Yesterday night Israel's cabinet met in a marathon five hour session to
discuss the nation's response to Hamas' breaking of a cease-fire that
morning which left two Israeli soldiers dead and one missing presumed
kidnapped. Obviously at a time of war the details of this meeting are
being kept secret but the scene was rather well set by Yochanan Gordon's
spectacular Times of Israel article "When Genocide is Permissible"
although I think that title was missing a question mark.
Essentially within the Israeli government you have the moderate
centrists led by the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who wish to
conduct the current operation in accordance with Jewish values of
freedom and justice by keeping an adherence to international law and
humanitarian concern for the Palestinian people at the fore. Pushing
against them you have extreme religious, Zionist parties such as Jewish
Home who along with the more extreme wing of Likud want to use this
conflict as an excuse to destroy Gaza so they can take control of its
natural gas reserves and build some nice beach-front holiday homes. The
extremists hand will only have been strenghend by Hamas' actions which
have left the Israeli public in a state of outrage that is hard to
imagine.
Further strengthening the extremists hand has been the relentless
international anti-Israel propaganda campaign that this operation has
triggered. Despite the fact that Israel has gone to great lengths to
improve the conduct of its military and drawn up a battle-plan intended
to minimise the risk to civilians everyone only seems interested in
re-living the arguments and criticisms of 2008/9's Operation Cast Lead. A
lot of the photographs I'm seeing on Twitter of supposed Israeli
atrocities were out of date when I saw them being passed around during
Cast Lead and some of them aren't even from Gaza at all. This propaganda
has fuelled public opinion leading to calls for tough action against
Israel from nations such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar who simply want to
unseat Israel from its position as the region's dominant power. Faced
with such an onslaught of hate many Israelis have got to be questioning
why they should bother paying such a high price both in monetary terms
and in the lives of their soldiers to protect Palestinian lives when
they are going to be vilified as murderers whatever they do.
During this cabinet meeting the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) provided a
demonstration of what they are capable of should the kid gloves come off
by heavily attacking the southern town of Rafah and the Tuffah district
of Gaza City. To their credit the IDF seem to have moved away from
artillery fire. The one image of flattened buildings that news channels
keep showing to illustrate the destruction of Gaza is actually of one
city block in the Shejayia district of Gaza City that was destroyed on
July 20th (20/7/14). That destruction was caused by artillery fire.
Instead the IDF have been focusing on air-strikes although gone are the
telephone warnings and 'roof-knocks' that warn residents to evacuate.
Although both types of weapon are being used the IDF seem to be
favouring largish guided bombs over Hellfire-type missiles which can be
fired through a window to target occupants of a single apartment while
leaving the rest of the building unscathed. As a result there was an
increased amount of property damage and an increase in civilian
casualties as entire buildings were demolished leading to another
gore-fest. However as always seems to be the case on social media the
same Palestinian child can apparently die a dozen times over.
At the end of this onslaught Hamas confirmed that it did indeed break
the cease-fire by attacking and attempting to kidnap an IDF soldier
although it is now claiming that its fighters and the IDF soldier were
killed in the immediate aftermath. This could well be true because it is
one of the objectives of the IDF's response under the Hannibal
protocol. However at this point I think Hamas would say just about
anything to distance themselves from the incident and as far as I can
tell they haven't provided the IDF with the last known co-ordinates of
the fighters and their hostage so their remains can be recovered.
For those of you who are wondering I am referring to this soldier as
"kidnapped" rather then "captured" is because if he had been captured
Hamas would have registered him as a prisoner of war with the
International Commission of the Red Cross (ICRC) and would release him
at the end of the conflict. US President Obama's announcement that "We
tortured some folks" seemed like a deliberate attempt to inflame Israeli
public opinion further because it is telling that Israel thinks that a
soldier is better off dead than as a Hamas hostage.
So far today it appears that the moderates within the Israeli government
have continued to win out against the extremists. The IDF have
announced that it will be withdrawing from Beit Lahia allowing residents
to return to the area. This is consistent with the plan of dealing with
the Gaza Strip in small sections allowing civilians to move between
non-combat zones in order to stay safe. There have even being rumours
that Israel is preparing to withdraw entirely from Gaza having completed
their mission. I think this could be possible because having identified
30 or so Hamas tunnels the IDF has spent the last week surveying and
mapping those tunnels meaning that they are now able to destroy them at a
rate of three to four per day.
I am though a little worried that Israel may be tempted to rush into
ending the mission. That is because victory in this operation is not
going to come from some telegenic moment where the victors raise their
flag over the enemy's HQ but from a tedious spread-sheet showing how
much of Hamas' offensive military capabilities have been destroyed.
(Originally Posted) 16:05 on 2/8/14 (UK date).
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