WarSclerotic

It was a meeting that underscored the increasing enmity between Washington and the Palestinian Authority.

Haley, the United States’ representative to the Security Council, arrived late to the meeting, as did Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.

They both arrived after the other 14 Security Council members held a moment of silence for the more than 60 Palestinians who the Hamas-run health ministry reported were killed by the IDF in an attempt to quell a violent protest along its southern border with Gaza.

It was the bloodiest day since the start of the Hamas-led “Great March of Return” on March 30, which had the goal of breaking down the border barrier and entering Israel.

Haley made a brief speech, arguing that none of the 15-member body would be as restrained as Israel if their borders were threatened.

“Make no mistake: Hamas is pleased with the results from yesterday,” she said, as she explained how the terror group had goaded protestors into heading into dangerous areas of the fence by falsely telling them the IDF had fled.

Hamas used “loudspeakers that urge demonstrators to burst through the fence, falsely claiming Israeli soldiers were fleeing, when in fact, they were not. The same loudspeakers are used by Hamas to urge the crowds to ‘Get closer! Get closer!’ to the security fence,” Haley said.

“I ask my colleagues here in the Security Council: Who among us would accept this type of activity on your border? No one would. No country in this chamber would act with more restraint than Israel has. In fact, the records of several countries here today suggest they would be much less restrained,” she charged.

Haley then left the room, just as Mansour, who was an invited guest to the meeting, addressed the council.

Mansour charged that her words were “racist” and “provocative.”

He compared the Gaza protests to the demonstrations in the US against gun violence.

“We reject the racist discourse that turns us into excluded victims of humanity. We have the right to demonstrate as families against the occupation and its arrogance,” Mansour said.

The right to demonstrate is accepted throughout the world, he said.

“Why are we accused in a racist, fallacious way just because we exercise the same rights as anyone else?” Mansour asked.

“Stop the massacre committed against our people. The council cannot remain silent,” he said.

He called on the council to offer international protection to the Palestinians.

Danon then responded, explaining to the council that “these were not demonstrations, these were not protests – these were violent riots. They have repeatedly attempted to sabotage and breach the fence with the explicit goal of killing Israelis.”

Danon accused Hamas of wanting “death over peace,” and condemned the terrorist organization for exploiting its own people and using them as a collective “human shield.”

“Its goal was to kill and kidnap Jews in surrounding Israeli towns,” Danon charged.

When it comes to the safety of Israelis, “too often the world is silent,” he said.

He also charged that the Palestinians had caused their own people to die in a deadly public relations game.

“What would you do if a mob charged at your border with explosives and weapons?” he asked.

At a press conference outside the Security Council chamber, Danon showed a photograph of the sole commercial crossing between Israel and Gaza, the Kerem Shalom crossing, through which food and supplies enter the Strip. But during the Gaza riots, it was burned by the rioters, he said.

The council debate, in which most of the members spoke out against Israel’s disproportionate use of force, ended without any vote or formal condemnation.

The United States, which is one of five permanent members of the Security Council with veto power, had blocked any attempt to issue a statement with respect to Gaza or to demand a UN investigation into the deaths.

The UN Human Rights Council plans to hold an emergency session on the Gaza deaths on Friday. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for an independent investigation into IDF actions on the border.

The images show relatively limited damage to several sites, but they do appear to show that the giant building known as the “Glass House” at Damascus International Airport has been evacuated. The images are from May 11, the day after the raid. The first images were taken in September 2017.

The evacuation of Iranians from this one site is emblematic of a larger and deadly chess game being played out in Syria. Over the last five years the game has involved limited and precision air strikes – a handful for which Israel has taken responsibility while others have only been reported in foreign media.

Now Iran’s apparatus in Syria has a new problem. After the large May 10 strikes which targeted numerous positions, including munitions, command and control and intelligence gathering sites, Iran’s agents in Syria must be wondering what’s coming next. They also have to be concerned about how much Jerusalem knows about their operations. After the strikes, around two dozen people were reportedly killed in Syria, most of them non-Syrian.

The ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu is reputed to have written that every battle is won before it is fought. It appears that the evacuation of the so-called “Glass House” near Damascus is an example of this.

Iran evacuated this key part of its infrastructure without a battle. The Glass House has been known in media since 2016. The Daily Mail claimed “Iran is shoring up the Syrian regime from a secret HQ in Damascus nicknamed ‘the Glass House’ – and commanding a huge covert army in support of Assad, according to leaked intelligence passed by activists to MailOnline.”

The article went on to give all sorts of details. “The third and fourth floors are apparently occupied by the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence unit, which is in overall command of the HQ. These areas are off-limits to even the most senior army officers. On the ground floor there is reportedly a cafe and a 20-bed private clinic for wounded senior military personnel, while the first floor houses the Revolutionary Guards’ propaganda department.”

THIS ALL may be accurate or it may not. The building allegedly contains up to 280 rooms. “A number of departments are based inside ‘the Glass House’, including counterintelligence, logistics, propaganda and foreign-mercenary command. The Iranian intelligence services, who are in charge of the base, are said to occupy the top two floors. The building is also said to contain prayer rooms, a 20-bed private clinic for wounded senior officers, and facilities for holding millions of dollars in cash, which are reportedly kept in the basement,” notes the website Israel Defense.

But when Israel decided to strike Iranian targets on May 10 in response to rocket fire, it didn’t destroy the Glass House. Instead a storage facility nearby was hit – a kind of warehouse. The major alleged Iranian investment at the Glass House appears to have been left intact.

Rendering the building unusable, since people are now afraid to go back to it for fear of air strikes, is almost as good as destroying it. In fact in a kind of Sun Tzu kind of way it’s better than having to destroy it. If you can win a battle without fighting it you have done better than had you been forced to risk soldiers in battle.

In this case the Iranians appear to have abandoned a prized possession because of fears of what Israel might do next.

That, in a sense, is a true Clausewitz achievement. “War is politics by other means,” the early 19th-century Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz claimed. The shadow war with Iran in Syria is politics by other means because the grand strategy is to evict Iran from Syria. Jerusalem said numerous times last year that it wants Iran to reduce its presence in Syria.

The danger now is that Israel may have a bit of hubris after the May 10 air strikes and the lack of response from Iran or its numerous proxies and allies such as Hezbollah. The psychological war in Syria can be fought – but only so long as Iran and Hezbollah are deterred and only so long as the threat of retaliation, in some form or another, is always taken seriously.