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Technorati Tags: Hamas

It seems to me that Israel brought the war to a conclusion prematurely. But here we are. So what are the next steps? 

Living next-door to a serial killer

By Barry Rubin

Israel has won a huge military victory in a defensive war against the radical Islamist Hamas group which rules the Gaza Strip.

So what does Israel want? Its first choice would be a moderate movement running the Gaza Strip which would negotiate a deal for a Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel, resettling refugees there, and being a prosperous, stable state. All Israel desires is that such a country wouldn’t attack it with rockets, war, terrorism, or inciting such terrible hatred as to ensure future wars.

Hamas, however, is too extreme to make peace; its rival, the Palestinian Authority (PA) which rules the West Bank, is too weak and indecisive to do so.

Having Hamas as a neighbor is like living next door to a serial killer, who abuses his children and threatens to kill them if you go in after him. You can defend yourself but if the police won’t arrest him the only choices left are to build a wall around him, stop him from getting weapons, and sending in food.

This is Israel’s dilemma. The world demands peace but isn’t prepared to do too much to help. The West’s basic stand is to keep Hamas ruling Gaza, comparable to ensuring continued Taliban rule in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks. Thanks to such international “support” Gaza’s people will be able to “enjoy” a dictatorial regime dedicated to spending the next century fighting — and losing — wars.

Remember, that the Hamas regime was not elected as such. Yes, it won an election but then seized total power by a bloody coup against the PA. Now, it imposes a radical Islamist regime on its unfortunate subjects. Hamas has no policy for creating jobs or raising living standards. Its educational system doesn’t teach useful skills or civic virtues but indoctrinates children with the ambition to become suicide bombers.

So the world should consider. Is this the kind of regime you want to save and succor? Do you want to keep Hamas in power when even most Arab states would like to see it fall? Why talk about a peace process while following a policy ensuring no peace process can succeed.

Understand that Hamas believes the deity insists on its victory. It doesn’t matter how long it takes or how many die. Its educational policy isn’t aimed at training productive citizens but rather future suicide bombers,

Well, it looks like the West is going to make that mistake, the PA itself isn’t going to help provide an alternative government, and Israel can’t solve this problem by itself.

So the next best thing is a ceasefire that works for a while. What is the basis for such a plan, which recognizes the fact that Israel won the war and that Hamas wants to restart it again?

First, Hamas must perceive itself beaten no matter what it says publicly. This doesn’t mean it will give up but does mean it will be slower to launch attacks in future.

Second, Palestinians must perceive that Hamas was beaten so that they follow a more productive path of moderation and diplomacy.

Third, the Arabic-speaking world — or as much of it as possible — must perceive Hamas is beaten so that Arab states are encouraged in their battle against radical Islamism, Iran, and Syria, while the flow of recruits to extremist movements decline.

Fourth, Hamas must perceive itself as isolated. If it knows that cross-border terror attacks, firing rockets at Israeli civilians, and cynically using its own people as human shields brings international sympathy and political profits these tactics will be used again by them, and be imitated by others elsewhere.

All of these are realizable goals. The West can help by giving Hamas no recognition, no support, and no help. A terrorist, genocidal movement which oppresses its own people and uses them as human shields should not be rewarded. That should be obvious.

What about the actual terms? Among the key provisions are these:

• A seriously effective regime of inspection and blocking smuggling must be put into place on the Egypt-Gaza border. This means Egyptian forces helped by a force which will really act to block tunnels and stop arms from coming in, not just sit and watch the contraband go by. If more weapons get in, that will bring another war.

• Israel has the right to maintain sanctions, which means that while humanitarian and necessary goods for Gaza’s society it can keep out items that have military applications.

• Aid money to rebuild in Gaza and sustain Palestinian society must be kept out of Hamas’s hands. Not only would Hamas use such funds for military purposes, it would also steal them from being used for real relief. For example, Hamas cries there is not enough fuel but that is because it diverts gasoline from civilian purposes for its own use.

