Comprendre les enjeux de la guerre Israël – Hamas
In his capacity as both an historian and a specialist in this area of operations, which he has been studying for 20 years, most notably in the mid-2000s as police officer in the feedback research division for the Middle and Near East at the Forces Employment Doctrine Centre of the Military School in Paris, Michel Goya unpicks the current conflict between Israel and Hamas since the particularly devastating attack of 7 October, taking it all the way back to its roots.
The author, a naval officer with a PhD in contemporary history, sets out to place the conflict within the context of an endless war, punctuated by ceasefires and military actions that could be more accurately described as police operations. A perpetual war with many protagonists, but one which has, since the outset, set out to deny the State of Israel the right to exist or, from a the opposite point of view, to ensure its survival, Goya reminds us. He deals with the subject dispassionately and with all the pedagogy necessary to allow his readers to understand exactly what is at stake.
Recalling that the Israeli state decided in 2000, then in 2005, successively to “retreat from the disaster zone of Lebanon and then from Gaza by allowing Hezbollah and Hamas to become established there, in the belief that this would keep the threat they posed at arm’s length”, the author notes that “in so doing, the Israelis exchanged disaster zones for a Sisyphean destiny, condemned to start the same little war over and over again for all of eternity”. “Where things differ from the Greek myth is that Israel felt strong enough to be able to do this over and over again for all of eternity without taking too much damage from it”. Which it did until the infamous 7 October 2023, marking a great change in proceedings, with “game rules [that] changed overnight”.
History has dictated that Israel’s strategic culture is first and foremost shaped by the existential threat posed by the Arab states, which do not recognise its existence and have not offered the young State any solution other than to “create a huge protective wall, like the Maginot line, or to strike any enemy very rapidly”, Goya observes. As a protective wall would cost too much, the decision was made to strike hard and fast, preventatively and/or in reprisal. Hence the development of a superior air strike force, to serve as a deterrent by the prospect of disproportionate reprisals. This culture would also have the effect of irrigating the response to a different threat, one that is both asymmetrical and diffuse, that of the Palestinian fedayin and the range of politico-military terrorist organisations that would grow up over time. This had the opposite effect to the desired one, as reprisals fed into a mindset of bitterness and revenge.
Having discussed all the various phases of war and police operations running through Israeli history, with the means employed, tactics used and the end results, the author notes that in 2006, the “second Lebanon war” showed that “Hezbollah was capable of forming infantry units at a decent level”, capable of “rivalling those of a regular army such as Tzahal”. The resulting Israeli defeat came as “a great surprise”, but bears no comparison to the war that began on 7 October 2023, when the “rocket attack [in the order of 2500 through the course of the day targeting much of the Israeli territory] was clearly used to camouflage the attack on the entire barrier surrounding the territory of Gaza”.
“The explosions of rockets and mortars covered the sound of direct attacks on the barrier and, more significantly, neutralised many soldiers by forcing them to comply with procedures and seek shelter”, writes Goya, adding that “thanks to an extremely specific target plan and by using everything that could be fired from a distance, heavy snipers, anti-tank missiles and the genuine novelty of a fleet of small drones with handmade munitions, Hamas destroyed surveillance and thermal-imaging cameras, movement sensors, cell towers on the fence and watchtowers as well as the remotely-operated machine guns based in small concrete towers (…). Without cell signal, the Israeli surveillance and defence system became unusable. Whilst on that Shabbat morning, which was also the rabbinical Festival of Sim’Hat Torah, minimal attention was already being paid [and, by request of the ultra-Orthodox, Israeli military staffing levels was reduced], the soldiers on duty in the control rooms of the posts behind the fence received only a few jumbled alarms. The billion-euro smart barrier became practically blind and deaf”. This allowed nearly 2900 fighters to enter Israeli territory “with the intention of going as far into it as possible, all the way to Ofakim, 20 km away from the border, to carry out guerrilla warfare for several days or even weeks, as attested by the enormous amount of weapons and food they took with them on their expedition”. The author argues that this is “certainly the most violent attack on the Tzahal since October 1973”, leaving 461 Israeli soldiers and police officers dead, plus 843 civilians, including 30 children, and around 267 people taken hostage.
