"Israel Was Massively Provoked"

Michael Stürmer is one of Germany's best-known historians. He teaches at the University of Erlangen and has written extensively on the Middle East conflict, including co-editing a book, called "Allies Divided. Atlantic Security and the Greater Middle East."

DW-WORLD.DE: Israel's attack is being viewed by many as offensive instead of defensive. Is that the case, in your opinion?

Michael Stürmer: The Israeli attack was not an unprovoked one. There were two very deliberate, focused attacks and both the Hamas leadership and Hezbollah leadership know extremely well that Israel's defense forces don't leave their own people alive or dead in the lurch. This is only the primer. What we see on the television screen is only the foreground.

In the background you have a much more complicated problem -- a real Gordian knot of problems.

One is that Hamas is a much wider pan-Arab movement -- as opposed to Fatah, which is a Palestinian nationalist movement. It's a revolutionary movement which is not only directed against Israel as a state, but also against the regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc. Hamas is backed up from Tehran and maybe also from other parts of the Arab world. Hezbollah is also backed from Tehran and Syria. Both Tehran and Syria play a very important role in it.

Do you think that Israel had alternatives to a military attack?

All the wise, great and the good tell you that diplomacy is the answer. If your people are taken away, shot, bombed, and blown up -- then diplomacy obviously isn't very helpful. Israel is a democracy. They have to do something. They have to show the people that the state protects them and that the Israeli defense forces are not there just for show but for real. Israel was massively provoked. They have held back for a long time and they've withdrawn from Gaza. (Prime Minister Ehud) Olmert has announced that they will also withdraw from large parts of the West Bank, which makes sense and is more or less inevitable.

What we have now is that the Hamas leadership is trying to keep Israel within this hornet's nest called Gaza in order to bleed Israel and revolutionize the Middle East in the Hamas sense. This is a very old pattern. It occurred in Europe; it's occurring in the Middle East. You have a revolutionary, trans-national movement transcending the state structure and this is precisely what Hamas wants. Sacrificing a few hundred or a few thousand civilians doesn't matter at all. These are nihilistic people pretending to do the work of Allah.

Germany has traditionally been very pro-Israel, in part due to its history with the Jews, but also prefers dialogue over military action. Do you think Germany feels obligated to support Israel because of traditional ties?

Every reasonable person, including the government of Israel, prefers dialogue over action. But what if dialogue leads you nowhere? Or what if dialogue means you just have to suffer very heavy blows? Germany is in the lurch. We have always gone through the EU in unpleasant things concerning the Middle East, whereas in the bilateral relationship we've always been very much pro-Israel.

Nowadays, we are of two minds. On the one hand, we are giving -- and partly selling -- to Israel the only submarines they have. On the other hand, we are very fussy about ball-bearings for the Merkava 4 tanks. I cannot really see a clear line from the Berlin government. When it comes to words, we are very pro-Israel. When it comes to practical deeds, we are not so helpful. We do cooperate in research and development, from agriculture to high-tech. What will happen if this war of low intensity develops into a very hot, fast-moving war? If Israel comes to the end of its military sustainability very soon, God only knows what will happen. Then it's up to the Americans.

Israel's new government is short on war experience. How long will the country be able to hold out?


The Israelis have endured and have supported this kind of thing for many years, indeed. When they invaded Lebanon in 1982 they stayed there for 18 years altogether. But there were strings attached when they withdrew. One condition was, you don't fire cartouches into northern Israel and we don't invade. This silent agreement was never a written one but there was a clear understanding and it was also supported by Egypt and others. This has been broken in a very massive way. Everybody on the Hezbollah side knew what would happen if they hijacked Israeli soldiers and killed people.