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The worst lessons to draw from the Lebanon war would be for Hezbollah or Hamas to imagine that terrorism can destroy Israel or for Israel to continue to think that it can create security through force alone.
The right-wing Economist magazine of London has declared Nasrallah the war’s winner. That is going too far but Hezbollah is still standing and its claim to a victory of sorts is hard to deny.
How to interpret this turn of events? Hopefully, Israel is learning to admit that using raw military power to flatten wide territories, including Gaza, the West Bank and south Lebanon, is not a deterrent for those who want to remove it from the Middle East.
Equally, Hezbollah and Hamas are seriously mistaken if they think that merely surviving Israeli attacks gives them a platform to start dislodging the Jewish State.
Finding peace in the Middle East is much harder now than six weeks ago. Israel can no longer make any compromises without being utterly certain that its enemies will not try to harm it. Hezbollah and Hamas will not compromise because the wars with Israel increase their political and military power in their own territories.
If this were merely a matter of stalemate, all sides could simply nurse their wounds and prepare for the next round. But the situation is too fluid and volatile for that. At this time, there are no elements of stability because none of Israel’s enemies submits to any central authority. At the same time, Israel refuses to occupy any territories to finally destroy its enemies and stabilize the region under a new political order.
That leaves power vacuums. Hezbollah and Hamas are struggling for influence to fill those vacuums within their own territories. They have gained popularity and prestige because of standing up to Israel. Inevitably, their rivals will try terrorism within Israel as a quick route to competing with Hezbollah and Hamas.
This is especially true in Gaza and the West Bank. Nobody has the means at this time to arbitrate the rivalry among armed militias as they try to gain prestige by attacking Israel.
Whatever the PLO’s fecklessness, Israel has delivered Gaza to Hamas on a silver platter by destroying PLO as an administrative entity. By reaching standstill with Hezbollah, it has handed considerable political power to that faction in Lebanese politics.
How great their gains are remains to be seen but the elements of instability have increased among Israel’s enemies. That is never good for any warrior state confronted by large numbers of influential terrorists who would rather die than compromise because of their belief systems.