• Gilad Shalit, a hostage seized by Hamas in a cross-border raid into Israel, should be released unconditionally. It is bad enough to reward terrorists for their crimes; it is ridiculous to do so after they have been thoroughly defeated after launching an aggressive war.

Finally, we should remember the aims of the two sides. Israel’s goal is very modest: security for its citizens, no cross-border attacks. Hamas’s goal is the destruction of Israel, wiping out its citizens, revolution throughout the Middle East, treating women as chattel, and the creation of what it considers to be Allah’s government on earth.

Knowing that, you can decide which side to support.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA and other GLORIA Center publications or to order books, visit http://www.gloriacenter.org.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Gaza war

The latest action by the cabal of British anti-Zionist academics almost strikes me dumb. It’s impossible to find words that adequately express my disgust at the expression of support for the completely barbarous Hamas from intellectuals in a supposedly civilized country (although history shows that ‘civilization’ can be a thin veneer indeed).

They wrote, in part,

The massacres in Gaza are the latest phase of a war that Israel has been waging against the people of Palestine for more than 60 years. The goal of this war has never changed: to use overwhelming military power to eradicate the Palestinians as a political force, one capable of resisting Israel’s ongoing appropriation of their land and resources…

Israel must lose. It is not enough to call for another ceasefire, or more humanitarian assistance. It is not enough to urge the renewal of dialogue and to acknowledge the concerns and suffering of both sides. If we believe in the principle of democratic self-determination, if we affirm the right to resist military aggression and colonial occupation, then we are obliged to take sides… against Israel, and with the people of Gaza and the West Bank.

I am not sure how they plan to take sides with ‘the people of Gaza and the West Bank’, given the nasty Fatah/Hamas split, but I presume that they would be happy with any solution that could be characterized as an Israeli defeat.

Although it’s a dreadful place, we should try to understand where they’re coming from.

Their argument rests on their acceptance of the Palestinian story in which Palestinians are only victims, acted upon first by the dastardly colonialists (including especially the British authorities of the early 20th century) and then by the Jews. But this story leaves a great deal out.

The nakba ['catastrophe' of 1948] is everything in this story, but according to it there is no Palestinian responsibility. The fact that the Palestinian Arabs attacked Jews all through the 1930’s and ’40’s, that the Mufti supported Hitler and tried to bring the Holocaust to the Middle East, that the Palestinians rejected partition in 1947 and fought alongside five invading Arab nations in 1948, in a war which they lost — all these facts are not part of the Palestinian story.

It is correct that a war has been waged for 60 years, but it has been the Arabs — Palestinians and others — both on their own initiative and as proxies, first of the Soviet Union and today of Iran — who have waged the war on Israel.

Not only do the Palestinians and the Arab nations bear the primary responsibility for the nakba, but they bear the primary responsibility for the condition of the refugees and the lack of a Palestinian state today. The Arab nations never permitted any solution to the refugee problem other than ‘return’ of an absurd number of hostile Arabs claiming refugee status to Israel, and UNRWA kept them fed and subsidized their reproduction so that today there are almost 5 million ‘refugees’.

The choice of Yasser Arafat as a leader and terrorism as a tactic put great obstacles in the way of statehood. Arafat dealt dishonestly with the Oslo process, funding and encouraging terrorism, all the while inciting Jew-hatred in all Palestinian Authority institutions. Then he rejected the Clinton-Barak offer in 2000, lied about what had actually been offered, and began the murderous enterprise of the second Intifada.

And of course those who voted for Hamas in 2006 knew what the Hamas program was. Unfortunately the ‘educational’ system and media set up by the Original Terrorist seems to have guaranteed that the faction perceived to be most capable of kicking the Jews out will always be the one that wins.

