Op-ed: The Middle East Tragedy

Here is an unpublished article on the Middle East crisis.

The Middle East Tragedy

Two phone calls. The first call found my aunt in a bomb shelter in Haifa, her hope giving way to trepidation. The second call found my friend’s trepidation replaced by hope. He had just found out that his uncle boarded a plane bound for the United States hours before the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) bombed the Beirut International airport. These phone calls brought home the Middle East tragedy.

How bitterly ironic that wars waged for the public good, or at least with the public in mind, so often hurt more people than they help. Israel entered Gaza to find one kidnapped soldier; it entered Lebanon to find two. Now, dozens of soldiers lie in its path to salvation. Hezbollah similarly acts out of “respect for public liberties” (from Lebanon’s constitution) as a parliamentary group, yet as an extraparliamentary organization it has put events in motion that have brought death, displacement and despair to the same public it seeks to protect. War is an ironic type of tragedy, without heroes and in a constant search for the worse villain.

How bitterly tragic that the one army in the world that is best equipped to fight terrorism discovers itself so ineffective against the terrorism it encounters. A tragic flaw lies in the nature of Israel’s opponent, for where does the terrorist end and the human being begin? IDF soldiers search for Hezbollah terrorists filled with a desire to die and find human beings filled with a desire to live. Confused, they shoot both, and the more human beings they kill, the more terrorists are born. Through death, they escape their nature, yet it is through their nature that they find death.

Most bitter is the realization than the end of even this conflict will not provide closure. The mass civilian casualties that have accompanied Israel’s entrance into Lebanon have only emboldened Hezbollah’s major backers, Iran and Syria. Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has now joined Syria’s Baath party in its support of Lebanon; neither show signs of acceding to American and European diplomacy. Even if diplomacy can somehow buckle Iran or Syria to publicly denounce Hezbollah, that diplomatic victory will not ensure a military victory. Diplomacy stands little chance of stemming the flow of aid from Iran and Syria to Hezbollah, yet if the two countries appear to comply with international demands, they will gain immunity from Israel. Iran and Syrian have nothing to lose from the outcome of this conflict, and no incentive to close up shop on terrorist organizations.

And what of Hezbollah? Hezbollah may come out battered, but without an incursion into Iran and Syria, which is currently politically-infeasible, it will not come out beaten. Weeks into the offensive, Hezbollah has been able to maintain its daily volleys of over 100 rockets into northern Israeli territory. If the IDF has been unable to stem this volley, they stand little chance of stifling the Hezbollah leadership without significant Lebanese casualties. The IDF’s hands are politically-bound on this front, too, as their Qana mishap has shown. Israel cannot afford another Qana without facing major backlashes of world opinion and, more damaging, withdrawal of American support. All politics, casualties and no catharsis – that is the nature of the Middle East crisis.

Over in Haifa, my cousin and his girlfriend were about to get married on July 10. That was two days before the rockets began to fall. Now, they have postponed their marriage until these hostilities cease, so instead of a marriage in war, they can have a marriage under cease-fire. But not a marriage under peace – there are only cease-fires in the Middle East. They are waiting each day for their relatives to call them from Haifa and tell them that it is safe to return. My friend’s uncle is waiting until Lebanon is safe again. This is, in the end, an imperfect tragedy, always seeking and always painfully unable to find its catharsis.