Israel breaks Gaza ceasefire

[bemildred]

ISRAELI soldiers have entered the Gaza Strip and clashed with militants, the first incursion into the territory since a November ceasefire.

Soldiers driving five tanks, bulldozers and jeeps, penetrated 500m into farmland near the northern Gaza village of Beit Hanun, sparking sporadic gunfights with militants, according to Palestinian security sources.

Two Palestinians were wounded, and one of them was arrested, according to the sources.

Israel confirmed it had carried out a limited incursion to stop three militants attempting to plant an explosive charge, but said it immediately withdrew its soldiers.

Australian News

[bemildred]

1. Israel troops launch incursion into Gaza

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Israel confirmed it had carried out a limited incursion to stop three militants attempting to plant an explosive charge, but said it immediately withdrew its soldiers.

"A unit operating on the Israeli side saw three men placing an explosive charge close to the fence," a spokesman said.

"The soldiers penetrated inside the area and exchanged fire with the militants hitting two of them," he added.

The first ground incursion into Gaza since a November 26 ceasefire follows a call by Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz for the army to take "decisive action" against militants to halt the firing of homemade rockets into the Jewish state.

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=20254

[whistle]

2. As Iran releases the 15 British captives, Israel follows Bush/Cheney marching

...orders to keep the shit-pot stirred up even though it is still Passover.

[Shaktimaan]

3. How can Israel break a ceasefire that's

already been broken 155 times by the other side?

Israel says militants have fired 155 such rockets at Israel since the ceasefire was agreed.

[bemildred]

4. I thought the headline was stretching it, in that regard.

But I saw the same thing in several places, so I went with it. The ceasefire has always been more wishful than real, in any case, on both sides. Still, I was wondering why the Gazans were not supposed to "place explosives" on their side of the fence if they felt like it.

[Shaktimaan]

5. Oh come ON...

Still, I was wondering why the Gazans were not supposed to "place explosives" on their side of the fence if they felt like it.

really?

[bemildred]

6. Yeah, really.

Can Israel place explosives on it's side of the fence if it wants to? What were all those mines in S. Lebanon about, anyway? If it were rockets or something likely to cross the fence I could see it, but that isn't what it says. I suppose if they were intending to blow up the fence it would make some sense, especially if it were on Israeli land.

Is the fence in Gaza or Israel, or does it run right down the border between the two, I wonder?

[Shaktimaan]

7. OK, so then what are your views on

the 6 day war?

Israel intercepted gobs of information pointing to an attack. The nations around her mobilized their troops and armor by Israel's borders. The leaders of said nations began bragging about how they were going to trounce Israel once and for all. Israel started seeing lots of radio chatter and messages indicating a coming coordinated attack against them.

Yet... no one had actually attacked Israel when she pre-emptively struck them. So, because Israel watched everyone prepare to destroy her, even though they did not attack Israel first the world considered Israel's actions to be self-defense.

This reminds me of what we're discussing now. Is a first strike ethical in your view under these kinds of circumstances?

[bemildred]

8. Getting a bit far afield from the OP, aren't we?

First strikes are never ethical. Build up your defenses all you like, the advantage lies with the defense after all, but sneak attacks are just that. Not that history is not littered with them, the notion of "ethics" in political affairs is somewhat theoretical still, I think.

[Shaktimaan]

9. Thank you

for clarifying your viewpoint.

It's not so different, just an example of a well known situation that poses a similar ethical question. I wanted a general idea of what your philosophy is on these matters.

Does it alter your view if the attack in question is something devastating, like a nuclear strike, or even just something that offers no defensive strategy aside from attacking them first, like a suicide bomber walking towards a crowd or someone planting a mine outside a school?

[bemildred]

10. That is a thorny question, I don't feel like trying to dissect it now.

I don't fault Israel for defending itself, and the threats can be real enough, as the Yom Kippur war shows. But Israel has the means to retaliate, even with nukes, and would do better to wait the event rather than precipitate it IMHO, in most cases. The threat can be more effective than the move, as they say in chess. It is only rarely in practice that restraint is folly. The recent exhibition in Lebanon did more harm than good, and was precipitated by precisely the sort of logic you are asking about, the desire to anticipate a future threat.

