In Focus: Invincible no more Now even by its own admission, the 2006 war on Lebanon proved that Israel's regional pre-eminence has collapsed, writes Galal Nassar History doesn't repeat itself in a mechanical way, but this doesn't mean that we cannot take a certain event from the past and compare it with a contemporary one. It is possible to formulate laws and theories that may help us interpret current events in the light of the past. Awareness of such laws and theories helps us see the context in which history unfolds. Greek philosophers, such as Galinus and Hippocrates, saw a connection between biology, ethics, politics, and the life of any state. Like any living organism, states have a life cycle of their own, they concluded. The Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun thought along the same lines, arguing that a state goes through three stages: vitality, growth and decline. All modern theories, from Hegelian dialectics to Marxian class struggle, from Max Weber's theories on the evolution of government to Sigmund Freud's analysis of civilisation and its discontents, offer insights, however varied, on the law of historical change. These theories came my mind as I read the Winograd Report on Israel's war on Lebanon in July 2006. The commission of enquiry led by retired judge Eliyahu Winograd revealed much about the war. It found that the decision-making process leading to war was flawed, that politicians and the military were not communicating properly, and that major errors were made at the highest levels of military command. The commission criticised political and military leaders for failing to think in a strategic manner. The Winograd Report concludes that Israel failed to use its military force "prudently and effectively". It adds that serious mistakes were compounded by failure to protect civilians from Hizbullah's rockets. The report maintains that the prime minister and defence minister acted on a correct evaluation of what they considered vital for Israeli interests, but that wasn't to say that they did the right thing. Five of Israel's top military and legal experts sat on the commission. It was their conclusion that the myth of invincibility that Israel has clung to no longer holds. No wonder then that many inside and outside Israel didn't want the report published in full, citing reasons of national security. Despite its admission that the myth of invincibility is over, the report failed to mention a few things that relate to the opening paragraphs of this article. Why did the Israeli army and government perform so disastrously in the July 2006 war? Why did that war turn out so differently from previous wars? Most of Israel's previous wars seem successful. Most led to the acquisition of more Palestinian territories and the weakening of Arab morale. Not this one. Why? The answer takes me back to my opening paragraphs. Israel is a usurping entity. It seized Palestine at a time when complex international developments were not exactly in the favour of the Arabs. Everything seemed to work for Israel, a country meant to be a colonialist spearhead into the Arab region; a country meant to be an advance garrison safeguarding the interests of foreign powers. Israel lacked from the beginning several of the most essential components of modern states. What it had going for it was international support and the absence of concerted action on the part of the nation it attacked and aspired to replace. The pioneers of the Zionist project were cunning, managing to convince world Jewry that the rape of Palestine was a legitimate thing to do. A land without a people for a people without land, the Zionists claimed. What gave momentum to the Zionist project was international support and the sense of vitality Ibn Khaldun so aptly described. For nearly half a century, this vitality survived as new settlers grappled with a foreign land and the fact that they had little in common. Israel was a hybrid. At the top of the social ladder were white settlers from East Europe, followed by Jews coming from Arab countries and Iran. The bottom of the social ladder was left for Jews known as the Falashas. The duality of the Ashkenazi and the Sephardim was only one aspect of disunity in Israel. And war proved to be the one rallying cry that would cement the new country. The Israelis needed wars to keep them together. Indeed, the Zionist project -- as I have said many times before -- is a project of war. It was Israel's very social fabric that triggered what the Zionists like to call "preventive wars". A careful reading of the internal realities of the Zionist entity shows the inevitability of those preventive wars. Only wars would keep together a society whose members have so little in common, aside from myth and legend. Facing the Israelis, on the other side of the divide, the Arabs lacked the same enthusiasm for war that Israel always had. Their reaction, with the one exception of 1967, was mainly emotional and disproportionate to the magnitude of the challenge. The result was continued defeats for the Arabs and successes for the Israelis. In 2006, the Israeli army fought a conventional war, thinking that it would be a repeat of earlier incursions, such as those of 1978 and 1982. Israel fought in 2006 with the same tactics it applied in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982. Relaxed and over-confident, the Israelis dusted off their old war tactics and went on the offensive. They were too confident to assess the strength of their enemy. If the old war plans worked in the past, they must work again, the Israelis thought. So they opted for an aerial strike followed by ground action. The Israelis sat in their military operation rooms thinking they would manage the battle with the same spirit of condescension that became their trademark. But the outcome was bitter this time. The power of deterrence collapsed. The Israelis didn't win in a few days, as they had expected. They became victims of their own arrogance. Fourteen centuries ago, on the 15th year of the Hijra, the Arabs fought the Persians in Al-Qadisiya. The Persian armies acted with the same arrogance of today's Israelis. They brought their elephants and hardware and set up camp in Al-Qorna, in a narrow valley situated between the Euphrates and the Tigris. The Arabs, meanwhile, took every precaution to ensure victory. They were driven by a new sense of vitality, one that the new religion brought along -- and victory was theirs. To put it briefly, vitality and alertness always win over arrogance and mental laziness. In 2006, the Israelis underestimated the resolve and skills of Lebanese fighters. And by the admission of the Winograd Commission, the "invincible army" turned out to be vulnerable after all.