The British intellectuals see none of this. They simply take Palestinian claims at face value. Everything is Israel’s fault, especially the present war. The believe all atrocity stories about the IDF, no matter how far-fetched or how biased the source. They apparently miss the fact that Hamas is is a movement that deliberately sites itself in civilian populations, cripples or murders members of its its political opposition, is explicitly racist, antisemitic, anti-Christian and genocidal in intent. They ignore the fact that Hamas is doing Iran’s work: Ahmadinejad himself has said that Israel will be destroyed by Palestinians, and has supplied Hamas with an ever-growing variety of weapons to fight Israel with.

They are so consumed with hatred for Israel that they don’t seem to realize that by supporting Hamas, they are supporting a return to a society based on 7th century principles for Palestinians, as well. But of course this never was about Palestinians.

The academics would probably say that they are not opposed to the existence of Israel (or maybe by now they wouldn’t say this) but only to the ‘occupation’. Gaza, according to them, is occupied even when there are no Israelis in it because Israel must take security measures to protect herself from the wave of terrorism that would otherwise emanate from there.

“Ending the occupation” for them means facilitating Hamas states in Gaza and the West Bank with no restrictions on what comes in or goes out. Look what Hezbollah has accomplished under similar circumstances in Lebanon — tens of thousands of missiles capable of striking anywhere in Israel. Indeed, look what Hamas ‘accomplished’ in Gaza alone, and they had to depend on tunnels to get their explosives.

The tone of the message is that the British intellectuals — some of whom are Jewish or even Israeli, like renegade Israeli academic Ilan Pappé — are sick and tired of Israel. They have come to the end of their patience.

The feeling is mutual.

Technorati Tags: British academics, Israel

Israel has decided to implement a unilateral cease-fire, starting at 2 AM Sunday, Israel time (that’s a few minutes from now). However, troops will stay in Gaza until Palestinian rocket firing stops. And Hamas says that it will not stop until all Israelis are out of Gaza (and other conditions).

Hmm, let’s see: the IDF will stay until the rockets stop, but the rockets won’t stop as long as the IDF is there. Why do I see a problem here?

The problem is that Hamas will not admit that it’s beaten, so it will continue to insist on conditions that it knows Israel can’t meet, such as withdrawal while rockets continue, opening the crossings, trading thousands of prisoners for Gilad Schalit, and so on. Hamas does not yet lack the capability to fight: since the announcement of the cease-fire Saturday night, 8 rockets have fallen in Israel.

I think that what this shows is that the cease-fire is premature. Now international pressure will focus on getting the IDF out of Gaza. It will be “all occupation, all the time” again.

Although Israel has said that it will respond if Hamas violates the cease-fire (that it didn’t agree to), it is much harder politically to restart operations than to continue them. And the restarting will have to happen with the new administration in place in the US.

If Israel thinks the Obama administration will force an end to the fighting, then why not wait until that happens (unless it has already happened)?

If the worry is that wrecking Hamas will produce chaos, maybe Somalia-type warlords, I am not sure this is worse than Hamas.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, cease-fire

The Gaza war will be coming to an end in the next few days, probably as a result of a unilateral Israeli cease-fire. As it appears today, Hamas will be allowed to remain in control of the Gaza strip.

Unless the IDF performs a last-minute miracle — it wouldn’t be the first time — the top leaders of Hamas, who should face punishment for war crimes or even plain old homicide, will not be hit or captured in Gaza and Damascus. And Gilad Schalit will still be in Hamas captivity.

I would like to see Haniyeh and Meshaal in Israeli hands, and given the choice to facilitate Schalit’s release or to become martyrs themselves, as they have so often urged others to do. If Schalit is released, then they can take their chances at trial. I know, I’m dreaming.

Israel and the US have agreed to work together to stop the smuggling of weapons and explosives to Hamas. I really want to be optimistic about this, but all the technology in the world can’t substitute for motivation.

The deal includes measures meant to fight arms smuggling from Iran to Gaza, with the policing to take place throughout the route by which the arms reach Gaza, including patrols of the Persian Gulf, Sudan and neighboring states.

