The Gaza war – IV

Voilà the latest installment of links to interesting articles and commentaries I’ve read over the past three or four days. First, Haaretz’s Aluf Benn, writing on the cease fire agreement, argues that “Israel’s Pillar of Defense achieved its goals”

Operation Pillar of Defense had two strategic goals – one, to reinstate the Gaza cease-fire with Hamas, which had unraveled in recent months amid increasing hostilities, and two, to stabilize the peace with Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood came to power.

Providing both sides now keep the truce, it seems from the agreements announced on Wednesday night that both these goals may have been achieved.

Israel expects Hamas to fulfill a role in Gaza analogous to Hezbollah’s in Lebanon – protecting the border, stopping the firing and enforcing quiet on other armed organizations.

This agreement is not based on love, mutual recognition or joint ideology, but on joint interests backed by a balance of fear – the IDF’s air firepower and threat of a ground invasion, versus the ability of Hezbollah and Hamas to launch rockets at Israel’s home front.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak declared on Wednesday: “Hamas is responsible for enforcing the cease-fire.” This means Israel expects Jabari’s successor to serve as “sub-contractor” and ensure quiet on the border. If he is sloppy or refuses, he may expect the same fate that befell the Hamas chief of staff who was assassinated last week. This is what the political and military leaders mean when they use the term “renewing the deterrence.”

According to the text released by the Egyptians, Israel has agreed to stop military activities and assassinations in the Gaza Strip, while Hamas has agreed to stop rocket fire into Israel and attacks along the border.

This means Israel will withdraw from the 300-meter-wide “safety belt” on the Hamas side of the border, in which the IDF acted against explosives and tunnels and fired at Palestinians who came near the border fence.

The current confrontation broke out after Hamas tried to create a counter-perimeter on the Israeli side, by shooting an anti-tank missile at an IDF jeep and wounding four soldiers. Hamas has succeeded, at least for now and at a heavy price, to rid its territory of the IDF patrols.

Israel’s second goal was to examine the relations with Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership in case of a confrontation with the Palestinians.

President Mohammed Morsi proved that he too prefers interests to ideology. He refuses to have open talks with Israel and intends to conduct relations with it via covert channels. But Morsi has made it clear the peace with Israel is an Egyptian interest and even serves Egypt’s desire to resume a leadership position in the region.

Netanyahu showed it was possible to bomb Gaza and kill Hamas’ chief of staff without harming the peace with Cairo. In the new strategic environment generated by the “Arab Spring,” this is no mean feat.

Analysts have been divided as to who came out on top in this latest flare-up, even within the pro-Israel right. David Horovitz, founding editor of the new web-based newspaper The Times of Israel—which appears not to be on the left—, has an interesting analysis, in which he maintains that Israel achieved successes in Pillar of Defense; the worry is that Hamas achieved more. Some quotes

Setting out on Operation Pillar of Defense last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak said it was aimed to bolster Israel’s deterrent capability, degrade Hamas’s rocket launch infrastructure, badly damage Gaza’s terror cells, and reduce the attacks on Israel’s citizenry.

In other words, from the start, the stewards of the conflict made plain that they did not intend to retake the Gaza Strip seven years after Israel had left it. Although Netanyahu had vowed while in the opposition to rid Gaza of its Hamas terrorist rulers, that ambition was neither the declared nor the unstated goal in the last few days.

Though critics and non-critics of Israel alike think Hamas came out on top of the flare-up, Horovitz says that Hamas suffered setbacks

The intelligence aspect of Israel’s strikes has shaken Hamas, no matter how swaggering its bravado. To lose your chief of staff, Jabari, on day one of a mini-war exposes a massive intelligence vulnerability. To see many of your key long-range missile locations pinpointed and targeted underlines the extent to which Israel has penetrated Hamas’s command and communications networks

This has been achieved while Israel’s casualty rate has been kept very low, largely through the remarkable success of the Iron Dome anti-missile system. Israelis in rocket-range still lived in fear of attack — the shield is not impermeable, and insufficient numbers of batteries have been deployed — but the assumption that a rocket once fired will reach its destination has been replaced by the overwhelming likelihood that a rocket once launched will be intercepted.

