January 5, 2009

Obama’s Iran diplomacy needs a Hamas defeat. The Israelis have done Mr. Obama a favor by striking back at Hamas before he takes office so President Bush can endure the usual global denunciations for U.S. support for Israel. But Mr. Obama will soon need to return the favor by showing Israel — and Iran — that the new President understands the U.S. stake in the success of Israel’s Gaza surge.

Wall Street Journal, Review and Outlook, Jan. 4, 2009

Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza raises the strategic stakes for the Jewish state, for its moderate Arab neighbors, and also for Barack Obama’s looming Presidency. Having committed to disarming Hamas, Israel can’t now afford to lose its second war in two years.

Though the analogy isn’t perfect, in some sense this Hamas exercise can be understood as Israel’s version of the U.S.-Iraqi “surge” in Iraq. The year 2006 was the worst in more than a generation for Western interests in the Middle East, with al Qaeda and Iran’s proxies advancing in Iraq, Hezbollah fighting Israel to a draw in Lebanon, and Hamas rising in Palestine. The 2007-2008 surge reclaimed the advantage in Iraq, and now Israel is attempting to do the same against Hamas.

The strategic question is larger than merely stopping Hamas missiles from landing in Israeli cities, though that is justification enough for Israel’s bombing and the ground operation. A nation like Israel, with enemies on all sides, must maintain an aura of invincibility if it is to have any chance at peaceful co-existence. It was that aura after two wars that induced Egypt to agree to peace with Israel in the 1970s. By contrast, the 2006 Lebanon campaign convinced radical Arabs and Persians that Israel had grown soft and could be beaten. Israel can’t let Hamas maintain a similar mythology at the end of this operation, or the costs will be far higher down the road. (Continue Reading this Article)