[시사 | 역사] (FT) A bitter blame game will follow Israel’s wartime unity

LINK : https://www.ft.com/content/aa7eb6ba-6dc1-46dc-b96a-b7c3a1b0446e

파이낸셜 타임스 기사 요약 (ChatGPT)

최근 하마스의 이스라엘에 대한 공격은 심각하게 분열된 이스라엘을 일시적으로 단결시켰습니다. 이에 대응하여 베냐민 네타냐후 이스라엘 총리는 국민 통합 정부를 구성할 수도 있습니다. 그러나 이러한 단결은 오래 지속되지 않을 가능성이 높습니다. 왜냐하면 이스라엘은 곧 안보 실패에 대한 분열적인 정치적 논쟁에 직면하게 될 것이기 때문입니다.

해결해야 할 두 가지 주요 실패가 있습니다. 정보 및 보안 실패와 전략적 실패입니다. 이스라엘의 강력한 정보력에도 불구하고 하마스는 육해공 동시다발 공격을 수행할 수 있었습니다. 우익과 중도 정치 세력 간의 상호 비난은 네타냐후가 자연스러운 비판의 대상이 되면서 더욱 심화될 것으로 보입니다.

팔레스타인과의 분쟁을 억제하고 이스라엘 경제를 건설하며 아랍 국가들과 관계를 정상화하려는 네타냐후의 전략은 이제 실패로 간주됩니다. 그의 계획은 아랍 이웃들과 정상적인 외교관계를 수립함으로써 팔레스타인에 대한 외부 지원을 고립시켜 내부 평화를 이룬다는 것이었습니다. 그러나 이 전략은 이번 공격으로 인해 무너졌으며 이스라엘의 군사적 보복에 초점을 맞추는 것은 장기적인 해결책을 제공하지 못할 수 있습니다.

이스라엘 지상군의 가자지구 투입이 검토되고 있지만, 가자지구에는 갈 곳이 없는 200만 명의 사람들이 살고 있기 때문에 이것은 함정처럼 보이며 실행 가능한 옵션인지 불투명합니다. 이스라엘의 현재 충격과 분노는 9/11 이후 미국의 감정과 유사하며, 이는 단결과 "테러와의 전쟁"의 시기로 이어졌습니다. 이스라엘은 장기간의 분쟁이라는 비슷하고 잠재적으로 위험한 길을 걷고 있는지도 모릅니다.

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The inquest into what went wrong ahead of Hamas’s attack could lead down a dangerous path

by Gideon Rachman

Wars unite nations. The shock and horror of the Hamas attacks on Israel have brought a deeply divided country together. It is possible that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, may now form a national unity government.

Israeli unity will last a while because this crisis is very far from over. The fate of the hostages inside Gaza, including children and old people, will continue to torment Israel. The government also faces the risk of new fronts opening in the occupied West Bank or on the border with Lebanon. But, fairly soon, Israel will be plunged into a divisive political argument about what went wrong. Two failures will have to be addressed. The first is an intelligence and security failure. The second is strategic.

Israel has long taken pride in its intelligence services. It was generally assumed that nothing much could happen in Gaza without Israel knowing about it. But Hamas was able to plan and execute a complex and multipronged attack and storm across a border that the Israelis thought was secure. In doing so, they carried out the most deadly attacks inside Israel since the foundation of the state in 1948.

Both the right and the centre are primed to blame each other for the intelligence and security failure. (The left barely exists anymore.) As prime minister, Netanyahu is the natural person to blame for what has happened.

The prime minister’s working assumption that the threat from Hamas was contained now looks delusional and complacent. As he struggles to avoid conviction in a corruption case, Netanyahu has also formed a government reliant on parties from the far-right. Those parties have supported increasing aggression by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Army forces were diverted to the West Bank to contain the resulting violence — which weakened the country’s defences on the border with Gaza.

The Israeli right and far-right, however, have a counter-narrative ready. They are prepared to blame the opp-osition and intelligence establishment for weakening the security of the country.

In recent months, there have been huge anti-government demonstrations — protesting against judicial reforms pushed by Netanyahu that the opp-osition say threaten Israel’s democracy. Some senior figures from the security world have supported these demonstrations, and many Israeli reservists have been refusing to report for duty.

When the head of Shin Bet, the Israeli domestic intelligence service, warned Netanyahu earlier this year that deadly attacks by settlers on Palestinians would increase the security threat to Israel, he was roundly denounced by members of Netanyahu’s Likud party. One Likud member of parliament complained: “The ideology of the left has reached the top echelons of the Shin Bet. The deep state has infiltrated the leadership of the Shin Bet and the IDF.”

The far-right will certainly repeat those kinds of arguments in the coming weeks, as they press for vengeance against Hamas. But Israel’s inquest will have to go well beyond the immediate intelligence and security failure — profound though that is. Netanyahu’s entire strategy towards the Palestinians now looks like a failure.

This essentially involved containing and “shrinking” the conflict with the Palestinians — while providing security to Israeli citizens, building the economy and normalising relations with Arab states. Netanyahu believed that Israel could cope with occasional rocket attacks and live with international condemnation of Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

The Israeli leader rejected the argument that Israel would never be accepted in the Middle East until it made peace with the Palestinians. He argued instead that establishing normal relations with Israel’s Arab neighbours would help to bring internal peace — by cutting off external support for the Palestinians.

This plan was gathering momentum — with growing talk that Israel and Saudi Arabia were on the brink of establishing diplomatic relations. But that normalisation is now likely to be put on hold. While much western coverage of the crisis will focus on the horrors perpetrated by Hamas, the focus in the Middle East is likely to be on the suffering of Palestinians caught up in the Israeli strikes on Gaza. In that climate, it is likely to be impossible to conclude an Israel-Saudi deal.

However while Netanyahu’s Palestine strategy has fallen apart, it is far from clear what can replace it. In the current climate of grief and fury inside Israel, it is inevitable that the government will embrace a ferocious military response. But the Israeli government does not yet have any vision that goes beyond killing Hamas leaders.

Over the long term, it is hard to believe that Israel can any longer accept Hamas’s control of Gaza. But although there is plenty of talk of sending the Israeli army back into Gaza, that looks like a trap. As the academic Lawrence Freedman points out, the army “neither has the capacity nor the staying power to take control of Gaza. This remains a territory of 2 million people, and as they have nowhere else to go, they will stay, still angry.”

The shock and fury in Israel are reminiscent of the emotions in the US after 9/11. That provoked a display of American unity and power. It also led to a decade-long “war on terror” — which many Americans now regard as misconceived and self-destructive. Israel may be heading down the same dangerous path.