The US war in Afghanistan was the longest in American history. When, after 20 years of conflict, the US withdrew its troops in August 2021, its legacy included not only wreckage and destruction, but also the paradigm of “forever war”.
What looked like a forever occupation of Gaza and the West Bank has turned into a forever war. The war on Gaza has become a forever conflict, and one actively sustained by the US. As Israel’s biggest ally and weapons provider, the US is complicit in the ongoing crimes committed in Gaza.
In spite of Biden’s lukewarm criticism of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, the US has yet to properly turn up the diplomatic heat. The US has blocked every ceasefire proposal in the current war since the first attempt at one on October 16. While the US has supported the idea of humanitarian pauses, it has also consistently vetoed UN resolutions calling for a complete ceasefire in Gaza.
The Gaza Strip is tiny, which means there is only so much for Israel to destroy. Apart from the human toll — which now includes more than 37,000 civilians dead and 75,000 wounded — the destruction of infrastructure has been immense. About 370,000 housing units have been damaged or destroyed by Israel. And the Jewish state has partially or completely destroyed 80% of all schools and razed all 12 universities in Gaza.
The overwhelming majority of hospitals in Gaza have been reduced to rubble, and 206 historical and cultural sites have been destroyed. The debris from the destruction alone amounts to 39Mt.
With vague, unattainable objectives and steadfast US backing, it seems the Jewish state will continue its assault on the Palestinians without end
Forever wars are nothing new. In September 2021, in the direct aftermath of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, I interviewed Noam Chomsky for Al Jazeera. Then, as ever, Chomsky was preoccupied with the US penchant for warfare.
He told me: “Violence is the Western way of life.” To Chomsky, a fierce critic of US foreign policy, forever wars started in 1783, when the US became independent. The Revolutionary War was followed by centuries of constant aggressive warfare by the US, extermination, ethnic cleansing, destruction, and violation of treaties.
With the war on Gaza, the US has successfully exported its forever-war model. Not content with the war on the blockaded coastal Palestinian territory, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week warned Lebanon that, should Hezbollah decide on an “all-out war”, Israel could turn Beirut and southern Lebanon into another Gaza.
The conflict on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon is now the most fierce since 2006 — and could spread to neighbouring countries. US envoy Amos Hochstein was sent to Tel Aviv last week to prevent such wider escalation. But Netanyahu is clearly ignoring the White House’s advice against expanding the war.
In light of the US’s own track record in waging forever wars, it is perhaps not the most credible peace-broker in the region. As always, the US fails to recognise the irony of its position. More importantly, the US has failed to use its clout to convince Netanyahu to accept any of the multiple ceasefire proposals that have been on the table since the war started in October.
Whereas Palestinians have long been blamed for difficulties in reaching peace agreements with Israel, it is clear that it is Israel that has mainly been obstructing ceasefire talks over the last eight months, prompting the inevitable conclusion that Netanyahu has no good-faith desire for peace.
Those who fight forever wars typically pursue vague, possibly unobtainable, objectives. In the case of the US, the war in Afghanistan was set to continue until Afghanistan was “no longer a launching pad for terrorism”. Netanyahu has repeatedly said the war on Gaza will continue until Hamas is destroyed. Netanyahu’s goal is similar to the goal of the “war on terror”, declared by George Bush after the September 11 attacks.
Both these wars are forever ones, not because the enemies have an endless capacity for resistance, but, as José Ridao writes in the publication El País, because those who declare these wars “define victory in terms that prevent it from being achieved by military means, forcing armies to endlessly race against their own shadow”.
Even Benny Ganz, a key member of Israel’s recently disbanded war cabinet, accused Netanyahu of drawing out the war to avoid elections and a corruption trial. Netanyahu might now also want to stay in power to avoid appearing before the ICC. He might calculate that he could claim head of state immunity if he stays in his current position — a strategy unlikely to be successful.
Netanyahu’s chasing of an unattainable solution is also not fooling the Israeli public, and is one reason for the increasing internal divisions in Israel. When Biden withdrew all troops from Afghanistan in 2021, he acknowledged the US had long accomplished its main mission of “denying terrorists a haven in the country”, indicating the war lasted longer than it needed to, even by US standards.
But the other key symbol of the excesses of the war on terror, the prison at Guantánamo Bay, remains open, with 30 prisoners still in indefinite detention. Some wonder if it will ever be closed. Forever wars are also psychological ones. The US war on terror was fought not only on the battlefield, but also in people’s minds. Bush, followed by Biden, had to keep up the fraudulent narrative of a war on terror that was really a war for resources.
In this psychological sense, the current Gaza war might never really end. Palestinian resilience has not faded over more than 70 years. The Palestinian spirit of resistance is famously strong. Since Israel will not be able to wipe out this spirit of resistance, it has guaranteed itself a forever enemy. Nothing in Israel’s actions over the past eight months suggests it wants it any differently.
• Swart is a visiting professor at Wits Law School.
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