Could Israel win a Prolonged War?

1) I don't believe that Israels enemies are able to create a lasting alliance before and during a prolonged war against Israel. Egypt and Syria did something like this before 1973, but even that failed. Egypts demands on when the war should start deprived syrians of seven hours of daylight in Golan. And then syrians demands on Egypt forced them to leave the SAM umbrella at Suez, getting shred by the IAF. Why should an alliance with more parcipiants, more goals and far more losses work any better? Sooner or later some countries will withdraw - either openly or de facto, refusing to advance/defend.

2) Since the war is ignored by the rest of the world Israel could take its time. No running against a UN deadline (like 1956, 1967 or 1973). And they get to keep any arab army they bag. Which arab country would keep fighting after seeing the equivalent of Egypts Third Army being marched off to POW camps?

3) Israel could blockade Egypts, Syria, Lebanons and Jordans ports. Just declare the off-limits to everyone. Do the same to the Suez channel, just to deprive Egypt of cash. That should be a hard blow in the long run.
 
1) I don't believe that Israels enemies are able to create a lasting alliance before and during a prolonged war against Israel. Egypt and Syria did something like this before 1973, but even that failed. Egypts demands on when the war should start deprived syrians of seven hours of daylight in Golan. And then syrians demands on Egypt forced them to leave the SAM umbrella at Suez, getting shred by the IAF. Why should an alliance with more parcipiants, more goals and far more losses work any better? Sooner or later some countries will withdraw - either openly or de facto, refusing to advance/defend.

2) Since the war is ignored by the rest of the world Israel could take its time. No running against a UN deadline (like 1956, 1967 or 1973). And they get to keep any arab army they bag. Which arab country would keep fighting after seeing the equivalent of Egypts Third Army being marched off to POW camps?

3) Israel could blockade Egypts, Syria, Lebanons and Jordans ports. Just declare the off-limits to everyone. Do the same to the Suez channel, just to deprive Egypt of cash. That should be a hard blow in the long run.

And risk pissing off the whole world?:eek:
 

Yonatan

Banned
And risk pissing off the whole world?:eek:

If the entire middle east is already invading, what does it matter? what, is NATO going to invade because the IDF is blocking arms shipments to Egypt? is the US and EU going to put sanctions on Israel?

There is something deeply flawed in either your, or the "world's" thinking if Israel blocking the Suez is somehow a terrible thing to do when Egypt, the country using it, is actively attacking Israel.

Im being serius here, what exactly would be the ramifications of such an act, that would be worse then letting the Suez canal remain open, during a total war with Egypt? after all, this couldnt be the first war to cause serius economic instability world wide, and I dont remember any such nation being harmed in any way as a result by other states, since they did it as part of a war.


BTW Snake, what you are describing is a bit more then borderline ASB. it would require unprecedented cooperation between multiple arab states to a high degree, for a period of months, if not longer. it requires a complete restructuring of all arab armies to meet such a standard, which is ASB, and that Israel doesnt change anything in its own military structure as a result, which is also ASB. you also assume the IDF will continue to react the same way every single time, as in:
Arab forces lose some land, the IDF moves forward, supply lines become longer, then somehow "light forces" will start wreaking havoc with its supply lines. are you suggesting the IDF will keep marching till it reaches Baghdad? or Tripoli? do you realy think this is how wars work? like some video game? or WW2?

But say it somehow works, and you manage to attrition the IDF till it can no longer go far beyond Israel's borders, then what? all the "heavy" forces have been demolished over time, what are you going to use to enter Israeli turf? light infantry again? seriusly?
 
