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Hamas must understand where this is heading:

Anger boiled over in Sderot on Saturday night as residents took to the streets, demanding that the government take stronger steps against the rocket fire from Gaza following a Kassam strike that shattered one local family’s Shabbat.

Two brothers from Sderot, aged eight and 19, were seriously wounded and two other members of their family were also hospitalized when a rocket fired from northern Gaza – one of almost four dozen launched this weekend – struck two meters from where the boys were standing. — Jerusalem Post

It is becoming politically impossible for the Israeli government to not take effective steps to stop this. As I wrote yesterday, such action will have to be to totally crush Hamas. If the decision hasn’t been taken already, sooner or later it will be.

Hamas knows this. So the fact that they are continuing, even stepping up, the provocations means that they must want to engage in full-scale warfare as soon as possible.

I’m sure that they have what they believe to be surprises up their sleeve. The IDF should have contingency plans for everything imaginable, including the participation of Hezbollah or even intervention by Syria.

In my assessment, the enemy is seriously underestimating the IDF. Their thinking is based on the 2006 war but there is no doubt in my mind that the IDF has learned its lessons. There is also a real Minister of Defense this time.

I don’t think this will be easy, not for the IDF, not for Israeli or Palestinian civilians. But I know what the outcome will be.

Like everyone with family or friends in Israel (or among the Palestinians, I’m sure) I feel a degree of anxiety. It’s unfortunate that there’s no alternative.

Possibly afterwards the Palestinians will develop a leadership that understands that they will not, ever, succeed in their goal to destroy Israel. Maybe after a lot of blood flows, they will finally understand that it’s more important for them to help themselves than to hurt Jews. Maybe.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Israeli-Arab conflict

As I have written time and again, there’s no way to talk with Hamas. The very raison d’etre of Hamas is the destruction of Israel and a genocidal program against the Jews therein. Negotiations would only bring Hamas closer to international legitimacy and recognition, one of its major short-term goals, and a cease-fire would only give it breathing space to develop their capabilities for the ultimate conflict.

Recently, concrete missile-launching silos able to hold Qassams and the larger, more dangerous Russian Grad missiles were discovered in Gaza. There will be a war between Israel and Hamas; the question is when, and on whose terms.

Ami Isseroff, certainly not what anyone would call a hawk, has written an incisive analysis of Israel’s options. He writes,

Hamas is a threat at many levels, not just to Israel, but to the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, the American sponsored peace process and Arab world moderates. Hamas is a strategic threat to Israel. For any such threat, one has to decide whether to contain it and last it out, as the US did with the USSR, or to confront it decisively and eliminate it, as was done with Nazi Germany. If the latter decision is made, the only acceptable “agreement” is unconditional surrender, and the only open option is total war. Hamas will not listen to “persuasion” and half-measures will only make it stronger. [my emphasis]

Isseroff also points out, however, that a unilateral attack by Israel could end in disaster without at least tacit international support:

In order to carry out such an operation, IDF needs time. It cannot be interrupted by UN [or US — ed.] imposed cease fires that leave the other side in a position to recover. It must not be forced to leave Gaza before the Hamas movement is eradicated in the same way that the National Socialist Workers Party was destroyed in Germany after World War II. That is why the international position must be well prepared before any action is taken.

So it’s clear that Israel should begin now both to prepare the IDF for the coming conflict and to lay the diplomatic groundwork for it.

Egypt and possibly other conservative Arab governments view the Muslim Brotherhood-allied Hamas as a threat. And possibly the West is finally beginning to understand that radical Islam really does endanger our idea of civilization. So maybe there is a possibility that the diplomatic part of the struggle will succeed.

I’ll add that it’s also necessary for the public relations arms of the government to be prepared and to have the appropriate resources allocated to deal with the flood of misinformation, fake atrocity stories, invented ‘massacres’ and ‘humanitarian crises’ that will come from Hamas and friends during the war. Israel lost this part of the battle badly in Lebanon in 2006 and this must not be permitted to happen again. There are people that understand the concept of information warfare on our side, too. They must be used.

Of course, the management of an integrated diplomatic, information, and military offensive will require a competent and dedicated government. In addition, it must be able to pursue a very difficult course without being derailed by domestic political opposition. Israel does not have such a government today.

There is also the need for full support from the US, by no means a given these days.

Finally, the question of what to do with Gaza once Hamas has been crushed isn’t simple. The last thing Israel needs is to be responsible for another 1.4 million hostile Arabs.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Gaza

Remember how the Palestinians of Gaza burst out of their ‘prison’ and participated in an orgy of shopping in Northern Sinai?

Gazans return home from Egypt with purchases

Some people wondered how they could afford the appliances, furniture, motorcycles, etc. that they carried and dragged back to the Strip. After all, wasn’t the Gaza ‘economy’ a shambles?

Well, now we know.

About $1 million in counterfeit bills, apparently originating in the Gaza Strip, were seized in the Sinai Peninsula in the past few days, Egyptian security sources told Palestinian news agency Ma’an on Thursday.