The two-and-a-half page document outlines a framework under which the United States will provide military and intelligence assets, including detection and surveillance equipment, as well as logistical help and training to Israel, Egypt and other nations in the region. The equipment and training would be used for monitoring Gaza’s land and sea borders.

The document also calls for the U.S. to expand work with its NATO partners in the effort, particularly in the Red Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Gulf of Aden, Indian Ocean and eastern Africa, according to a text.

It also commits Washington to use relevant components of the U.S. military to assist Mideast governments in preventing weapons and explosives flows to Gaza that originate in or transit their territories.

I would prefer to see Israel in control of the Philadelphi corridor, at least for a time.

I think Israel’s enemies have a learned that they drew the wrong lessons from the 2006 Lebanon war. Israel can and will fight if necessary.

I just think a bit more of an unequivocal victory, which the IDF really has earned on the battlefield, would leave Israel much better off politically. When the Obama administration comes on stage, there will be immediate pressure to unite the Palestinians in some way. The more that Hamas can be marginalized before that happens, the better.

My guess is that there will not be a total end to rocket fire, unless things change dramatically in the next few days. What’s left of Hamas will claim victory, of course.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Gaza war

During the Gaza war, the UN has been doing its best to provide political cover and support for Hamas. Apparently some UN personnel — either because of sympathy for or fear of Hamas — have provided more than political support:

Gunshots and an anti-tank missile were fired at IDF troops near the UN compound that was attacked by the IDF on Thursday, senior defense officials told The Jerusalem Post.

According to the officials, the IDF responded by firing artillery shells at the location of the gunmen, causing damage to the UN installations. At least three people were wounded in the attack and the building was set on fire…

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who was in Israel on Thursday to promote a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, expressed “strong protest and outrage” at the reported shelling of the UN compound.

Ban also demanded an investigation into the shelling, and said Defense Minister Ehud Barak had told him it was a “grave mistake.” — Jerusalem Post

Either the “senior defense officials” were wrong, or Barak was. If IDF troops were fired on from the UN compound, the IDF is justified in returning fire. I’ll put my money on the “senior defense officials”.

The hypocrisy of the UN, which has consistently favored Hamas and repeated its propaganda, knows no bounds. But after all, the UN is dominated by Arab and third-world nations which have always opposed Israel. For example, the UN Human Rights Commission Monday passed a resolution called “The Grave Violations of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory including the recent aggression in the occupied Gaza Strip” which does not even mention Hamas! (courtesy Eye on the UN)

It’s harder to understand Israeli organizations such as B’Tselem. Yesterday, several Israeli ‘human rights’ groups said that  “heavy suspicion has arisen of grave violations of international humanitarian law by military forces”, and accused Israel of “making wanton use of lethal force”. These charges are untrue and constitute support for Hamas’ PR offensive to cause international pressure to shut down the operation on terms favorable to it.

The IDF has gone to great lengths to refute charges of deliberately targeting civilians, and has also presented convincing demonstrations of techniques, unprecedented in warfare, to reduce civilian casualties (for more, see the IDF Spokesperson Blog). And see Martin Sherman’s illuminating — I should say shocking — comparison of the IDF’s practices with those of NATO in Yugoslavia.

Israel is fighting a war that — unlike the conflict in Yugoslavia — could literally be characterized as a struggle of civilization against barbarism. A Western nation has not confronted such stark evil as Hamas since the Nazis. And as is always the case in all-out war, populations suffer. Israelis have certainly suffered from Hamas’ actions, which killed hundreds of civilians in suicide bombings as well as rocket attacks.

I guarantee that if NATO, the US, Britain, or Russia (!) were fighting Hamas, the strip would long since have been turned into a wasteland, with thousands upon thousands of dead civilians. Israel is judged by another standard.

But that’s OK — the IDF can handle the job of  eradicating this cancer with the minimum possible damage to uninvolved people and infrastructure — which, by the way, is what is meant by ‘proportionality’ in war.

