Marc Lynch spent some time yesterday at a roundtable with Sallai Meridor, Israel's ambassador to the United States. It was not a confidence inspiring presentation. "If Ambassador Meridor is taken at his word," says Lynch, "then Israel has no strategy in Gaza." Italics his. He continues:
Asked three times by audience members, Meridor simply could not offer any plausible explanation as to how its military campaign in Gaza would achieve its stated goals. Indeed, he at times seemed to offer this absence of strategy as a virtue, as evidence that the war had been forced upon Israel rather than chosen: "we have no grand political scheme... we were forced to defend ourselves to provide better security, period." With current estimates of 550 Palestinians dead and 2500 wounded, and the region in turmoil, the absence of strategy is not a virtue.[...]I asked him directly about his government's strategic logic. How, precisely did Israel's government expect its military campaign to achieve its goals? His answer tellingly focused almost exclusively on body counts and targets hit: over 1000 Hamas targets hit ("not a small number"), many headquarters and tunnels and rocket production facilities destroyed. Tactics over strategy.But as to a political strategy tied to the military campaign, nothing. No guidance as to whether Israel would re-occupy Gaza, or on what terms it would accept a cease-fire. No thoughts as to whether the campaign would cause Hamas to fall from power or help the Palestinian Authority regain political power. An absolute refusal to entertain a question about the negative effects of the images from Gaza on the wider region (the important image of the war, he nearly spat, should be that "terror is not allowed to win"). Would the military assault at least change Hamas's strategic calculus? "This is for the future, only the future will tell."In short, Meridor quite literally offered no strategy beyond hitting Gaza hard and hoping for the best. "In terms of creating damage we are certainly on the right path," noted the Ambassador. Few would disagree with that assessment, at least. But some might hope that the bloody, battered path might actually be leading somewhere.
The question, of course, is whether Meridor should be taken at his word. And on that, it's hard to say. He can't very well go to George Washington University and suggest that Israel's attack is really aimed at boosting Kadima's fortunes in the February elections, or restoring Israel's sense of military potency after the humiliating stalemate in Lebanon, or killing so many innocent Palestinians that they reject Hamas because they can no longer endure the collateral damage that results from Israel's reprisals against Hamas. All of those are plausible strategies given the tactics, but they can't be made public. None of them, however, are strategies relating to a resumption of the peace process or finding an ultimate settlement. Whatever Israel is ultimately doing, coming to some sort of livable agreement with the Palestinians is not part of the current plan.