Ethics demands that you do the right thing even when it is risky, when it has a potential cost. Being ethical when it has no cost is not being ethical at all. Slavish adherence to self-interest may be justified in the sense that it is the norm, but it is not a moral position.

I would add that one cannot merely consider military threats in isolation. A nation such as Israel, that depends heavily on outside forces to sustain it, must pay at least as much attention to politics and appearances as to the purely military aspects of the situation, and that may often lead one to put not being seen as the aggressor ahead of the military cost of delay, for example. Israel has NEVER been in a position to sustain a long war with the Arabs, on its own, and it has won the wars it has fought, in part, because they were kept short by outside intervention, and because it received timely help when it needed it. I think that can be a far more important consideration than a temporary tactical advantage.

In the case of individuals, the issue is both simpler and more difficult. Let me ask you, in a case such as you suppose, say of a suicide bomber, how many bystanders can you harm in order to save yourself? How many can you harm in attempts to prevent such a threat from reaching you?

[pelsar]

11. saving lives is also ethical......

you showed the moral problem with the yom kippur war vs 6 day war:

The cost of not attacking in 73 and letting the egyptians attack was extremly high in terms of israeli lives. (i'm ignoring the repucussions of both wars here). Its quite easy to see the immorality of letting people be killed in order to "look good".

and the suicide bomber....since one can never actually know how many he or she may kill (the bomb many not even work, or it may kill 50). The bomber must be stopped. Not only that, since nothing is in a vaacuum and the bomber, the handler, the guide, the supplier are constantly improving their own methods, and their own efficiency, for every defensive measure setup they will and do find a better system for circumventing that as well. (see frances maginot line WWII). And you only discover that upon ones failure. i.e. dead people.

so the question of how many can be killed in order to save?.....one can never know what "would have been" (invading japan or dropping the bomb). So we're left with the principle of either acting to catch the bomber during the earlier stages when he/she is more vunerable or after.

once the bomb is made and put on the suicide bomber, the chances of them killing used to be very high, their suceess rate goes up (the wall changed the percentages dramatically)..... hence the reason for the "active defense."

which we see as the "more moral choice".....waiting for a failure of a defense system only gives us dead israelis
_____

a word about lebanon....israel had 6 years of restraint from hizballa attacks....did any body notice? any political gain?.....i think not.

[bemildred]

12. So their pre-emptive strike on Israel in 73 was good for them.

And your pre-emptive strike on them was good for you.
So you say.

But what has that to do with ethics? That is an argument from self-interest. "Better them than us" is all it says. By your logic, the best thing for them to do is arrange some sort of sneak attack to "destroy Israel" so they could live in peace. If you want to have me take you seriously when you babble about ethics, you are going to have to have rules that apply the same to everyone, including Arabs. Otherwise you are just making excuses for pursuit of self-interest. Not that there is anything wrong with pursuit of self-interest, as such, but as I said it is not a moral position, and it allows others to do the same.

Saving lives is clearly ethical, if you are not taking lives in the process. When you are taking lives to save other lives, there is a moral calculus that comes into play. You duck the question, how many people can you kill, how many can your harm, on the pretext of saving other peoples lives, and still maintain the thesis that you are being moral? What are the tradeoffs? When the people you kill are trying to kill you, it's clear enough. When there are lots of dead bystanders, when the people you kill are NOT trying to harm you, the notion of moral clarity becomes a fig-leaf for moral cowardice, whatever the method used for the killing.

If you think the Second Lebanon War was such a good idea, why not do it again? See what it gets you. The notion that the proper solution to a difficult problem is to make it worse, in the most expensive and noisy way possible, is funny, but dumb.

[pelsar]

13. 73 vs 67...

in one respect the 73 war and israels lack of response had good long terms affects, whereas 67 didnt. 73 gave the egyptians their pride back in terms of the military and sadat was able to make peace. The 67 war humiliated them and gave us the territories..... Hence the complexity of the "action and consequences" that nobody could forsee. (so which was the more "moral" response at the time?......wheres Socrates when you need him!)