The Israeli response was on a massive scale, with around 29,000 air missiles launched at Gaza between October and 14 December 2023, “or an average of 400 for each day of war, not including ceasefires”. “In response, not only did Hamas make no particular efforts to protect the population, in its underground shelters for instance, but even made the martyrdom of the populace into a weapon in the media war – and the Israeli army gave it a lot of ammunition”, Goya notes. Although the airstrikes came very soon after the Palestinian attack, the Israeli army’s land offensive did not begin until 27 October.
Unlike the United States, which has spent two to three billion dollars every year since 2018 on improving the efficacy of its infantry groups, “Israel, like most other nations, has not made the effort that might have allowed it to engage its land forces immediately, without first having to launch a counter-productive campaign of strikes, and with a good possibility of an easier victory through the streets of Gaza”, the author notes. He goes on to point out that “instead of this, the Israeli infantry was ultimately not much better prepared and equipped than it was in 2014 or even 2008, when it was upgraded following a long period of the decline of its capabilities. The Hamas infantry, for its part, improved greatly up to 2014 and it might even have slightly increased the tactical level of its battalions while increasing the number. All things being equal, the battalions (or battlegroups) of each side are more or less on the same tactical level”.
Is peace possible, despite everything? “It is hard to see how the conquest and attempts to control Gaza, as well as the evolution of the situation in the West Bank, could fail to lead to permanent guerrilla warfare and two theatres dripping with blood, like during the time of the Intifadas, but even more violent”, the author replies, going on to point out that “the current Israeli government is a political zombie, which owes its survival to nothing but the continuation of the war”. His conclusion is that “inevitably, it will be necessary to see this disaster right through to its end to find the energy to move towards something looking more like peace”. This may be possible with the assistance of the Arab states – principally Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia – which “secretly wish for the destruction of Hamas and the normalisation of relations with Israel”, but cannot state this openly. They are imperatively part of the solution. (Olivier Jehin)
Michel Goya. L’embrasement – Comprendre les enjeux de la guerre Israël-Hamas (available in French only). Robert Laffont. ISBN: 978-2-2212-7544-3. 238 pages. €19,00
Migration: un fait total
Following an initial section, meandering through a description of the evolution of migration phenomena, sociologist Felice Dassetto sets out to highlight the fallacy of restricting the perception of migration to a single dimension, be it the employment market and economic factors or its demographic effects. “However, from the point of view of the implications of the decision to regard migration as a ‘total social fact’, it should be noted that it is also not enough to regard migration solely from the point of view of the migrant himself or herself”, the author continues, seeing in this a “major tendency in the way contemporary migration takes place and the debates and polemics this gives rise to”.
Although, as the author points out, the concept of integration born in the United States is debatable, the fact remains that the “inclusion of newcomers in a society is a major challenge to build a social and political entity and to found a democracy”. “In the European countries, whose identities are anchored in a long history of civilisation, the way in which this question is generally framed needs to find its own path, which should be very different from that of North America (or Australia), which we tend to imitate and whose migration model prioritises the employment market and the individualistic approach, albeit within the mindset of American power. This model moreover tends to aspire to be spread globally, for instance through UN bodies for the OECD”, Dassetto argues, adding that the “European integration mindsets are mostly different from their North American counterparts. Europe needs to invent its own model and announce this clearly, or risk its own populations rebelling (as they are already starting to do) and at the risk of introducing misunderstandings about itself and breeding resentment among immigrants”.
Among the lessons to be learned from recent migration, the author stresses that the “’integration’ of new arrivals is both easier, as the populations have generally attended school and have been pre-socialised to urban life, and more complex, as the satellite media, communication technologies and the states of origin are all channels by which migrants formulate migration plans that are somewhat disconnected from the societies where they settle and they tend instead to live there in a bubble”.
He goes on to point out that “this sociological reality reframes the question of ‘integration’. As an additional layer of complexity, in the context of contemporary migration, identity affirmations, which are often included and theorised by thinkers and researchers with a migration background in a so-called ‘post-colonial’ posture, tend to distance themselves from the host society, whose culture is considered dominant and somewhat neo-colonial, but which, paradoxically, is often in fact the origin of migration movements. This stance also gives rise to demands in terms of rights and identity affirmation. This leads to greater complexity, relative confusion in positions and calling local identity into question in the name of cultural pluralism, which makes it even harder to set in place coherent integration policies. This confusion also feeds into mutual ‘resentment’”.
