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| Photo Credit: Flickr user hazy jenius |
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| An Israeli reserve soldier rests his head on his rifle following a training session at the Elyakim military base, 03 August 2006. (Photo: AFP - David Furst) |
Since the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948, every war it launched had its own peculiar global and regional strategic environment which set the circumstances and impetus for the decision to go to war. The war launched by Israel on Hezbollah and Lebanon in 2006 was also a product of a strategic environment that made it possible and imperative.
It was necessary to eliminate Hezbollah, its fighting capacity, and military threat to Israel. Additionally, it aimed to pave the way for Washington to carry out its plans for the Middle East by way of Lebanon.
On the eve of the 2006 war, Israel enjoyed two strategic assets. The first was the Hosni Mubarak regime on its southern border, which had guaranteed the neutrality of Egypt for the past thirty years, thus allowing Israel to launch its wars on Lebanon, Palestine, and the region without worrying about the Egypt front.
The second was the US occupation of Iraq, a strategic development that promised – according to Israeli projections at the time – the neutralization of its eastern and northern fronts.
Iraq is considered the strategic depth of these two fronts, in addition to its ability to contain Iran.
Israel’s assessment at the time saw the Syrian withdrawal as an opportunity to crush Hezbollah and smash its capabilities, making it impossible for the party to rebuild its fighting capacity. But as the bet on an internal Lebanese process failed, the war became more necessary and urgent. The repercussions of Israel’s subsequent failure was not limited to Lebanon; it led to a transformation deep inside Israel’s strategic thinking.
The most prominent manifestation of such a shift was expressed by the current Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak in Yedioth Ahronoth on 10 August 2012. “The shock of the 2006 war is the reason the army high command is opposed to attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities,” he said.
In any case, Tel Aviv and Washington’s greatest problem did not stop at the failure of the 2006 war. The war allowed Hezbollah to draw the needed lessons and begin accumulating its ballistic and fighting capabilities. The Damascus-Tehran front was reinforced and Hezbollah was viewed differently in the eyes of the Israelis.
It was no longer just a resistance movement preventing the re-occupation of Lebanon and thwarting Israel’s plots in the region. Rather, it became a growing strategic threat and a basic foundation for current regional equations.
Arab Spring or Israeli Winter?
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The story of the term recommended by Israeli intelligence to be used by politicians to denote the current developments in the Arab region summarizes how the Israeli establishment perceives it surrounding strategic environment.
After the use of the term “Arab Spring” by Israeli politicians and commentators, the intelligence community fell into disarray about what term truly expresses the reality. They finally picked a “neutral” term, “the earthquake.”
Behind the choice of the term, lies the possibility that the events in the Arab world may culminate in a “spring,” which could provide Israel with a regional umbrella protecting its security and existence. It could also end in a “winter” that would transform the existing wave of change to a threat to its existence and national security.
In other words, the postulate currently adopted by the Israeli establishment is that the events in the Arab world could lead to exacerbating the imminent threats.
What distinguishes the current strategic environment, compared to the eve of the 2006 war, was the loss of Israel’s southern strategic asset, despite its gamble that the new establishment would not be as bad as it feared. Bets and hopes aside, there is a reality that Israel cannot ignore. A new process was initiated on its southern borders.The Israelis do see the possibility of such threats dissipating due to political and economic constraints inside Egypt. After all, there is a strong possibility that the new Egyptian regime will have priorities other than Israel.
However, it seems certain that a state of anxiety is taking hold of Israel’s military establishment, leading it to demand an increase in its budget to enable it to be ready to contain any sudden developments in the Egyptian arena. To demonstrate the impact of these developments, it is useful to look at the comparison made by Major General Giora Eiland, who had held important positions such as heading the Planning Directorate of the Israeli military and later as a national security advisor.
Since the signing of the Camp David agreement – more precisely since 1985 – the size of the armed forces was reduced, especially on the ground, while improving their fighting capabilities. “Moreover, in real terms the Israeli military budget has remained more or less constant since 1974. Yet because the GDP has grown significantly in the 37 years since then, security allocations have dropped from 30 percent of the GDP in 1974 to less than 7 percent in 2010,” he said.
Israel has also lost its eastern front stability following the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, whose regime is currently allied with Iran. “The two new events are expected to impact us: the results of the elections in Egypt [which led to a Muslim Brotherhood victory] and the new reality emerging in Iraq which puts Israel in the face of challenges from the east in a manner that we have not seen or dealt with for almost ten years,” the Israeli Prime Minister told the Knesset on 28 December 2011.
Israel’s Strategic Situation
In a lecture at Bar-Ilan University on 6 June 2007, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then in the opposition, said that “the 1967 war meant [for Israel] the transition from a state whose reason for existence was being questioned to a state that cannot be overcome.”He added that
“Israeli victory and deterrence were a critical factor for Arab countries to understand the importance of recognizing Israel’s existence and making peace with it. This had led to peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan and indicators for reconciliation with Palestinians.”
“Starting with the unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, through to the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and following the second Lebanon war (2006), this tendency was reversed and it no longer seems now that Israel is invincible. The question about its existence is back on the horizon, not just for Israel’s enemies, but also its friends.”
This description of Israel’s strategic reality, as told by Netanyahu, came 10 months after the war stopped on 14 August 2006. Hezbollah had not yet completed assembling the ballistic capabilities which made it into a vital component of the regional equation, as admitted by the Israelis themselves.
Furthermore, the Mubarak regime was still in power in Egypt and neither Israel nor anyone else had any indicators that it would fall in the next few years. Iraq was also still under occupation by the US and the future was not clear.Netanyahu touched on that in his Bar-Ilan address. He said that “the fact that currently there is no threat [against Israel] from the east, does not mean that the threat will not occur in the future, if the situation in Iraq does not develop in the directions we would like to see.”
This is how Netanyahu saw Israel’s strategic environment in 2007. In the regional and strategic situation in 2012, another strategic opportunity looms, from the Israeli perspective, whose prerequisites were absent in the past years.
It is betting on the possibility of toppling Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which had embraced and supported the resistance movements in Lebanon and Palestine, and provided them with strategic depth. Their victories transformed the regional and strategic equations in the region.
Today, however, many Israeli officials show some optimism about the outcome of Syrian developments in the foreseeable future and its strategic impact on Israel.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
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