According to the sources, hundreds of counterfeit bills, which are being used by merchants amongst themselves or in their dealings with the Egyptian banks, are being discovered every day.

The Egyptian security sources estimated that additional forged banknotes would be discovered in the near future in light of the fact that Egyptian residents – mainly in the el-Arish, Rafah and Sheikh Zweid areas – are expected to use the money they received from Gaza residents in exchange for the various goods they sold them. — YNet

The Egyptians are not amused.

“Anyone who breaches the border will have their legs broken,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit was quoted as saying by the official MENA news agency on public television overnight. — AFP 

But Hamas is upbeat as always:

Less than a week ago, the London-based Arabic-language newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat reported that Hamas was seriously contemplating severing the Gaza Strip’s economic ties with Israel, quoting a senior advisor to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

The advisor, Ahmed Yousef, was asked whether Hamas was also considering abandoning the use of Israeli currency in the Strip. Yousef indicated that this “might be possible in the future. Residents of Gaza can always trade in American Dollars, Jordanian Dinars or Egyptian Pounds at a later point.” — YNet

I just bet they can.

Technorati Tags: Gaza, Egypt, Israel, Hamas

Same old stuff, different day:

[Today] two young children, aged twelve and two, were lightly wounded when a Kassam rocket landed near a playground in Kibbutz Be’eri, in the western Negev.

The two kids, who were playing outside their home, were evacuated to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba suffering from shrapnel wounds. Their mother was sent into shock as a result of the attack.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the rocket fire. — Jerusalem Post

Numerous other rockets struck Sderot, damaging a house. Now here is what Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said:

“Rockets are entirely pointless and must be stopped,” Abbas said in a meeting with Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik.

However, he added that “Israel must not use the launchings as an excuse to collectively punish an entire population and must always allow entry of humanitarian [aid] into the Strip.” — Jerusalem Post

Leaving aside the fact that Israel does allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, it’s time to talk about ‘collective punishment’.

War is always uncomfortable for civilians on both sides. Random rockets hitting playgrounds are uncomfortable. It was uncomfortable for the Jewish residents of Jerusalem in 1948, when Jerusalem was blockaded (and they were getting shot at as well as starved out).

The fact is that Hamas is waging war against Israel. Hamas, leading the legitimately elected government of the Palestinian people — more legitimate than the Fatah rump government in the West Bank — is not hiding its intention to make war, nor of its goal to ultimately destroy the Jewish state. The great majority of the population, whether it supports Fatah or Hamas, supports violent ‘resistance’ against Israel.

As always, the world insists that Israel must behave according to some kind of unattainable standard to which no other nation has ever been held. “Yes, you have the right to defend yourselves. But don’t hurt (or even annoy) anybody doing it.” So Israel is asked to provide electricity for the rocket factories in wartime and to guarantee that when it fires a missile against enemy troops — who do their best to stay close to civilians — that only the soldiers are hit.

The contrast between Israel and her enemies, who make an effort to target civilians, is stark.

It’s a poor argument to compare Israel to the French in Algeria, the RAF and AAF over Germany, the Nazis in Russia or the Russians in Berlin. The ‘siege’ of Gaza is not a siege like the Siege of Leningrad in which a million and a half civilians died of starvation and disease. Israel does allow passage of food and medical supplies, and does supply electricity, despite Hamas’ theatrics to prove otherwise. Nobody is starving.

There’s no doubt that war is undesirable, or that nations should solve their problems with diplomacy. Gratuitous brutality is wrong, even in war. But it is not reasonable to expect a nation that is under attack to provide supplies to its attacker. It is reasonable for a people to do whatever is necessary to defend themselves when they are under attack. And it is reasonable for such a nation to ignore the voices telling them to surrender because self-defense may be uncomfortable for the enemy population.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas

What can we learn about the conflict from yesterday’s terrorist bombing? For one thing, that the West’s perception of it is far enough removed from reality to be called…

Uniquely Bizarre

By Barry Rubin

The Arab-Israeli conflict definitely holds the record for the most bizarrely treated issue in modern history. It is easy to forget just how strange this situation is and the extent to which it is understood and handled so totally different from other, more rationally, perceived problems.

Let’s take a very simple example and examine the surrealistic, bizarre way in which normally sensible people and institutions respond.

On February 4, 2008, two terrorists attacked the quiet town of Dimona in southern Israel. One blew himself up near a toy store in a marketplace, killing an elderly woman and wounding forty people. The other was injured in the first blast and, before he could detonate his own bomb, was killed by a policeman.

At first, some Fatah officials claimed that one of the men was theirs, from that group’s al-Aqsa Brigades; the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said the second belonged to them. Such are the bare facts. But from here it gets far stranger.

Apparently, Fatah and the PFLP did dispatch a two-man terrorist team, but they were apparently caught before crossing into Israel. At the exact same time, Hamas sent another duo, and they succeeded in reaching Dimona.

