The psyops wars of the Middle East

David Brooks:

For several years, Israelis and Palestinians played the land-for-peace game. Each side engaged in a series of elaborate maneuvers designed to get the best possible deal when it came time to negotiate a final status agreement.

But when Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran became leading players in the Middle East struggle, that land-for-peace game was suspended. A different game with different rules was begun. This new game is not oriented toward a final agreement. The extremist groups believe in the eventual extermination of Israel. They’re not interested in a handshake on the White House lawn.

In this new game, both sides seek the destruction of the other, but neither has the power to achieve it. They are engaged in a struggle that has no near-term practical end. The extremists’ goal is to kill as many Jews as possible and wait for God (or Iran) to kill the rest. Israel’s goal is to restrain the brazenness of the extremists until their movement somehow burns itself out or is destroyed from within Arab society. Israel’s realistic immediate goal is not to achieve some permanent resolution, but to merely suppress terrorism week by week and month by month.

The writer Michael Oakeshott captured Israel’s quandary in this game in a famous passage: “In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbor for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel.”

By trial and error, Israel is learning to keep an even keel. For while Hamas and the extremists are dogmatic about ends, they are pragmatic about timing and means. On several occasions, Israelis have managed to temporarily suppress violence. The assassinations of Abdel Aziz Rantisi and Ahmed Yassin in 2004 temporarily suppressed Hamas suicide bombings. The destruction of Hezbollah’s command and control structure in Beirut’s Dahiya district in 2006 seems to have shocked the leadership and reduced terror activity in the north.

In this game, violence doesn’t necessarily beget violence. It sometimes prevents it. The difference between successful Israeli actions and unsuccessful ones is not in the amount of destruction they achieve, but in the psychological messages they send. The attacks on Hamas terror leaders in 2004 demonstrated Israeli prowess. They demonstrated superior intelligence capability and suggested that Israel is always one step ahead. These sorts of accomplishments sapped Hamas’s confidence and created a cycle of recrimination, leading to uncertainty and more risk-averse behavior.

Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, on the other hand, created plenty of physical and human destruction, but it also displayed Israeli ineptitude. This time it was Israel’s turn to suffer a crisis of confidence. Radicals on the Arab side gained prestige, while moderates lost it.

This new game isn’t a war of attrition. It’s a struggle for confidence, a series of psychological exchanges designed to shift the balance of morale. The material destroyed in an episode can be replaced, but the psychological effects are more lasting. What is really important is how each episode ends, because the ending defines the meaning — who mastered events and who was mastered by them.

Over the past several weeks, Israeli leaders seem to have adjusted to the new game with new rules. The initial incursion into Gaza was an effective display of prowess. According to The Jerusalem Report, in the first wave, 80 Israeli planes hit more than 100 targets and nearly all of the Hamas military compounds within 3 minutes 40 seconds. The I.D.F. has clearly addressed many of the weaknesses exposed by the Winograd Commission, showing the recuperative powers a democracy is capable of.

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The problem for both sides in this conflict is the influence of outsiders who will not let either side completely fail. Israel does have the capacity to destroy Hamas or Hezballah, but it is restrained by outside forces from exercising that capacity. This restraint comes mainly from western governments who want to keep good relations with Arab governments who want to keep some hope alive for the incompetent Palestinians. Recently the Arab governments have shown some restraining influence with the Palestinians, but Iran has stepped into the breach to push intolerance of Israel. This is why, many of the Arab governments correctly blame Hamas for the current war. These governments will wring their hands over Palestinian casualties their media calls massacres, but they really want to see Hamas and Iran fail. That is a new dynamic that Israel is exploiting at this point.

As for Hezballah, their reaction to the current war demonstrates they clearly lost the last one despite their bluster and Israeli hand wringing. Iran was an even bigger loser in that war because it lost its strategic deterrent against an Israeli attack on Iran nukes. Iran's attempt to build up Hamas to offset that lost now appears to be a failure too.