Why Israel fights - drawing the line

So far, Israel enjoys three crucial strategic advantages in this war: unequivocal American support; a divided Arab world; and, most crucial of all, a united Israeli people.

Arguably not since the 1973 Yom Kippur War has Israel been as determined in war as it is today. Though some restlessness has begun - an antiwar rally in Tel Aviv drew 2,500 people - most of the left supports the invasion. Indeed, Peace Now and other Zionist left-wing groups stayed away from the Tel Aviv rally.

One reason for the absence of serious left-wing opposition is the fact that Amir Peretz, our most dovish mainstream politician, happens to be running the war as defense minister. Peretz's ideological credentials are compensation for his lack of military ones: Just as Ariel Sharon helped insure broad support for withdrawal from Gaza, so Peretz is insuring broad support for the reinvasion of Gaza and Lebanon.

Most of the left understands that this is a war, in part, for the viability of the concept of territorial withdrawal. For years the left assured the Israeli public that, in the event of withdrawal, Israel would resist any subsequent aggression with determination, unity, and international legitimacy. In Lebanon and Gaza, then, two fronts from which Israel has already withdrawn to the green line (Israel also withdrew to the green line on the Egyptian border in 1982), that premise is now being tested. If the left defects from the war effort, triggering international pressure, then the Israeli public will rightly despair of future withdrawals.

Most of all, this is a war for the viability of Israeli deterrence. After Israel unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon in May 2000, Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah described the Jewish state as a “spider web”: just as a spider web seems solid from a distance but disintegrates when swiped, so Israel will collapse under the pressure of Arab resolve.

The “spider web” speech, as it came to be known, is very much in the mind of Israelis today as we belatedly try to restore our lost deterrence, without which the Jewish state will not survive long in the Middle East.

Israel tried to avoid this war, to the point of endangering its most basic credibility. For months we allowed Palestinian groups to shell Israeli towns on the Gaza border with virtual immunity. And for six years we turned away as Iran supplied Hezbollah with thousands of long-range rockets and built a vast infrastructure literally meters across our border.

When three Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah in October 2000, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak didn't massively retaliate, preferring to negotiate a prisoner exchange. Among some Israeli journalists, Nasrallah was considered a “responsible” leader, capable of insuring quiet in the north, rather than biding his time and awaiting instructions from Iran to act.

The Jewish people is once again being forced to act as a brake against evil. This is not a repetition of the first Lebanon war, but a return to our consensus wars of survival - not a Vietnam moment but a World War II moment. That is why Israel fights, and why it will win.