You ask how many can you kill/harm in order to save lives. I could go and pretend there are ratios and mathematical equations etc that would give me the "moral fig leaf" if you will, but i dont think that is relevant, since i dont think such a question can be answered. (i sure cant)

what becomes more relevant is the "pecking order"...and as hard as it is to accept in a "moral universe" its exists with us all. Whos lives are more important?.

your son or the stranger? (if an armed robber enters a store and your 5yr old son/daughter is with you and a stranger next to you, who will you stand in front of to protect?).

thats how it is, we protect our family first, friends, guys in our unit, etc...the last ones are those belonging to "the others, them". In the equation of lives there is a pecking order, the palestinians have theirs as well, we all do. Their civilians are worth "less" to us then ours. (and visa vesa). The choices that have to be made simply demand some decisons along those lines, otherwise more of "mine" will be killed.

The lebanon border from 2000-2006 is an example of what your proposing....static defense, do not initiate anything just attempt to defend....the result of that is lots of dead israelis and no stopping of the attacks......that too is very immoral.

(my opinion of the 2nd lebanese war is not the principle of attacking lebanon, after 6 years of being attacked we had more than the moral right to invade, its the tactics i disagreed with). but like anything else here, the actual repercussions of that war are yet to be felt.

[bemildred]

14. I am not the one that raised the issue of morality.

I'm just saying that if you do, certain things follow. And if you don't, certain things follow.

As far as the messiness of results, of 67 vs 73, that is the point. How can you say you gotta do this and you can't do that when the long term result is so unclear? Time and chance happen to us all, like it or not, and you may as well being doing yourself damage as not, you don't know. There are no guarantees, no matter what you do. The real long term problem with '67 is they decided to try to hold onto it, instead of USING it to bargain with.

You should not conflate the imperatives that would drive you or I in deciding who to try to save and who to leave to fend for themselves with the policies and actions of governments, which assume that we are ALL "fungible", to use Dumbsfeldt's word.

It is precisely the tactics in the Second Lebanon War that are worthy of criticism, that are being criticized, and that is precisely the issue of "balance" between attack and response, and that had a good deal to do with the negative effects that resulted, the cost, the losses, the political damage was all rooted in the lack of balance there. Sometimes you have to leave your enemies their due, or you harm yourself.

If a static and patient defense is the best you can do, it's the best you can do. The fact that it is or is not satisfactory is beside the point. Sometimes there is no answer, or the best answer sucks.

You are going to have to figure out what to do with all those Arabs soon, they are not going to go away, anymore than you are, and the current approach is going nowhere. The position today is significantly worse than in 2000 say, when Jabba seized the helm, and the trends are not the way you want. Next time you might not get the extra JDAMS and bullets when you need them.

[pelsar]

17. Lebanon II may have been "brilliant"

one hand you say that the 'tactics are worthy of criticism"...the balance of attack and response...and previous to that you say:
"How can you say you gotta do this and you can't do that when the long term result is so unclear?"

and that is the point is it not? Israels response created a wave changes in both lebanon and israel.....like the 73 war, the long term result may actually be good....nobody knows, as you have pointed out.


but here i disagree
If a static and patient defense is the best you can do, it's the best you can do. The fact that it is or is not satisfactory is beside the point. Sometimes there is no answer, or the best answer sucks....its the best we can do in terms of keeping with one version of intl law...its not the best we can do to save israeli lives.

whats the "more moral response? perhaps because my life and my sons will be involved, we can do better, at the potential cost of lebanese losing their lives.....(raids, ambushes, etc, things which keep hizballa in a defensive posture never knowing when they're going to be hit).

like you write: sometimes the best answer sucks..in this case it does.....now it will be for the lebanese to have to deal with our "best answer"...that fact that its not satisfactory for them is beside the point.

[bemildred]

19. Again, it is not I that seeks to cast it as a moral issue.

The notion that the Second Lebanon War saved any lives, Israeli or otherwise, remains at best speculative and unproven. The facts are that quite a few people died, on both sides, with no apparent useful result as far as Israel was concerned. What benefits have been postulated, and postulated is the right word here, are all obvious butt-covering by weak politicians.

