On June 12th 2014 (12/6/14) three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped as
they made their way back from a religious school (Yeshiva) in the
Palestinian West Bank to their homes in the illegal Jewish settlement of
Talmon. Although they were likely killed immediately it took 18 days
for their bodies to be recovered. This is simply indefensible. However
when Hamas have kidnapped Israelis in the past - for example the soldier
Gilad Shalit - it has been done as part of a highly professional and
pre-planned operation with great focus being placed on keeping the
hostage(s) alive so they can be used to negotiate concessions from the
Israelis. As a result I have always looked at these murders as a
particularly nasty hate crime rather then a terrorist tactic carried out
by an organised group.
This makes the way the Israeli government reacted to the kidnappings
particularly disturbing. They immediately blamed Hamas despite having
absolutely no evidence to support that theory. The one suspect they have
arrested in relation to the crime - Husam Dofsh - had once been a low
level member of Hamas but had long since left the organisation probably
to pursue a more militant path. The other two suspects that the Israelis
are pursuing are not known to have any links to Hamas but are believed
to be closely linked to the Qawasmeh family who although have worked
closely with Hamas in the past are very much more sometime allies rather
than part of the Hamas command structure.
This little detail seemed to be of no interest to the Israeli government
though who immediately sent the police and military to tear apart the
Palestinian West Bank. This operation did not find the missing teenagers
nor did it catch any suspects in the disappearance. It did though see
more then 1000 Palestinian homes searched, five Palestinians killed and
over 350 Palestinians placed under "administrative detention" on
unrelated allegations. As the vast majority of those detained -
including children - are unlikely to ever to face trial it is perhaps
more reasonable to descibe their detention as kidnappings. Of the 350
people detained 150 of their homes were immediately demolished as a form
of extra-judicial punishment that's no been seen since the end of the
second Palestinian intifada in 2005. Added to a ban on travel outside of
the West Bank that prevented more then 23,000 Palestinians travelling
to and from work it is very easy to understand why Israel's response has
been described as a form of collective punishment which is banned under
the 4th Geneva Convention although officially no state of war exists
between Israel and Palestine for the simple reason that Palestine is not
considered a state.
Legal technicalities aside what was most disturbing about the Israelis
government's response is that it took the understandable public outrage
at the murders and directed it firmly towards Hamas. It also made
vigilante violence and hatred against Palestinians acceptable. So when
the bodies of the teenagers were discovered on land owned by the
Qawasmeh family on June 30th (30/6/14) a wave of violent unrest was
unleashed with gangs of Jewish civilians running riot through
Palestinian areas chanting "Death to Arabs" attacking Palestinians and
Palestinian owned property. It also sparked a wave of revenge attacks
including a series of murders in which Palestinians were mown down by
Jewish motorists and Palestinians were kidnapped and beaten. The most
high profile of these was the kidnapping and murder Mohammed Abu Khdeir a
US dual national who was kidnapped and forced to drink petrol before
being burned to death. That incident was further made worse when the
Israeli authorites seemed to delay releasing Khdeir's body forcing his
funeral to be held on the first Friday of Ramadan when it was most
likely to provoke rioting. The Israeli police then beat and arrested
Khdeir's cousin in what seemed to be an attempt to punish the entire
family for complaining about the murder.
Obviously faced with this level of provocation which has seen residents
of the West Bank pleading with the exclusively Fatah Palestinian
Authority to protect them from the Israeli security forces Hamas could
not simply stand by without taking action. As a result they almost
immediately began firing small Qassam rockets into areas of southern
Israel that are used to this type of ineffective rocket attack. However
as the brutality of Israel and particularly its Jewish citizens
intensified Hamas response intensified with ever more and more
effective, military grade rockets being fired ever further into Israel.
These have included M-302/Khaibar-1 rockets that have been looted from
Libyan and Syrian arsenals which have a far longer range and are more
effective then either the Grad rockets that Hamas used during Operation
Cast Lead in 2008/9 or even the Katyusha rockets Hezbollah used during
the 2006 Lebanon war.
Being placed under this type of threat Israel had no option other than
to launch an air campaign into Gaza to prevent these rocket launches
from taking place. Although the Israelis have so far conducted this
campaign very much with a focus on pinpoint strikes that minimise the
risk of civilian casualties it has caused the confrontation to quickly
escalate into a cycle of intensifying violence where both sides end up
retaliating simply for the sake of retaliation. So for example the
Israelis warned residents to leave a building in Gaza that was about to
be bombed prompting local residents to rush to the building to act as
human shields only for the Israelis to bomb it anyway. In turn that
prompted Hamas to target the Ben Gurion civilian airport in Tel Aviv.
That prompted Israel to target the Hamas commander so Hamas responded by
targeting the nuclear research reactor at Negev.
This type of tit for tat escalation is exactly why I am so worried about
this current confrontation because unlike in Cast Lead or even in
2012's Pillars of Defence neither side is working to some great master
plan with clearly defined objectives. As a result there is no way to
tell how far things would go and Hamas seem to be one rocket strike on a
school or a passenger jet away from a massive Israeli ground invasion
that will utterly destroy their power structures in Gaza and could well
destroy Gaza itself.
To make matters worse unlike on previous occasion there seems to be no
intermediary to help broker a ceasefire. Due to the terrorist
designation both the US and the EU are prevented from talking to Hamas
and due to its conduct on Syria and to a lesser extent Rihanna the US is
simply not an acceptable negotiating partner for the Israelis who are
unlikely to view the EU as much better. For their part Hamas have almost
entirely broken off ties with Iran in favour of their parent
organisation the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. This has put them in
direct confrontation with the Egyptian government and their recent
rejection of an Egyptian ceasefire seemed done more out of spite rather
then any understanding of the realities of their situation.
(Originally Posted) 15:05 on 16/7/14 (UK date).
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