Thus, through no fault of their own, Fatah and the PFLP did not actually commit the attack. But they tried and would have preferred to have carried out the terrorist assault. From here, a number of conclusions should be obvious:

1. The nature of Fatah. Why is Fatah, the organization routinely described as moderate by Western governments and media, involved in constant terrorism attempts–and sometimes successes–against Israel?

The al-Aqsa Brigades are an integral part of Fatah. The Brigades’ founder and leader is Marwan Barghouti who has been head of Fatah on the West Bank. Many of the Brigades’ gunmen are on the Fatah payroll in various ways, often as members of security forces which are supposed to prevent…terrorism.

Of course, the leader of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and in effect Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas “condemned” the attack. That is, he said he didn’t like it. But no member of Fatah has ever been expelled from the organization or fired from the security forces for involvement in terrorism. The PA’s media regularly broadcasts incitement to commit terrorism. It does not transmit television, radio, and newspaper demands on its members not to attack Israeli civilians.

So is Fatah a terrorist organization?

Well, apparently not. Granted, Abbas personally would prefer these attacks not occur. In the Fatah spectrum he is at the moderate end. Nevertheless, he presides over a group that is terrorist and which regards itself as fighting a war against Israel whose main tactic is deliberately murdering civilians. It uses its funds for this purpose and encourages such behavior through program and propaganda.

A Reuters dispatch about the attack, when it was thought to be perpetrated by Fatah, said it was a challenge for Abbas to control “rebels within his own Fatah faction.” The point, however, is that they aren’t rebels at all but rather members in good standing who probably have more support in Fatah than does Abbas himself.

2. International policy toward Fatah. Therefore, if Fatah, and the PA, should not be shunned at least they should be subjected to serious international pressure, right? If only for their own good since presumably the world believes that they are better off if they abandon terrorism? Again, apparently not.

Fatah is the group which is being given well about $7 billion by international donors. And there are no strings attached to that aid: no measure of whether Fatah uses or advocates terrorism whatsoever. It gets the money no matter what it does. There are good reasons for the West to work with, and even aid, the PA and Fatah but there are no good reasons for that support and aid to be unconditional.

3. Motive. Fatah officials said the reason for the attack was to protest Israeli “aggression” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. To begin with, of course, Israel is merely responding to rocket and mortar attacks on its territory. If these were to cease, Israel would never attack the Gaza Strip and continue to supply it–directly and indirectly–with its electricity. But if Israel were never to attack the Gaza Strip, the Hamas regime and its junior partners in the Gaza Strip would continue to attack Israel. By definition, then, they are the ones who are aggressive.

Incidentally, there are no sanctions whatsoever against the West Bank, which Fatah rules. Thus, Fatah is at war with Israel while Israel, despite periodic raids against individuals directly involved in terrorism, treats Fatah as a partner and urges countries to give it financial aid.

But there’s more. Fatah is essentially coming to the aid of a Hamas regime which threw it out of Gaza, killed Fatah members, sometimes in cold blood, and represses its own people. Why? Because Fatah and the PA are competing for Palestinian popular support in the Gaza Strip and the way that one does this is to murder Israeli civilians. This is a very telling definition of Palestinian politics, ideology, and public opinion.

4. PA/Fatah attitude towards terrorism. The other terrorist killed was initially claimed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a radical Arab nationalist group, which also tried to kill Israeli civilians on that day. Recently, the founder and long-time head of the PFLP, George Habash, died. Habash was a veteran terrorist who practically invented airplane hijacking and international terrorism. Habash was lauded by the PA and Fatah at his funeral as a great hero of the movement.

Riyad al-Malki, the PA’s Minister of Information and Foreign Affairs of the “moderate” PA is a PFLP member and ran the organization on the West Bank for many years. So when Western politicians and diplomats deal with the “moderate” PA they are talking directly to a man who played a leading role in a terrorist group which continues to make–and proudly claim responsibility for–terrorist attacks.

Arab members of Israel’s parliament went to the funeral and joined in the accolades for a terrorist whose group continues to murder their fellow citizens.

5. Israeli attitude toward Arabs. When the second terrorist fell as a result of the first explosion, Israeli medical personnel did not hesitate from rushing to help a man they thought was an Arab victim of the attack. Then the nurse saw the explosives belt and realized the man she was trying to save was about to murder her. She had to run for her life, pulling along another wounded person, and yell for help from the police.

To summarize: Fatah acts as a terrorist group; the PA facilitates terrorism and includes people leading terrorist groups; Fatah views itself as an ally of a group that attacks it and murders its own members; the West aids Fatah and the PA with no attempt to discourage their behavior; Israeli Arab politicians side with terrorism; and Israelis, at the risk of their lives, try to save Arab lives, and would like to have a two-state solution if the other side is ever able to make and implement such a deal.

Oh, yes, and guess who much of the world blames for the conflict. As I said, uniquely bizarre.

. . .

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA). His latest books are The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan) and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).

Technorati Tags: Israel, Fatah, terrorism, Dimona