HISTORY TELLS US HOW THE WAR WILL END:  14 October – a turning point?   

14 October 2024 could well mark a turning point in the Israel-Gaza conflict.  The event was less conspicuous than the military breakthrough many pundits were anticipating but for those who study history, it was a significant indicator that events may be reaching a climax.  Yes, the countless prayers for peace in the region have not been in vain.

According to an article in HAARETZ, Israel’s biggest and most influential source of news coverage, the U.S. warned Israel that weapons sales are at risk if the Gaza humanitarian crisis is not improved within 30 days[1].  This warning not only predicts WHAT the future could hold for Israel and her neighbours but confirms a trend throughout Israel’s history that explores WHY this is significant.  This warning might be 375 days too late, but still provides a glimmer of hope for a region that is experiencing a season of death.

By Monday 14 October 2024:

• At least 42,979 people have now been killed in the relentless bombings,
  • including more than 16,765 children.
  • and 11,346 women
  • 69% of all fatalities
• More than 98,464 have now been injured.
  • 1 in every 23 people in Gaza is now maimed or injured
• More than 10,000 Gazans are still missing, most probably dead and buried in the rubble.
• 1.7 million people in Gaza have infected diseases because of the war (75%)
• 2.15 million people in Gaza are facing a severe lack of food supplies (96%)

The U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd issued a highly irregular warning to their Israeli counterparts, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, writing that failure to dramatically address and better the Gaza humanitarian crisis within 30 days would have ramifications, potentially including the suspension of U.S. arms sales.  An Israeli diplomatic source said that the U.S. has informed Israel that it will stop supplying weapons if Israel continues to block U.S. humanitarian aid from Gaza.

They noted that aid deliveries have dropped by more than 50% since Israel provided assurances in March and April that it would allow humanitarian aid in accordance with U.S. law, adding that the amount of aid entering Gaza in September was the lowest of any month in the past year.

This warning could potentially end the current Israel-Gaza conflict and confirms a trend throughout Israel’s history that is easy to ignore: Israel has never ended a war without being ordered (threatened) to do so.  In a nutshell, the current conflict could end —as all other Israeli wars have since 1948—when leading nations (often the U.S.) determine that Israel’s military has gone too far.

Israel is incapable of securing a military victory on their own.  It has never been the intervention of God that secured victories over their enemies but the intervention of Western military support.  Once this support is threatened or stopped, Israel would not be able to successfully defend herself.  History underlines this simple, yet profound fact.  This gives the announcement on 14 October prominence in a year of war.

In an article in TIME[2], Ian Lustick[3] explores the history of conflicts between Israel and her Arab neighbours and that all wars only concluded once Western allies intervened and, more specifically, threatened Israel with abandonment.

After the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, Israel has declared an ever-expanding list of war aims that includes the destruction of Hamas, the return of all hostages, assurances that Gaza will never again threaten Israel, the banning of the Palestinian Authority from any role in governance of the territory, prevention of any “element” that “educates its children for terrorism, supports terrorism, finances terrorism and calls for the destruction of Israel,” and creation of a wide buffer zone within Gaza separating Israel from the Strip’s population.

Yet, no Israeli leader has explained how they could possibly achieve these objectives. That’s because it can’t—and they know it. This very situation has existed in almost every Israeli war since 1948 because the country’s problems are political in nature, not something military force alone can solve.

This reality means that instead of the conflict ending upon completion of Israeli objectives, it will end when allies in the West determine that its military has gone too far, as it did on 14 October.  The instructions given to Defence Minister Yoav Gallant were more a confession than an ultimatum.  “We have gone too far” is the confession, “You must stop, or else…” is the ultimatum.

This, however, is not the first time in history that this has happened.

Lustick writes as follows:

May 1948

When Israel declared independence in May 1948, its Arab neighbours attacked. Israeli forces were victorious on almost all fronts, displacing roughly 750,000 Palestinians—but the war only ended when Israel’s leaders became fearful of British military intervention and agreed to withdraw their forces from Sinai and cancel operations to conquer the West Bank.

1956

In 1956, after Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal and struck an arms deal with the Soviet Union, Israel, along with Britain and France, invaded Egypt and occupied the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. Israel left the territories it occupied only when President Dwight Eisenhower threatened direct and painful retribution if it failed to do so.

June 1967

In June 1967 Egypt, Syria, and Jordan threatened to attack. Israel responded with a devastating pre-emptive strike. The U.N. Security Council ordered a ceasefire, but Israel did not stop fighting until the U.S. and the U.N. pressured Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and Defence Minister Moshe Dayan into an abrupt ceasefire.

October 1973

In October 1973, after Egypt and Syria waged a surprise assault on Israeli positions in the Sinai and Golan Heights, Israeli forces slowly gained the upper hand and began a drive to isolate and destroy the Egyptian Third Army. It only halted this campaign because the U.S.—in a tense standoff with the Soviet Union—categorically refused to allow it to continue. President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger insisted that Israel abide by the terms of Security Council Resolution 338, requiring Israel to go back to positions it had held on the day the resolution was passed.

Without peace, wars have regularly broken out. Each time, the Israeli government promises that finally, unlike in the past, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) will be allowed to fight until victory. In reality, however, the IDF can never deliver real victory because military means alone cannot transform Middle Eastern realities or create the basis for stable political arrangements based on the principle of the equality of nations.

2006

That explains why Israel has never ended a war without being ordered to do so. The pattern has held steadily into the 21st century, including in 2006, when the Israeli-Lebanon war only ended when the U.S. and France intervened, brokering a UN resolution. Even if an Israeli government wants to stop fighting, it cannot, because that would mean admitting that it never had a chance of keeping its promise to solve Israel’s problems by simply “letting the IDF win.”

This history exposes that Israel’s current laundry list of war aims isn’t designed to be achievable. Rather, these goals are political statements put in place so that after the U.S. inevitably forces an end to the fighting, Netanyahu and his government can claim they would’ve achieved lofty goals, if only the U.S. had not interceded.

An American order to stop is not what Israeli leaders fear, it is what they expect, and it is what the country always needs. And history shows it will come—eventually. Like previous presidents, President Biden is learning that there are excruciating trade-offs between the dangers, risks, and human costs of allowing an Israeli military campaign to continue and the domestic political consequences of stopping it. When he decides the former concerns outweigh the latter, he will give the order. Then and only then will this war end.

[1] https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2024-10-15/ty-article/.premium/u-s-warns-israel-arms-sales-at-risk-if-gaza-humanitarian-crisis-not-improved-in-30-days/

[2] https://time.com/6549715/history-israel-hamas-war-end/

[3] Ian S. Lustick is the Bess W. Heyman professor emeritus in the department of political science of the University of Pennsylvania.