[pelsar]

21. morality is what its all about...

geneva convention, level of response etc...you cant say in one post that one no one has any idea what the results will be (true) than in a later post say that people died for no apparent reason.....

that "no apparant reason"...may infact have a reason 5years down the line....i could easily say that of the soldiers, who in the sinai in 73 were bascially left to be killed as the IDF did not attack first in 73....30years later with a peace treaty with egypt i can say that, maybe it wasnt in vain. Maybe it saved another war...

same true for the second lebanon war....many died, whether in vain or not...we really dont know

[bemildred]

22. If there is no "apparent reason", then I can indeed say those two things.

I am asserting that any future positive effect is speculative, at best, while the immediate negative effects are there to see. The long term results may well be negative too.

[pelsar]

23. who knows..

short term: good for israel, as hizballa is away from the fence, we have a new commander in chief, peretz is being pushed out, olmert has low ratings, the IDF was shaken up,.....

bad for the lebanese, bad for hizballa (they lost their "land")

_____

long term? up for grabs.


the actual long term affects are now in the hands of the lebanese and what they do with the hizballa (and the iranians and the syrians and the UN)....the countries divisions are now being pushed into the open, perhaps before hizballa got a chance to take it over (or not....arab politics and lebanese in paticular are worse than any soap opera)

[eyl]

16. As long as we're on this tangent

I'd point out that isn't necessarily correct, at least in this context.

Tactically, you're correct; the defender usually has a significant advantage in a battle (the rule of thumb is that the attacker needs three times the forces), especially if he's had time to prepare. Strategically, however, the opposite is true; the attacker has the advantage of choosing where and when to attack, while the defender needs to stretch his forces to cover all possibilities.

In the particular case of Israel, there's another difficulty with a protracted defensive stance (at alert); since the IDF's combat units are primarily reserves, and those form a significant part of the population, the IDF cannot remain at high alert for an extended period without causing significant damage to Israel's economy.

Of course, this doesn't mean tha you should attack whenever there's a glimpse of the possibility of an attack. But I contend that if you have olid information that an attack is impending, and a defensive stance is not practical, then it's unethical to wait until your enemy gets his first strike him - which will cause you significant casualties and possibly lose the war - just for the sake of appearances.

As an additional nitpick, I'd also point out that, contrary to what you wrote below, the "artificial shortening" of wars was actually to the advantage of the Arab states, not Israel; in all those cases where a war was shortened due to outside interference, the IDF was advancing into enemy territory at the time.

[bemildred]

18. It's more complicated than that, as you say.

There is no panacea, no sure fire formula in strategy. Since I was merely refuting the idea that attacking first is always good, if you know the enemy is coming, I don't think we really disagree there. History is replete with examples of both failed attacks and outsmarted defenses. There are many good examples of suckering fools into attacking prepared defenses, and of massive defenses out-flanked by modest - but mobile - attackers. It all depends.

Static defenses generally can be considered weak, but defense does not have to be static, Trotsky's defense of the revolution by shifting troops around by train comes to mind, although he was hardly the first to think of it. The point is that you have to pay attention and adapt.

Nobody would think of suggesting in boxing that just wading in and firing away is the right approach, or that you should always counterpunch, but the analogous views are espoused all the time in the far more complicated business of war. My own view is that people are driven bonkers by the uncertainty, so they espouse this or that narrow view ("L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace.") neat, simple, and wrong.

I think the Second Lebanon War gave an excellent demonstration of the advantages that well thought out prepared defense can offer, and of the disadvantages of ill-thought-out and ill-prepared offense.

Israel does have some difficult defensive issues, but they are not with respect to Lebanon or Hizbullah, neither of which has any conventional aggressive capacity worth mentioning. It's rockets and guerillas all the way, and that's how it should be thought about.

"Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip." -- Barbara M. Tuchman

[eyl]

15. probably because

there's an IDF patrol road which runs right on the Israeli side of the fence; bombs placed there are usually placed to hit passing patrols.

[bemildred]

20. Eh, good answer.

That wasn't really what I was getting at, but I was just being cute, so forget it.

[eyl]

24. forget what?

;)