (along with British and Jordanian ones) to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles in defense of the Jewish state. The Biden administration’s quid pro quo - as the president is engaged in an extremely challenging reelection campaign - is to demand that Netanyahu place Israel’s national priorities above political expediency.

In international relations, there is no such thing as unconditional support. Netanyahu - who has always fancied himself as a master strategist - is learning an expensive and avoidable lesson which was articulated simply in an old American pop song - “you don’t tug on Superman’s cape.” It is a lesson that is also creating enormous and unnecessary damage to Israel’s international standing and destroying Netanyahu’s legacy. Israel is not “one step from total victory” in its just and morally defensive war against Hamas. But just as the Rolling Stones pointed out many years ago “you can’t always get what you want but if you try, sometimes you get what you need.” What Israel needs is ironically reflected in the title of Bibi Netanyahu’s 2009 book “A durable peace: Israel and its place among the nations.” Just as in biblical times, Israel – despite its technological prowess and regional power status – is a small nation in a problematic neighborhood. To survive and thrive, it requires both regional and global alliances – and alliances require compromises and creativity, both of which have been beyond the capability of the current Israeli coalition. Alliances can also confer legitimacy and are an antidote to international isolation.

In the Fall of 1968, Prime Minister Golda Meir paid her first visit to Richard Nixon’s White House. During that visit, she graciously offered to join our family and many others at Washington’s Addas Israel Synagogue to celebrate my bar mitzvah. During the ceremony, Golda rose unprompted to speak to the congregation. Calling me up and placing her arm on me, she told those in attendance that her fervent wish was that, as a ninth-generation Sabra, I would not find it necessary to defend the country against enemies who yearn for its destruction. Her hopes obviously did not come to fruition. Fifty-four years later, I find myself wishing the same for my daughters and my grandchildren and hoping that Bibi Netanyahu finds the moral compass to put Israel’s interests above his political fortunes.