So What Was That Whole Israel/Gaza War About Then?

Between December 26th and January 19th Israel went to war in Gaza on the pretext of stopping rocket fire into southern Israel and breaking Hamas, the democratically elected government of Palestine. Following three weeks of fighting which left 13 Israelis and 1330 Palestinians dead the Israelis ended their campaign with neither of these objectives being achieved leaving many to question what the hell it had all been about.

The short answer is that it had nothing whatsoever to do with Hamas and everything to do with internal Israeli and therefore global politics.

In order to explain more fully how this war started I must first explain how another, much longer war ended. Many older Israeli's will be familiar with how the Cold War started using it, as they did, as a fantastic opportunity to play the USA off against the USSR in order to get the best weapons. What they may not be so familiar with is how this long conflict came to and end. In the early 1980's, after 40 years of conflict, civic officials including politicians, spies and business from both sides of Europe’s Iron Curtain got tired of fighting and fell in love. The officials on the Communist side of the curtain fell in love with the rampant greed and violent inequality of Capitalism. Their counterparts on the Capitalist side fell in love with the control, domination and subjugation of the individual inherent in Communism. With this common ground reached a marriage made in hell was formed and barriers across Europe began to crumble as a kind of peace ruled the day.

After the USSR collapsed this disparate group of kindred spirits, who I shall call the Second Worlders, joined forces and decided to hijack globalisation and use it as a vehicle to create a violent world based on the greed and inequality of Capitalism mixed with the controlling, Totalitarian governments of Communism. Chief amongst these Second Worlders was a one Mr Anthony Blair who became the Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1997 starting a trend of similar leaders across the world including Nicholas Sarkozy of France and Hillary Clinton of the United States. In Kadima's Tzipi Livni this crop of second worlders saw a natural ally who would help them in their quest for world domination.

So strong was this allegiance that when he took up his new job as the quartets Middle East Peace Envoy, Tony Blair decided, possibly with the help of his friend the British Prime Minister, that rather then use this position to, I dunno bring peace to the region, he was going to use it to boost Ms Livni's political career at the expense of her party leader Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister. This project came to fruition in November 2008 when a series of fraud investigations forced Mr Olmert to stand down and Ms Livni was asked to form a new coalition government and become Prime Minister. Unfortunately by this point Ehud Barak, Israel’s Defence Minister in the Coalition, and leader of the Labor (no relation) party had decided that he would be able to take power all for himself if he was able to present himself as a strong, competent leader in contrast to Kadima's more liberal image. As a former head of the army Mr Barak decided that the best way to get Israeli voters to rally behind him was to win a short, successful war against Hamas and so Operation Cast Lead (OCL) was born.

For their part Ms Livni and her international backers were more then happy with this idea because they knew that many younger, more liberal Israelis were already getting war weary so a long war with lots of casualties would quickly turn them and many older Israelis against Barak’s war for votes. So this is what Ms Livni and her supporters set about turning Operation Cast Lead into. Firstly they raised the point that in the 2006 Lebanon war the use of overwhelming airpower had quickly turned the world against the war forcing Israeli to bring it to a premature end. This meant that Barak had to commit to deploying ground troops within Gaza raising the possibility that many would be killed in urban warfare with Hamas. Next Livni, the foreign minister, convinced Barak, the defence minister that Operation Cast Lead would be much better received if it could be portrayed as a "policing operation" rather then an all out war. To this end she helpfully went out and got her British friends to supply Barak with some of the tactics used by the British Police to maintain order in violent demonstrations. These tactics are very labour intensive meaning that in order to incorporate them in OCL Barak would have to call up a vast number of IDF reservists tearing husbands away from wives and fathers away from their children during the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.

Having made sure that OCL would cause the maximum disruption to Israeli civilian life the 2nd Worlders set about making sure there was a thriving anti-war movement in Israel ready and waiting to recruit disgruntled Israeli voters. This mainly involved making sure there were plenty of liberal Israelis reading to take to the streets in protest waving signs like "No blood for Knesset Seats!" and "Don't support Barak's war for votes!". More key though was making sure that local officials were prepared to allow well funded campaigners to set up peace camps and "reflection zones" in city centres. No doubt Ms Livni had also been assured by her British allies that they would take steps to make sure that certain bloggers would put in a repeat of their performance in the 2006 Lebanon war. These bloggers would of course post everyday, reporting on the mounting death-toll, global protests against the war and dismissing Ehud Barak as a war-mongering idiot killing innocent Palestinians to win himself votes. Of course if these bloggers were still held in any regard in Israel then this daily commentary would challenge the official Israeli broadcasting of the campaign and strengthen the wave of opposition to Barak's war.

Once the war itself had started Livni and her backers had two further tasks. Firstly they had to make sure Hamas were prepared to make a fight of it in order to maximise the number of Israeli military deaths. This was done by making sure that key people (MI6's Iran network) had ready access to the tactics the IDF were intending to use so Hamas military commanders could use this information to draw up a strong defensive plan. Livni's second task was to make sure that the war went on for as long as possible. This would be done within the coalition government by coming up with reasons like "There's too much cloud cover, your laser-guided bombs might miss." and "You can't start the land invasion now, the element of surprise has been lost." to delay every phase of Operation Cast Lead. It would also be done externally by using her role as Foreign Minister to delay the Franco-Egyptian peace talks and prevent the UN passing a resolution to stop the fighting as soon as it did.

All things considered I think that Livni would have been happy to see OCL continue for another week, making Barak even more unpopular by embarrassing Obama, before ending with a slow, phased withdrawal from Gaza. This meant she could delay the release of the reservists, keeping them with their units until the first week in February. Only allowing them home in time for them and their disgruntled relatives to vote in the election and sweep Tzipi Livni into power on a wave of opposition to Barak and his war. Britain and it's Labour government would of course have been more then happy to help make this happen because with a natural ally in charge of Israel it would be much easier for them to spread their nasty ideology of Totalitarian Capitalism across the globe. Plus they would also be able to serve Israel up on a plate to the Chinese as a part payment for the massive national debt that the United Kingdom has managed to run up over the last decade.

In the end things didn't quite work out like this. The bloggers didn't turn up and Hamas decided that there was little point trying to fight tanks with rifles. So after a few curious incidents like the Israeli tank commander's decision to kill three of the ten Israeli troops who died in the conflict Ehud Barak finally won the power struggle within Israel's coalition government and was able to end Operation Cast Lead exactly when he wanted too.

Now Israelis will go to the polls on February 10th to decide if they want to be ruled by Ehud Barak who fights short, pointless wars for votes or Tzipi Livni who fights long, pointless wars for votes. Personally I wouldn't vote for either of them as they both sound like an absolute pair of liabilities but I doubt I'll have much influence. After all the last time I endorsed and Israeli politician it was Ehud Olmert and look what happened to him.