BTW Snake, what you are describing is a bit more then borderline ASB. it would require unprecedented cooperation between multiple arab states to a high degree, for a period of months, if not longer. it requires a complete restructuring of all arab armies to meet such a standard, which is ASB, and that Israel doesnt change anything in its own military structure as a result, which is also ASB. you also assume the IDF will continue to react the same way every single time, as in:
Arab forces lose some land, the IDF moves forward, supply lines become longer, then somehow "light forces" will start wreaking havoc with its supply lines. are you suggesting the IDF will keep marching till it reaches Baghdad? or Tripoli? do you realy think this is how wars work? like some video game? or WW2?

But say it somehow works, and you manage to attrition the IDF till it can no longer go far beyond Israel's borders, then what? all the "heavy" forces have been demolished over time, what are you going to use to enter Israeli turf? light infantry again? seriusly?

I repeat that my view is that such a scenario is impossible if the superpowers are going to step in to bail both sides out if they run into difficulty and both sides know this before the wars start. Without that both Israel and the Arabs will wind up changing how they do things because of that mother of invention, necessity. If we bring either or one of the superpowers into the picture a protracted war between Israel and the Arabs is a no-go and in the short term Israel's advantages are always insuperable.

And no, the practical reality would if anything resemble a hybrid of the Wars of Louis XIV and the Napoleonic Wars: Israel does well in the short term and for a while in the medium term with the advantages of being one state pursuing many objectives and then logistical reality ensues and the Arabs "win" by just being able to stay in the war with oil for their armies against an Israel running out of oil. And after that five seconds later the Palestinian Wars of Independence start.
 
Guderian was a blatant liar and fraud who got away with it so the USA could justify putting the treacherous idiots who lost WWII for Germany back in charge of the West German army (where if a war broke out those sorry assholes would have just lost yet another war the way they lost their first one). The Germans didn't have the ability to win either a short war or a long war, Israel's in a worse situation where its over-mobilization *will* begin to produce economic issues and logistical disasters so the only thing the Arabs would have to do if they were able to act in a purely military fashion is keep retreating and engaging in a sequence of small battles until Israel is overstretched and out of fuel and ammo, at which point they start dropping the hammer and using the kind of infiltration tactics a light force can use to rip the heart out of a much more heavily armed force.



The Palestinians, if they ever found a leader who could actually do something, given that Israel won't ever let go of the West Bank or Gaza Strip until this problem ultimately becomes irresolvable for it. Admittedly the Palestinians like the other Arabs about as much as Israel does, and the crude reality, too, is that IOTL we're speaking of short wars where the superpowers stepped in to forestall embarrassments to their proxies. In a longer war, both Israel and the Arabs would expect that they'd have to fight their battles, not having the USSR or the USA save their asses.

Again we have Israeli escalation dominance, if local violence ever looked like becoming an extistential threat to Israel they could ethically cleanse the Palestinians from their territory. It wouldn`t be pretty and Israel would be internationally condemned but pushing these threats out of Israel and into neighbouring countries is a strategy that in the final analysis Israel could employ. Whereas the reverse is not true, the Palestinians can make life uncomfortable for Israel, but not so much that the Israelis will cease to be a nation. Indeed despite 65 years of war Israel has the strongest economy in the region and a robust and stable democracy.
 
Again we have Israeli escalation dominance, if local violence ever looked like becoming an extistential threat to Israel they could ethically cleanse the Palestinians from their territory. It wouldn`t be pretty and Israel would be internationally condemned but pushing these threats out of Israel and into neighbouring countries is a strategy that in the final analysis Israel could employ. Whereas the reverse is not true, the Palestinians can make life uncomfortable for Israel, but not so much that the Israelis will cease to be a nation. Indeed despite 65 years of war Israel has the strongest economy in the region and a robust and stable democracy.

No they can't. After so many years of pretending they're a lovely, fuzzy democracy they resort to a 1915/1942 style "solution" like this and their credentials as anything but a generic Middle Eastern state in all the worst ways are permanently destroyed.
 
Its as realistic an option as nuking other countries during a high end war, and it happens all the time in other parts of the world. I think that if it ever came to that Israel wouldn`t care about world opinion, and world opinion wouldn`t care too much either when it came to action rather than rhetoric.
 
