Why has the war on Gaza continued so long?

The Gaza war has passed for nine months, until the morning of last Sunday, July 7, 2024. This is a long period in which approximately 40,000 martyrs were gone in Gaza, about 90,000 were wounded, and others were missing, the exact number of which no one knows. As for the Israeli side, it lost at least 2,300 dead and 15,000 wounded. This is in addition to the displacement and destruction that occurred in Gaza, and camps in the West Bank, and in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. There were martyrs that I could not count, and great harm was caused to Israeli cities, settlements, and colonies.

All this killing suffered by civilians, especially children and women, and all the destruction and displacement, the global system, with its security, diplomatic, political and humanitarian dimensions, appeared with its wings and teeth lost. Likewise, the weakness of individual Arab action and its organizations appeared to the extent that no one could any longer defend it, or even hope for the best in reforming it.
We note that this is the sixth war launched by Israel against the Gaza Strip since 2006, but this last is the longest-lasting, the bloodiest, the most lethal in weapons, and the darkest in outcome. The question that arises is: Why did this war last so long?

First, a dear friend of mine provided me with a study entitled “Analysis of the Causes of the Prolongation of the Gaza Crisis According to Brecher’s Model.” After reading it, I searched for the books of this political scientist, Michael Brecher, and found that he worked as a professor at MacGill University in Canada, and that he had published, in partnership with other researchers, two very important books on this subject. Framework: The first and most important is a book called “A Study of Crisis,” published in 2000 in collaboration with another political science professor interested in crises and conflicts from the American University of Maryland.

The other book includes a collection of articles edited by Brecher with Frank Harvey of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. The title of this book is “Conflict Security, Foreign and International Political Economy: Past Paths and Future Directions in International Studies.”

The first book, which was published in 2000, took about 20 years of studies of specific conflicts, and to analyze numbers and statistics about the explosion of those crises into conflicts and wars. The authors point out that the study covered about 400 crises and 31 ongoing wars, and about 900 official bodies participated in these crises and conflicts. In the book, the two authors cover (as an article promoting the book says) the following important aspects: the security dimensions of crises, the impact of different political systems on the eruption of crises, where one party is a dictator of the regime and the other is a democracy, and the role and intensity of violence in prolonging wars.

The authors (Breacher and Declenfeld) developed a model called the Unified Model of a Crisis, where they studied specific crises as examples, and studied the impact of some variables on special cases. Among these influences or variables is the behavior of decision makers and their reaction to the crisis and its developments, and the extent of the impact The conflict over the values that the parties to the conflict adhere to, and the fear that the conflict will surround its parties if it continues for a long time.

As for the Arab study that reached me from the friend, and which I referred to, its authors (whose names were not mentioned in the study) applied Brecher’s model to the case of the war on Gaza, and deduced six indicators that indicate that these wars were likely from the beginning to be prolonged, or that some Other factors may have affected its duration, such as the reactions of the Israeli leadership and the fluctuation of its positions regarding the war, or the position of the leaders of the Palestinian resistance. And also because of the effects that this war may have on the value positions (fixed, so to speak) regarding issues that are not agreed upon between them.

The authors of the Arab study applying Preacher’s model say that one of the reasons for prolonging the current war is the great harm that this war has caused, especially on its first day, to Israel’s reputation as the fourth military power in the world, and that its espionage and intelligence capabilities are unmatched, and that its global position, which it has abused. In it, the reputation of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims has remained above suspicion. All these idols expressed in resonant words such as “Israel is the most advanced country in electronic and cyber protection,” or words such as “anti-Semitism,” or that the Israeli army is undefeated, or that its advice and equipment are the best, have been revealed to the world, and this deceptive magic has become nothing more than a mere mirage in the world. Desert of wandering and thirst. When Israel was exposed, it began to desire to continue the war in order to regain that reputation for continuing violence and killing, which revealed it as a rogue state whose leaders are nothing but war criminals.

The second indicator relates to the geopolitical importance of the Gaza Strip. Despite its small area (360 km2) and its population density (about six thousand people per square kilometre), it is located near the junction of the continents Asia and Africa, and it threatened Israel's security and caused it heavy losses in its wars with it. According to Israeli claims, Gaza is an advanced Iranian base on Israel's borders. Therefore, the goal of changing its features or repositioning Gaza politically, and seizing its rumored abundance of fossil resources (liquid oil and gas), became the covetous goal of Israel, which withdrew from it in 2005.

The third indicator is that the intensity of the violence and the scale of killing and destruction put the resistance in a mood that allows the war to continue as long as Israel does not respect the humanitarian laws regulating wars, and in return this matter applies to Israel. The fourth indicator is that the parties influencing the continuation of the war in Gaza were divided in their interests. The calculations of the second day and its share in the end of this war have varied in their assessments and methods among the great powers and regional countries, and therefore the energy of these people expended to bring things together has been scattered.

The fifth reason for prolonging the crisis is related to the calculations of the parties involved in the war and the disparate interests of those responsible for it. This is clear in the disputes between the Israeli parties in the government or those in the Ministerial Committee for War Management, in which parties competing with Netanyahu and wanting to take his place participated.

As for the sixth matter, it is each party’s insistence on leaving with proof that it won the war. The Palestinian and Arab parties refuse to be displaced outside Gaza or the West Bank. He rejects the war ending with the presence of Israeli forces on Gaza, or turning Gaza into Area B instead of C, or declaring a ceasefire and prisoner exchange without a political horizon.

In my estimation, matters after the ceasefire will take two important paths: the first is what US President Joe Biden said about the necessity of reaching a political solution in the region that the parties are satisfied with, and the second is adopting a development plan similar to the Marshall Plan after World War II in 1945.

(From Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed)