Israel-Palestinian Paradox: Empowering Weakness, Weakening Power

Even now—even after Israel's tactically successful Operation Cast Lead—Hamas and assorted kindred terror groups gleefully declare "victory." How can this be? The answer lies in the occasional paradox of military strength in world politics. Although power is obviously powerful, and weakness is obviously weak, power can sometimes weaken itself. At times, weakness can even become a source of power. Nowhere is this crucial irony more apparent than in Israel's persistent but essential struggle with Palestinian terrorism.

From the start, long before Operation Cast Lead, Palestinian jihadists had transformed their generally presumed weakness into real power. Again and again, the "weak" Palestinians outmaneuvered the "powerful" Israelis. To wit, just a few years back, the U.N.'s International Court of Justice chose to condemn not the unhidden criminality of Palestinian terrorism but the fence erected by Israel to safeguard its citizens from terror attacks. Today, even after Operation Cast Lead, and even while the terrorists still rocket Israeli civilians from Gaza, world public opinion largely blames the Israelis for unavoidable self-defense.

From time immemorial, the Jews remained stateless and defenseless. But in a number of important spheres of human activity, they were stunning innovators and bold leaders. Now, when there does exist a sovereign Jewish State with modern weapons, and with advanced centers of science, learning, and technology, the Jewish citizens of Israel comprise the most vulnerable Jews on the face of the earth.

Yet virtually no one sees. The world, as usual, sees only what it wishes to see. And what it wishes to see is suffering Palestinians, not existentially fragile Jews. The indisputable fact that this Arab suffering has been brought about directly by Palestinian terrorism, and certainly not by any gratuitous Israeli resort to force, remains beside the point. Hamas "perfidy," its insidious and illegal resort to human shields, has deliberately created the multiple Palestinian civilian casualties. This is because the desired image of Palestinian weakness has become a critical and strategic source of Palestinian terrorist power.

The Arab world is comprised of 22 states, nearly 5 million square miles and more than 150 million people. The overall Islamic world contains 44 states with well over 1 billion people. The Islamic states comprise an area 672 times the size of Israel. Israel, with a population of a bit more than 5 million Jews, is smaller than New Jersey, and less than half the size of Lake Michigan.

Power vs. weakness? The State of Israel, even together with Judea/Samaria (West Bank) is less than half the size of California's San Bernardino County. Leaving aside that present-day Jordan comprises 78 percent of the original British mandate for Palestine, and that it has long had a substantial Palestinian majority, the now fratricidal Palestinian Authority is still being encouraged to declare a second Palestinian state on land torn from the "powerful" body of Israel.

What will this unmistakable terrorist victory suggest about power and weakness in the Middle East? Does the new president of the United States truly understand what is happening here?

The Palestinians have consistently drawn tangible benefits from their alleged "weakness." Will "Palestine" enlarge Arab/Islamist power, or would it produce a weakened condition? Perhaps, with a tiny Jewish State existing next to a tiny Palestinian state, there would develop a mutuality of weakness. But this would make no sense, as power is always a relative notion.

Plato wrote imaginatively about the reality of ideas. In matters of national security, as in science, good ideas are always logically prior to good policy. With new leaders in both Jerusalem and Washington, Israel and the United States will soon need to fully appreciate the reciprocal ideas of power and weakness. Will they be ready?

Israel must learn that advanced weapons of war, however necessary, do not by themselves create strength. By nurturing misjudgments of power, they can even create weakness.

More often than we may care to admit, foreign policy making in Jerusalem and Washington has displayed an absence of learning. Soon, both Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama should come to recognize that the truly core ingredients of power in world politics can be subtle and intangible. Oddly enough, these ingredients may even include weakness.

Sometimes, truth may even emerge through paradox.