Why they fight
Today's Mideast crisis not just a replay of past battles
This week's Time magazine cover story.
Around the world, people could be excused for feeling that they are witnessing something numbingly familiar in the Middle East, like a recurring nightmare that many would rather keep stored in the recesses of memory.
But the conflagration involving Israel and its neighbors has erupted once more --and no one knows how bad and destabilizing it could get.
The lethal exchange of firepower between Israel and Hezbollah won't likely let up until someone -- the U.N., or nervous Arab countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, or possibly the U.S. -- intervenes and persuades one or both sides to stop.
A British official told TIME that Prime Minister Tony Blair is personally pressing President George W. Bush to send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region to engage in Henry Kissinger-style shuttle diplomacy. But it's not clear that anyone has the ability to get the belligerents to climb down.
Though the current battles may have been set off, at base, by age-old hatreds between Israel and its Arab enemies, what we're seeing today is not simply a replay of hackneyed set pieces in the Middle East.
With new governments in place in the three key nodes of the crisis -- Israel, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority -- and fighters within the radical Islamist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah, eager to assert their agendas, the region is going through a period of dramatic and in some ways radical change.
To understand why the Arab militants of Hamas and Hezbollah are picking a fight with Israel now, you might start with an election. In January, Hamas, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, won the Palestinian general vote.
The Hamas political leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, who fashions himself a relative moderate, became Prime Minister, and set about trying to prove Hamas could govern. Boycotted financially and politically by the U.S. and the EU, Haniya in late June hammered out an agreement with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on a unified platform that would implicitly recognize Israel if it would withdraw to its 1967 borders.
Recognizing Israel, though, is anathema to Hamas' hard-liners. With Israeli soldiers and settlers out of Gaza for the past year and Israel's security fence deterring Hamas' usual weapon of choice, suicide bombing, the militants decided to try another, daring tactic: in early July they emerged from a tunnel dug under the Gaza fence to kill two Israeli soldiers and nab Corporal Gilad Shalit.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah, which was created in 1982 to resist Israel's invasion of southern Lebanon, has its own internal political incentives to act against Israel.
In the new Lebanon, genuine independence is trying to take root after popular unrest forced the Syrians to lift their yoke on the country last spring. As a result, whether Hezbollah should be allowed to remain armed six years after the Israelis have left Lebanon is the most divisive political issue in the country today.
The Israelis, for their part, are determined to show their adversaries they aren't cowed. That has become clear in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's announcements that Israel will not negotiate for the return of its soldiers.
'Changing the rules'
Israeli officials have long talked of "changing the rules of the game" and Olmert unleashed the military to do just that, setting the price for aggression against Israel so high that its enemies would be deterred from acting up in the future.
Olmert may have been influenced, both in his "no negotiations with terrorists" stance, and in his decision to retaliate harshly for the Hamas and Hezbollah actions, by President Bush. The post-9/11 era has marked a new high in Israeli-U.S. relations, with Washington abandoning its past practice of criticizing Israel when it acts severely toward the Palestinians or other Arab parties. Starting with former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israeli officials have taken to adopting Bush's War on Terrorism rhetoric.
Israel's assault on Lebanon is intended to send a broader message too, at a time when Israel has largely given up on trying to negotiate for peace and security and is instead trying to establish it on its own.
The strongest argument made by domestic critics of Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last year was that the country's enemies would think that it was weak and frightened, and would thus be encouraged to strike out. Olmert's dual counterblasts are aimed at changing that impression, among those who believe it, to make the idea of attacking Israel prohibitively scary to the other side, or, as the Israelis put it, to re-establish deterrence.
So given all that, what should the U.S. do? Blair and other allies would like Rice to take a more active role in bringing first calm and then a return to peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. Bush has shown no interest in engaging in the region in that way, and Washington is handicapped by its unwillingness to negotiate with four of the key players -- Hamas and Hezbollah, Syria and Iran -- whose interests would have to be addressed.
But crises can sometimes provide opportunities, especially since the U.S. can't afford another Middle East mess on its hands. At this point, U.S. intervention can't undo the reasons why Israel and its enemies fight. But doing nothing is an even bigger risk.
Copyright © 2006 Time Inc.