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10 OPINION maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 28 FEBRUARY 2024 AS the deadline for Israel's ground assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah approaches on March 10 – the beginning of Ramadan – world leaders are urging its government to rethink its strategy. Casualties from such an assault may even dwarf the huge human losses so far of close to 30,000 Palestinians killed and 70,000 wounded. US president, Joe Biden, has re- peatedly urged his Israeli coun- terpart, Benjamin Netanyahu – in private and public – to hold off on the assault and to come up with a plan to protect civilians. What Biden may or may not do to influence Netanyahu's deci- sion is unclear – and will, in part at least, be calibrated by Biden's domestic political requirements in an election year. But there is an important prec- edent which shows that Israel has been known to heed US pressure in similar situations. In 1982 Is- raeli jets bombed west Beirut, where fighters of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) were embedded during Israel's war with Lebanon. Ronald Reagan, who was then US president, phoned his Israeli counterpart, Prime Minister Me- nachem Begin, and ordered him to to stop the bombardment, re- portedly using the words: "Men- achem, this is a holocaust." A White House statement at the time reflected that Reagan's approach got immediate results: The President made clear that it is imperative that the ceasefire in place be observed absolutely in order for negotiations to proceed. We understand the Israeli cabi- net has approved a new ceasefire, which is in effect. It must hold. Special relationship One factor that will lend weight to any pressure from Biden is the singularly close and cooperative relationship between the Israe- li Defence Forces (IDF) and the Pentagon. When Israel won its war of independence in 1948, the US support came primarily from American Jews. But that changed rapidly through the 1950s as the cold war hardened, Arab nation- alism emerged and Israel became America's key ally in the region. While not supporting Israel's role in the Franco-British Suez Canal disaster in 1956, in just about every other respect mili- tary relations with Israel became steadily closer. It is thought to be highly unlikely that Israel could have succeeded in the 1973 Yom Kippur War without US backing. Through the 1980s and 1990s the two armed forces maintained close relations. Just as important, though, were the ever closer links between US and Israeli arms corporations, not just in joint re- search and development but even in weapons production. Even so, the end of the cold war and the collapse of the So- viet system in the early 1990s changed the calculus of interests. For Washington, with the threat from the Soviet Union a thing of the past, the strategic significance of Israel in the Middle East was diminished. This was a matter of serious concern to Israeli govern- ments at the time. After 9/11 That all changed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the start of the "war on terror". Israel suddenly gained a much greater signifi- cance – and this came to a head in late 2003, six months into the war to terminate Saddam Hus- sain's regime in Iraq. The first few weeks of that war, in March and April, seemed to be remarkably successful, but within a couple of months it had gone badly wrong as US troops found themselves faced with a growing urban insurgency with most of their troops inadequately trained or equipped to respond. By October 2003, the position was getting dire – and one Penta- gon response was to turn to Isra- el with its of experience of urban warfare. In early December, the head of Israel's ground forces, Ma- jor-General Yiftah Ron-Tal, hosted a series of meetings with a visiting senior US team headed by General Kevin Byrnes, commander of the US army's training and doctrine command (Tradoc), to strengthen cooperation and to look at ways the US could benefit from Israeli expe- rience in urban combat. The Pentagon was particularly interested in how the IDF had op- erated during the first three years of the second Palestinian Intifada – especially across the occupied West Bank – and went on to use Israeli equipment and tactics in Iraq. It may have been useful to the US – but it also presented a val- uable propaganda opportunity to the militias fighting the US forces. They were now able to character- ise the war as a Zionist/Christian "crusade". Cooperation and collective punishment In the event, there were many ways in which US-Israeli mil- itary cooperation hardened in the wake of the war. A ground- breaking development was the decision to station US army personnel permanently in Isra- el, running an advanced X-Band Radar facility that provided early warning of long-distance missile attacks. Another was the US Army Corps of Engineers building a complete Arab town, Baladia, in the Negev Desert, used by the US, Israel and others for urban warfare training. With all this cooperation, Israel might well have been strength- ened in its ability to control ur- ban insurgencies. But even while the war in Iraq continued, it found that a ground force operation against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 2006 was going badly wrong, leading to unexpected casualties and recourse to mass aerial bom- bardment. Gaza war: will Israel respond to US pressure to tread carefully in Rafah? There is a precedent Paul Rogers is Professor of Peace Studies, University of Bradford Paul Rogers President Biden with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu