Daniel Pipes: Israel Undoing a Decade of Mistakes

Daniel Pipes says that the Lebanon war may turn back the clock in Israeli-Arab relations--and if so, it might be a good thing:

Decades of hard work before 1993 won Israel the wary respect of its enemies. By contrast, episodic displays of muscle have no utility. Should Israel resume the business-as-usual of appeasement and retreat, the present fighting will turn out to be a summer squall, a futile lashing-out. By now, Israel's enemies know they need only hunker down for some days or weeks and things will go back to normal, with the Israeli left in obstructionist mode and the government soon proffering gifts, trucking with terrorists, and yet again in territorial retreat.

Deterrence cannot be reinstated in a week, through a raid, a blockade, or a round of war. It demands unwavering resolve, expressed over decades. For the current operations to achieve anything for Israel beyond emotional palliation, they must presage a profound change in orientation. They must prompt a major rethinking of Israeli foreign policy, a junking of the Oslo and disengagement paradigms in favor of a policy of deterrence leading to victory.

The pattern since 1993 has been consistent: Each disillusionment inspires an orgy of Israeli remorse and reconsideration, followed by a quiet return to appeasement and retreat. I fear that the Gaza and Lebanon operations are focused not on defeating the enemy but on winning the release of one or two soldiers – a strange war goal, one perhaps unprecedented in the history of warfare – suggesting that matters will soon enough revert to form.

In other words, the import of hostilities under way is not what has been destroyed in Lebanon nor what the U.N. Security Council resolves; it is what the Israeli public learns, or fails to learn.