Since my last post on the subject militants in Gaza have fired a further
125 rockets and mortars into Israel. These included both short range
and longer range rockets. The overwhelming majority of these have either
been intercepted by the Iron Dome system or have fallen in open areas.
Some though did succeed in hitting structures such as electrical
substations leaving people in the Ashkelon area without power. A handful
of civilian homes have also been hit including one in Eshkol where one
person was seriously wounded although their condition has since been
upgraded to moderate.
In response the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have carried out 20-30
further air-strikes into Gaza. These have struck rocket launch sites but
it has become clear that the IDF mission has shifted towards
assassinating senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters. This has included
two fighters of undeclared allegiance who were killed in central Gaza
City and six Islamic Jihad fighters who were killed while preparing a
rocket for launch at an undisclosed location. The big scalps of the
night though have been the deaths of Raed Attar, Muhamed Abu Shamala and
Muhamed Barhoum who were all killed in a single air-strike in Rafah.
While I'm unsure of Barhoum's role Abu Shamala was the commander of
Hamas military wing in the southern region of Gaza, Attar is a very
senior Hamas official who is believed to have taken command of their
tunnel operations from Muhamed Deif when Deif was promoted to overall
command. It was Attar who commanded the operation to kidnap Gilad Shalit
and is suspected of being behind the attempt to kidnap Hadar Goldin.
Despite Palestinian claims to the contrary the civilian death toll from
this latest round of fighting has been extremely light. For example
there have only been 22 reported deaths overnight and not only are we
certain that the majority of them were fighters we can actually name 11
of them.
In response to this fresh round of fighting Israeli Prime Minister last
night addressed the nation. In this speech Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a
great blow being dealt to Hamas which seemed to be a reference to the
attempt to kill Muhamed Deif yesterday and the expansion of the
operation to target more senior Hamas figures. Netanyahu went on to
speak on the need for patience from the Israeli people during the
operation.
This last point struck me as fair comment because the facts of the
situation dictate that this is going to be a war of attrition. That is
to say that Israel's success or failure will come from their ability to
wear down Hamas capacity to fight by destroying their stores of weapons
and killing their fighters. Unlike the tunnel threat which has been
completed and required boots on the ground in Gaza this next phase of
the operation may not require another ground operation and with now only
the hard targets located in the heavily populated areas of Gaza left a
ground operation carries with it increased risks of both civilian
casualties but also Israeli military casualties.
The problem is that the Israeli public seem to be getting extremely
frustrated at the length of time that this war has gone on for and that
is increasing the pressure on Netanyahu. For example the reaction to the
announcement that Netanyahu was going to speak that I got from everyday
Israelis was deeply sarcastic and even the leader of the normally quite
moderate opposition Labor Party came out to publicly accuse Netanyahu
of being more worried about maintaining his governing coalition then
protecting Israeli civilians. This strikes me as a very worrying
development not just for Israeli politics but also more seriously for
the Palestinians.
Netanyahu's big achievement has been keeping the conflict between Israel
and Palestine at such a low level that many Israelis have been able to
almost forget that it has been going on. As a result the Israeli economy
has grown steadily under Netanyahu and much has that growth has been
driven by dynamic start-up businesses in the hi-tech sector. With many
young Israelis now able to live fulfilling lives on the back of this
economic growth they have become less and less interested in religious
and political causes that demand the increasing expansion of Israel and
the subjugation of the Palestinians. This was reflected by the strong
showing of the Yesh Atid Party who unusually for an Israeli political
party don't really have a policy towards the Palestinians.
As a result more Israelis then ever before are happy to support both a
two state solution and a peace process providing neither really affects
how their go about their everyday lives. By launching this long war of
attrition Hamas has once again forced the conflict to the centre of
every Israelis minds and a lot of the old attitudes are once again
coming to the fore. So if this war causes the Netanyahu government to
fall or even changes the attitudes of a significant number of Israelis I
am worried that the best ever chance of peace between Israel and
Palestine could be lost for a generation or even longer.
Another development that I found interesting is that yesterday evening
Hamas warned international airlines to avoid Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion
airport from 03:00 (06:00 local) today presumably because they were
going to start shooting rockets at it. This seems to have been an
attempt to force a repeat of the shortlived international ban on flights
to Israel that we saw early on in the conflict. Although I think this
began as an attempt to put internal pressure on US President Obama it
was largely received by the Israelis as a form of sanction and therefore
a sort of victory for Hamas. This time though not a single airline or
airline regulator responded to Hamas' threat and in the end I don't
think Hamas even bothered attacking the airport. This really highlighted
to me that Hamas really don't seem to have realised that in the last
two to three weeks international support has very much shifted away from
them and back towards Israel.
The first reason for this has been the way that Hamas has conducted
itself during the cease-fire negotiations. By rejecting a series of very
reasonable offers that have been tabled by both Israel and Egypt in
favour of firing more rockets and in the process breaking cease-fires
Hamas have revealed themselves to be very much the aggressors in this
situation. This obviously makes it very hard for people who have no real
bias in the situation to be sympathetic to Hamas and the problems it
has succeeded in bringing upon itself.
The other big factor has of course been the situation with the Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq. Although the Hamas I am
used to is nowhere near as bad as ISIL its current military wing does
seem to have rather been swept up in ISIL's delusional propaganda. With
ISIL's true methods and objectives being laid bare for the World to see
international opinions have very much hardened against them with even
previously staunch supporters such as the UK calling for military action
to destroy them. As a result the Gulf States such as Qatar that back
ISIL and also back Hamas are now very much out in the cold
internationally. So while Obama might look to increase the pressure on
Israel as a way to apologise for taking extremely limited military
action against ISIL it seems that nobody else in the international
community is in any mood to do Qatar or Hamas any further favours.
(Originally Posted) 16:55 on 21/8/14 (UK date).
No comments:
Post a Comment