If “the affirmation of pluralism is certainly a step forward in the vision of migration within a contemporary globalised world”, “staying there, as is often the case, does not help to put together collective political and social projects (other than affirming pluralism) and results in the exacerbation of ethnic or ethno-national identities”, Dassetto rightly observes, going on to stress that there are two extremes that absolutely must be avoided: “retreat into identitarianism, leading to the idea of a society that results from the juxtaposition of disparate groups, and (…) a vision of societies and identities as fluid and changing”. Hence the concept of “mutual co-inclusion” posited by the author to promote a dynamic of mutually taking account of “each other’s point of view and history to begin a transactional process”.
“Regarding both the management of migration flows and migration policies, the European countries will each seek to do something for its own part. However, there can be no solution without a European logic. And this will be a matter for the medium to long term”, Dassetto writes, regretting the fact that even now, the European authorities have an “incomplete and (…) uncertain vision of what a European migration policy could look like”. The European Commission, for instance, goes no further than to “consider migration as a factor of production”, the author observes, lamenting the fact that the Global Gateway programme, which is supposed to “spend 150 billion euros on Africa to bring in a new type of partnership” focuses predominantly on investments in infrastructure, without establishing any connection between this funding and migration or “movements between the African and European countries”. (OJ)
Felice Dassetto. Migration: un fait total – Nouveaux regards et nouvelles politiques (available in French only). Presses universitaires de Louvain. ISBN: 978-2-3906-1453-1. 155 pages. €15,00
The Euro in a World of Dollar Dominance
In this study, Pawel Tokarski reminds us that despite constant erosion, the greenback continues to reign supreme. It has a share of 59.17% of foreign currency reserves in the fourth quarter of 2023, compared to just 19.58% for the euro. This share has grown only a very small amount since the single currency was introduced in 1999 (17.9%), despite peaking at 27.7% in the fourth quarter of 2009.
This poor performance can be explained by many factors, including the dollar’s dominance over the SWIFT financial transactions system, or the lack of integration of the capital markets in the EU. 49.6% of imports to the EU were still in dollars (compared to 41.5% in euro) in 2022, the author goes on to stress, noting major differences between member states of the EU: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, the Netherlands and Poland pay for more than 60% of their non-EU imports in dollars, while this figure is less than 22% in Slovenia.
As well as the difference in opinions between Paris, where monetary union is traditionally seen as a means of defence against the dominance of the dollar, and Berlin, where the reinforcement of the euro’s international role is regarded as likely to lead to its appreciation and therefore to risks for the export-focused German economic model, Tokarski highlights the inability of the member states to agree on a single representation of the Eurozone at the IMF, as proposed by the European Commission in October 2015.
The author also feels that the green transition could provide an opportunity to bolster the international role of the euro, in view of the EU’s prioritisation of the fight against climate change and the transition to low-carbon economies. By 2022, 42% of the world’s green bonds were being issued in euros, he points out. (OJ)
Pawel Tokarski. The Euro in a World of Dollar Dominance – Between Strategic Autonomy and Structural Weakness. Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik. February 2024. This study can be downloaded free of charge from the foundation’s website: https://aeur.eu/f/dad
Les inflations
With 28 authors and 19 articles, edition 153 of the Revue d’économie financière takes a deep dive into the factors determining various inflation curves and suggests ways of returning to a situation of greater stability. As Pervenche Berès, chair of the Association Europe – Finances - Régulations points out, “the simplistic affirmation that inflation is always, and everywhere, a monetary phenomenon is therefore true only in a very narrow sense: it is a loss of value in the means of payment”. “Therefore, exclusivity of dominance in seeking a return to price stability cannot be conferred upon any one macroeconomic policy. On the contrary, it is important to combine the components of these policies, in other words deepen the principal and their forms of coordination”, the former member of the European Parliament adds. (OJ)
Revue d’économie financière. Les inflations (available in French only) - Association Europe - Finances - Régulations. No. 153, Q1 2024. ISBN: 978-2-3764-7093-9. 324 pages. €35,00