Gaza: Israel's leaders seem to have got their calculations wrong

The Israelis know very well they are fighting an asymmetric war against their erstwhile enemies in Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. They know that when they launch an invasion of Gaza or Lebanon, as they have done four times in the last eight years, they will be castigated by world opinion for their disproportionate use of force, the civilian casualties and their refusal to make political compromises. Israeli leaders make careful calculations, from a position of strength, over how much international uproar they will accept while they achieve their immediate military objectives.

But this time Israel’s invasion of Gaza has been an act of weakness and its leaders seem to have got their calculations wrong—hence now the rapid drawdown of ground forces from Gaza as pressure behind the scenes from the United States begins to bite.

This operation began with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political weakness. Following outrage at the kidnapping and subsequent murder of three Israeli teenagers on 12th June and the sporadic rocket attacks on Israeli towns across the border, he was pushed into a direct military response. This took the form of airstrikes and artillery fire into Gaza which began on 8 July. That was never going to make much difference to moveable rocket sites and Hamas military stockpiles inside the densely populated conurbations of Gaza. But it might have been enough to satisfy the hawks.

Then other rationales took over. Hamas’s deal with Fatah in May—which joined the two organisations in a unity Government—made the Israeli claim that negotiations with Hamas are simply impossible look shaky. Mr Netanyahu opposed the deal outright. Another operation against Gaza was sure to provoke Hamas to greater extremes and keep them beyond the negotiating pale. Hamas predictably obliged with more rockets and kidnap attempts.

Two other events turned this into a full scale invasion of Gaza. The sheer extent and potential of Hamas’s tunnels under the border seem to have surprised and alarmed even Israeli intelligence. They had to get in on the ground to find and destroy them. Then, maybe, it was whispered that this was the best time to do Hamas some real damage. All this seems to have come together on 17 July with the downing of the Malaysian airliner, over Ukraine. The crash provided an immediate window of opportunity where an Israeli Defence Force incursion into Gaza might be less than front page news. The ground invasion coincided exactly with the shooting down of the airliner.

But asymmetrical war uses victimhood itself as a potent weapon and Hamas is just as good at this as it is at launching rockets and kidnapping people. It has upped the stakes and demanded the eight year Israeli blockade of Gaza be lifted in return for any ceasefire. In its weakness, Hamas thinks it might just have Netanyahu on the run. It could be right.

If the Israel Defence Force (IDF) has been working hard to avoid civilian casualties over the last three weeks, as it claims, then it must be judged incompetent and very poorly trained. Of course it is not. IDF doctrine is to fight terror with terror and to deter with visible punishment. But this puts Israel on the wrong side of legality. It is clearly illegal to use or stockpile weapons using civilians as a shield, as Hamas undoubtedly does. But equally, it is illegal to target such sites even where this is known to be happening. Moral equivalence, still less an eye for an eye, is no defence.

After three weeks the opprobrium that really matters to Israeli leaders is that which comes from the US. Netanyahu’s image is of a leader who has faced down the American President and cannot be pushed around by the White House. Maybe not, but President Obama has already vetoed the supply of some key technologies within the $3bn package of military aid that annually goes to Israel. The President may not be able to scale the whole package back but he can certainly affect what goes into it to make his point personally to Mr Netanyahu. Kerry makes similar points off camera.

Jerusalem could assume that, while it may have lost the personal vote of the White House, as long as Congress is solidly behind Israel that will not matter too much. But now the State Department has said officially that the US is "appalled" at Israel’s "disgraceful" shelling next to a UN school in Raffah. The "warring hashtags" of US social media indicate a far less pro-Israeli attitude among the younger generation.

Israeli leaders have got this one wrong. Their tactical military successes put Hamas and Islamic Jihad in a stronger political position as evident victims. They may reduce the rocket threat but will hardly stop it. And this time the moral equivalence argument does not look as if it is trumping the International Law argument in the eyes of most of the world. Prime Minister Netanyahu can ramp his military involvement up and down but he can no longer control the argument around its use.