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“While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. And while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”
So said Joe Biden on his recent visit to Israel. But the US president did not elaborate in public on the mistakes that America made. So what were they?
Broadly speaking, the US attempted to defeat “terrorism” through conventional military means. It launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. But more than 20 years after starting its war on terror, America is probably less powerful and respected around the world than it was in 2001. And its own society has been gravely wounded.
Is Israel in danger of repeating many of these errors? Absolutely. But Israel has much less margin for error. The US is the world’s largest economy. It is protected by two oceans and has a global network of allies and dependent powers. Israel, by contrast, is a small country in a hostile neighbourhood.
The desire to destroy the organisation that slaughtered your civilians is entirely natural. Israel’s vow to obliterate Hamas is strongly reminiscent of America’s pledges to destroy al-Qaeda and the Taliban after 9/11.
The US can claim a partial success in the direct struggle against al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden, its leader, was killed in 2011 and the organisation has not managed to launch another spectacular attack on the American mainland. But Islamism is an idea and terrorism is a tactic. So destroying one Islamist terrorist organisation does not end the problem. New groups, such as Isis, have emerged. Europe, in particular France, has been hit hard by Islamist terror attacks. And jihadist militants are gaining ground in Africa.
Hamas itself resembles the Taliban more than al-Qaeda because it is an actual governing authority that has run a defined territory for some years. That should be a warning because, more than 20 years after US troops entered Kabul, the Taliban are back in charge of Afghanistan.
Both Hamas and the Taliban employ terrorist tactics. But the unpalatable truth is that they are also social and political movements with deep roots.
How many times did the allied forces in Afghanistan announce that they had killed this or that Taliban commander? There was always a replacement. Indeed, a war against a foreign occupier feeds the nationalism and fanaticism on which organisations like the Taliban and Hamas thrive. With the Taliban reinstalled in Afghanistan, who could rule out Hamas still running Gaza in 20 years’ time, improbable as that now seems?
Despite its military victories, America failed to find a sustainable political settlement in either Iraq or Afghanistan. By treating the Palestinians as purely a security issue, Israel is poised to repeat this error. “Restor[ing] deterrence” will not be enough.
At some point, Israel and the Palestinians need to find a durable political settlement, or another generation of Palestinians will emerge, committed to taking the fight to Israel. And yet the Israeli government seems to have no idea who or what might govern Gaza — once Hamas has been theoretically destroyed. All the options — the Palestinian Authority, Israeli occupation, a foreign peacekeeping mission — seem unworkable.
The Netanyahu government has also debated launching a second war — this time against Hizbollah in Lebanon, which is a much more powerful force than Hamas. Hizbollah itself could go on the offensive, which has led some in Israel to argue for a pre-emptive strike. The logic is similar to some of the arguments that led America to invade Iraq. The view was that, after 9/11, it was simply too dangerous to ignore a looming security threat. But many of those who voted for the Iraq war, including Biden, now accept that it was a mistake.
The way the war on terror was waged was also deeply damaging to America’s global standing. The civilian deaths caused by drone strikes, the Guantánamo prison camp and the torture carried out by the CIA (and detailed by the US Senate report) did lasting damage to America’s image.
Israel argues that many of those criticising its war in Gaza are misinformed, hypocritical or antisemitic. Some of the most ferocious critics of Israel are indeed dangerous enemies of the very idea of a Jewish state.
But there is also a large group who start from a position of real sympathy for Israel — but who will be alienated if, for example, the cut-off of water and electricity to Gaza leads to starvation or outbreaks of disease; or if Israel flattens the territory, as the Russians once destroyed Grozny.
Israel cannot afford to simply brush aside international opinion. As it enters a very dangerous phase in its history, the Jewish state will need all the international support it can get — military, economic and diplomatic.
A war on terror can also damage the society that wages it. More than 30,000 US troops died by suicide after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan: more than three times as many as died in battle. The anti-elite rage and the “American carnage” that led to the rise of Donald Trump in 2016 were closely connected to the social wreckage wrought by the wars America fought after 9/11.
A war on terror unifies a country in the short term, but it can rip it apart over the longer term. That, too, is a lesson that a traumatised Israel needs to think about — before it is too late.
gideon.rachman@ft.com
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