Just give them time to finish the job.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Gaza war, UN, proportionality

News item:

 Hamas has accepted the Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire with Israel, the group said Wednesday evening, after talks in Cairo. The Hamas delegation, who said it made the decision with reservations, was making its way back to Damascus to brief the group’s leaders…

It has been widely reported that a potential truce would initially consist of a slowing down of IDF activities followed by a temporary ceasefire and a halt to troop movement into the Gaza Strip. Agreements with Egypt regarding smuggling into the Strip would then be finalized, including the introduction of US monitors, and, after calm has been reached, a full cease-fire would be established and IDF forces would withdraw from Gaza. Only then would discussions over opening the Gaza crossings begin.

If this is a correct description, it makes no sense for Israel to agree.

Hamas is highly motivated to bring in weapons and transfer personnel through the border. Will the American “monitors” directly confront them? What will happen if Americans are killed? Will the Egyptians have motivation equal to that of Hamas?

If it acts as it has in the past, Hamas will ‘accept’ the cease-fire with reservations unacceptable to Israel, and then act as though these were part of the agreement (for example, the previous cease-fire as agreed to by Israel applied to Gaza only, while Hamas used Israel’s counter-terrorism activities in the West Bank as a pretext for firing rockets). Since it will have an excuse and the means to break the cease-fire, it will do so at its convenience.

If a cease-fire is implemented now, and the Hamas leadership in Gaza (Haniyeh) and Syria (Meshaal) remains in place, then its status as representative of Gaza Palestinians will be enhanced. In the Arab world, it will be seen as having defeated Israel by ‘armed struggle’; in the West, it will be treated as the de facto ruler of almost half the Palestinian people.

This will be the case even though the Hamas regime has not met any of the international criteria for participation in the Palestinian Authority (recognition of Israel’s right to exist, acceptance of prior agreements between Israel and the PA, renunciation of terrorism), and although it took Gaza in an illegal, bloody coup.

Hamas is guilty of war crimes such as deliberately attacking civilian populations, fighting in civilian clothes and even in stolen IDF uniforms, using the population as human shields, stealing humanitarian aid, and — today — firing white phosphorus munitions at human (in this case, civilian) targets.  Despite Hamas claims, Israel has done none of these things.

Hamas is opposed to any peaceful solution between Israel and the Palestinians, and as long as it continues in power, there can be no solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict that leaves the Jewish state in existence (see Jeffrey Goldberg, ” Why Israel Can’t Make Peace With Hamas“, which includes interviews with Hamas leaders).

Anyone — the US, the UN, whoever — who truly desires peace in the region should understand that it will not be obtained as long as Hamas controls Gaza.

Israel has the ability to seal off the border between Gaza and Egypt and prevent the rebuilding of Hamas’ military infrastructure, and the ability to find and eliminate the murderous Hamas leadership, both in Gaza and Syria.

It’s in the interest of every peace-loving being — nations as well as individuals — to allow Israel to finish the job and put an end to the hateful, racist war-mongering Hamas regime.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Gaza

How Israel could lose:

Just do nothing differently for a few days, while the pressure builds for a cease-fire. No imaginable cease-fire agreement can close off the smuggling routes — no international force could, nor could Egypt. Even if Hamas agrees to stop rocket attacks, what can prevent it from starting them up again as soon as supplies are replenished?

An agreement would probably include some ‘humanitarian’ concessions to Hamas. Hamas will exploit them for military purposes, as well as claim that they were obtained by force of arms.

Hamas will have lost perhaps 5% of its manpower and much material. So the cease-fire that will follow — like the one that it broke to cause this war — will give it time to replace what has been lost. Any international presence will protect it in the interim.

How Israel could win:

Cut off the Philadelphi corridor along the Egyptian border and maintain a presence there. It’s the only way to stop the weapons smuggling (if only it were so easy in Lebanon). Some Palestinian civilians will have to move. Worse things have happened.