Israel carried out Pillar of Defense in the absence of any criticism, let alone condemnation, from the “responsible members of the international diplomatic community”

By eschewing a ground offensive, Israel also avoided both a rise in its casualty figures and a likely drastic increase in Gaza fatalities. (Of the 177 Palestinians who were killed in Gaza, 120 of them were “engaged in terrorist activity,” the IDF Spokesman said Wednesday night.) It has consequently retained the support of the responsible members of the international diplomatic community (the likes of Turkey would condemn any Israel attempt at self-defense), and at least a measure of the empathy of the fair-minded members of the international media. It has also avoided a possible descent into a far wider confrontation, which could have come to threaten the already unpredictable relationships with Egypt and Jordan.

But if Hamas was not the winner of the flare-up, nor was Israel

Hamas has also gained greater governing legitimacy, hosting solidarity visits from regional leaders, and essentially requiring Israel to negotiate with it — albeit indirectly — even as it maintains its avowed goal of destroying the Jewish state.

Among the additional worries for Israelis is the concern that Netanyahu’s disinclination to make even limited use of ground forces — Pillar of Defense lasted less than half as long as Operation Cast Lead four years ago, when a ground offensive did further degrade Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure — was in part a consequence of heavy American pressure.

Then there is the fact — more troubling to Israelis on the left than those on the right — that the boosted popularity of Hamas, at the expense of relatively more moderate Palestinian figures, will further reduce the prospects of substantive progress toward some kind of viable Israeli-Palestinian accommodation.

In the same vein, Yossi Klein Halevi, asks in TNR “Who won Israel’s latest war?” Answer: not necessarily Israel

As for Israeli deterrence: Hamas called Israel’s bluff on a ground offensive, and Israel backed down. The mobilization of the reserves was apparently nothing more than an exercise in intimidation. Yet Hamas leaders hardly seemed intimidated. Come on in, they taunted Israeli leaders—fully aware of just how reluctant Israel was to topple Hamas and risk being turned into an international pariah. Hamas leaders acted as if they’d been eavesdropping on Israel’s media debates over a ground invasion, or else reading the polls that showed most Israelis opposed to one. Government ministers spoke openly about the futility of a ground invasion, even as the reservists were gathering on the border. During one TV panel, the education minister, Likudnik Gideon Sa’ar, confessed that there was no alternative to Hamas rule. The strategy of deterrence toward Hamas has always depended on projecting the opposite message.

In the streets of Gaza City, Palestinians celebrated Hamas’ victory. Netanyahu will have to work hard to convince Israeli voters that those celebrants were wrong.

In the lefty New Statesman, of all places, Professor Alan Johnson explains “Why Israel’s action in Gaza [was] not ‘disproportionate’,” that “[p]roportionality is not the same thing as symmetry [and that] Israel must counter the developing threat from Hamas.” His main points:

First, in comparison to Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9, what is striking about the current military action is precisely how limited the civilian casualties have been…. Second, in international law and just war theory, proportionality is not the same thing as symmetry.

When Professor Johnson sustains the full fury of Mark LeVine & Lisa Hajjar, he won’t know what hit him…

MEMRI has a compilation of  tribunes by “Arab columnists [who] criticize [the] firing of rockets from Gaza as [a] reckless escapade serving Iran, not Palestinians.” Not all observers in the Arab world were uncritically supportive of Hamas in the latest flare-up. Members of the Palestinian Amen Corner have long dismissed MEMRI as an officine of the Israeli state—which it may indeed be—but have never challenged the accuracy of its translations (except maybe one or two times six or seven years ago). MEMRI’s translations are, in fact, impeccable—which anyone with an even passable knowledge of Arabic may see/hear for him/herself—, as are its selection of reportages and articles. It is an indispensable source for anyone seriously following the conflict.