Its as realistic an option as nuking other countries during a high end war, and it happens all the time in other parts of the world. I think that if it ever came to that Israel wouldn`t care about world opinion, and world opinion wouldn`t care too much either when it came to action rather than rhetoric.

I think in this case it actually would, as the results of a renewed version of the 1948 expulsions will do tremendous damage to Israel's ties with some very key countries and all but guarantee the Arabs in Israel proper are going to become a fifth column for fear that this happens next to them.
 
Not if places like France and Germany are cracking down on their own Muslim populations, Israel would just become the worst of several.
 
Not if places like France and Germany are cracking down on their own Muslim populations, Israel would just become the worst of several.
Wait, why on earth would this start to happen? Besides, there's "cracking down", and then there is ethnic cleansing on a massive scaled. I'm not even sure that mighty AIPAC could keep America on Israel's side in a situation like this.
 
Not if places like France and Germany are cracking down on their own Muslim populations, Israel would just become the worst of several.

First, what is the exact reason either France or Germany would crack down on their Muslim populations? Second, this is less a crackdown and more a sweeping ethnic cleansing of the kind only undertaken by authoritarian, even totalitarian societies.
 
To answer a question with a question, how is multiculturalism being viewed in France and Germany at the moment?
 
To answer a question with a question, how is multiculturalism being viewed in France and Germany at the moment?

When they're both pulling a Ferdinand and Isabella, then you've a case. As it is the one time France *proposed* this for the Roma, *not* Muslims, the outrage settles any concept of how civilized countries react to such a barbaric proposal.
 
No I`m not getting at that, and find it odd that that is the conclusion you leap to. I`m spitballing an escalation dominance scenario whereby if Palestinians look to be bringing down the Israeli state under current restrictive conditions Israel can escalate the violence and clean out the Palestinian enclaves by slaughter and expuslion.

My comment about France and Germany relates to the empathy that Israel may get from these countries due to their own Muslim minorities causing problems. I have no doubt that the Europeans would dennounce Israel and institute sanctions but when it comes to sending in troops to stop the expulsion I think they would find all the excuses under the sun due to a certain level of empathy.
 
No I`m not getting at that, and find it odd that that is the conclusion you leap to. I`m spitballing an escalation dominance scenario whereby if Palestinians look to be bringing down the Israeli state under current restrictive conditions Israel can escalate the violence and clean out the Palestinian enclaves by slaughter and expuslion.

My comment about France and Germany relates to the empathy that Israel may get from these countries due to their own Muslim minorities causing problems. I have no doubt that the Europeans would dennounce Israel and institute sanctions but when it comes to sending in troops to stop the expulsion I think they would find all the excuses under the sun due to a certain level of empathy.

Again, given the degree to which European countries themselves racist against Roma reacted to France's proposal, not actually implemented, to expel their own, I disagree with this entirely, and in blunt terms ethnic cleansing is less and less acceptable in the era when people see what that term actually has always meant.
 
Condemning it is one thing, but sending in troops to physically stop it is another. Would there be strong international support for invading Israel to stop the expulsion of Palestinians? What about if it occured concurrently with race riots in European countries, would the Europeans be keen then?

I`m not putting this out there lightly, but it was suiggested by someone that the Palestinians were going to bring down the state of Israel from within, and I`m just showing that in this worst case scenario Israel, or any other strong state for that matter, is not helpless in this situation.
 
Condemning it is one thing, but sending in troops to physically stop it is another. Would there be strong international support for invading Israel to stop the expulsion of Palestinians? What about if it occured concurrently with race riots in European countries, would the Europeans be keen then?

Why would it occur simultaneously with race riots in European countries? Are Muslims hive-minds to react thus?
 
No, either Israel would use existing riots as a cover/distraction for their own plans, or protests against Israeli actions turn racial and riotous.
 
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