Send special forces units to al-Shifa hospital or wherever the Hamas leadership has set up its headquarters.They can come in by helicopter. All that’s needed is adequate intelligence about the layout of bunkers, etc. and after all, Israel built the hospital. Eliminate the leaders and destroy the command and control system.

Spend a few more days mopping up weapons depots and lower-level leadership. Then announce that the war is over, and invite Fatah, the UN, the US, NATO, or whoever wants to govern the strip to do so. But maintain full control over the borders and crossings.

In the long term:

Getting rid of UNRWA must be a priority.  UNRWA is no more or less than a branch of the Palestinian movement, funded by the rest of the world, whose function is to produce soldiers to confront Israel (see Gunnar Heinsohn’s perceptive comments here).

Technorati Tags: Israel, Gaza war

Who killed the “peace process”? Not Israel — it was dead long before the Gaza war.

The Peace Process is in Jeopardy? I Wonder Why!
by Barry Rubin

Whatever became of reality, at least in analyzing the Middle East? Consider the following:

With every image of the dead in Gaza inflaming people across the Arab world, Egyptian and Jordanian officials are worried that they see a fundamental tenet of the Middle East peace process slipping away: the so-called two-state solution, an independent Palestinian state coexisting with Israel. — NY Times

So begins an article in the New York Times that explains the peace process is failing and the two-state solution slipping away. It is one more example of an obsessive narrative whose key premise is this: the Palestinians can never be responsible for anything.

Of course, the Arab world’s public reaction to the Gaza war is not pushing it in a more moderate direction. Yet on a governmental level — and compared to past such crises including the 1982 Lebanon war, 2000-2005 Palestinian intifada, and 2006 Israel-Hizballah war — most governments have come as close to being pro-Israel as you are ever going to see them. Privately, they make clear they want Hamas beaten. Publicly, they are far more reserved in their speech and passive in their reactions.

That’s the big story. As for the Arab street, that much-exaggerated phenomenon, since when have governments followed its dictate?

Yet there’s even more to this kind of argument quoted above: the implication that only Israel is responsible for the peace process’s poor prospects and a Palestinian rejection of a two-state solution, and only now is it happening.

(more…)

What did I tell you (“Did Hamas shoot Palestinian truckers?“)?

The IDF was not responsible for the death of a Palestinian aid worker contracted to the UN and the wounding of two others on Thursday, the IDF Spokesman said Saturday.

“An IDF investigation has found that it was not the army who fired on a UN truck at the Erez crossing,” the IDF Spokesman’s Office said. The IDF is not sure who fired on the truck, and is still investigating.

“The army further wishes to point out that the Palestinian wounded were evacuated by the Red Cross to the Israeli border, where they were taken by Israeli medical personnel for treatment at Ashkelon’s Barzilai Hospital,” the IDF told The Jerusalem Post…

The version of events that claimed the IDF had attacked the aid convoy was widely disseminated in the global media, and it was only on Friday afternoon that the IDF posited a different theory...

Foreign press reports [based on UNRWA statements -- ed.] said the dead Palestinian and two others were hit by tank shells. A MDA medic at the scene told the Post that soldiers in the field said Hamas snipers targeted the aid workers. A Post probe revealed that the two wounded Palestinians were being treated at Barzilai for gunshot wounds [not shrapnel from tank shells -- ed.].

Reacting to the IDF’s assertion that it did not fire on the UN convoy last Thursday, UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said the UN “was careful to source its information from eyewitnesses on the ground.”

Gunness added that the UN was keen to “clear the fog of war” and get to the bottom of the incident. — Jerusalem Post (my emphasis)

1. Great job, Jerusalem Post!

2. UNRWA is in no way impartial.

3. I’ve heard Chris Gunness interviewed on NPR. He is vehemently anti-Israel.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, UNRWA, Chris Gunness