In the Guardian’s ‘Comment is free’ section, Jonathan Freedland writes about how “Israel and Palestine’s leaders – and cheerleaders – have failed them.” The lede: “Those who support Israel or Palestine as if they were rival football teams do those two peoples a terrible disservice.” Hear, hear!

In the rival Independent, Robert Fisk interviews the grand old man of the Israeli left, Uri Avnery, “One of Israel’s great leftist warriors [and who] wants peace with Hamas and Gaza.” I am a great admirer of Avnery—and have been so for forty years—but am not always 100% on the same page with him.

In the Turkish Hürriyet Daily News, the fine commentator Burak Bekdil, in a column entitled “Baby-killers vs. innocent baby-killers,” skewers PM R.T. Erdoğan for his rhetoric on Israel, the Palestinians, and Gaza. Way to go, Burak!

On CNN, Christiane Amanpour has a must watch interview with Khaled Mashal, in which she seriously grills the SOB. Good job, Christiane. How anyone can think that it is at all possible to negotiate a solution to the I-P conflict with the likes of Mashal & Co is something I do not understand.

Finally, Jerusalem Post editorialist Caroline Glick, whom Hussein Ibish incisively observes is “barking mad,” has an unhinged column in which, entre autres, she situates herself not only to the right of Ariel Sharon but also to practically the entire Israeli Amen Corner in the right-wing US media

Despite government repression, some 45 percent of Israel’s Jewish population actively participated in anti-[2005 Gaza] withdrawal protests. In the US, virtually no one supported them. The absence of opposition owed to the fact that in America withdrawal opponents were boycotted, demonized and blacklisted by the American Jewish community and the previously supportive conservative media.

During the years of the fake peace process, conservative US Jewish groups and conservative publications led by Commentary, The Weekly Standard and The Wall Street Journal forcefully opposed it. But when Sharon joined the radical Left by adopting its plan to withdraw from Gaza, these formidable outlets and institutions enthusiastically followed him.

Leading voices like former Jerusalem Post editor and Wall Street Journal editorial board member Bret Stephens, Commentary editors Norman Podhoretz and Neil Kozodoy, commentator Charles Krauthammer and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol not only lined up to support the dangerous planned withdrawal. They barred all voices of opposition from the pages of their publications.

This is a doozy. Ms. Glick is hopping mad. And mad as a hatter. She wants blood. Now. In re to the current Gaza flare-up, she thunders

Israel has only two options for dealing with the ever-escalating threat from Gaza. It can try to coexist with Hamas. This option is doomed to failure since Hamas seeks the annihilation of the Jewish people and the eradication of Israel….

The other choice is to destroy Hamas. To accomplish this Israel will need to invade Gaza and remain in place. It will have to kill or imprison thousands of terrorists, send thousands more packing for Sinai, and then spend years patrolling the streets of Gaza and arresting terrorists just as it does today in Judea and Samaria.

Whereas the first option is impossible, the latter option is not currently viable. It isn’t viable because not enough people making the argument have the opportunity to publish their thoughts in leading publications. Most of those who might have the courage to voice this view fear that if they do, they will be denied an audience, or discredited as warmongers or extremists.

So they remain silent or impotently say that Israel shouldn’t agree to a cease-fire without mentioning what Israel’s other option is.

The millions of Israelis who opposed the withdrawal from Gaza do not seek personal vindication for being right. They didn’t warn against the withdrawal to advance their careers or make their lives easier. Indeed, their careers were uniformly harmed.

Normally when I read such deranged screeds, I ask myself “Who is this whack job? Where do they find these people?” Except that Ms. Glick, given her perch at JPost, is well-known by those who follow I-P. And, as it happens, she hails from Hyde Park in Chicago: the most liberal neighborhood of one of the deepest blue Democratic-voting cities in America. For all I know, I may have crossed paths with her on South Kimbark while she was on her way to the Lab School (she left the neighborhood before Barack Obama arrived). But then, the U of Chicago and environs have always had their share of right-wing nutcases. One less, the better.