vimothy

yurp
From The Independent, 18th June 2008:

Israel officially confirmed today that a ceasefire with Hamas militants will begin this week in an effort to end a year of fighting that has killed more than 400 Palestinians and seven Israelis.

The truce is due to begin tomorrow morning and would be followed next week by an Israeli easing of its blockade of Gaza.

"Thursday will be the beginning we hope of a new reality where Israeli citizens in the south will no longer be on the receiving end of continuous rocket attacks," an Israeli government spokesman said. "Israel is giving a serious chance to this Egyptian initiative and we want it to succeed."

As part of the deal Egypt has promised to stop the smuggling of arms and weapons from its territory into Gaza.

If Israel agrees the Egyptian efforts are serious, Hamas, Egypt and European officials will begin talks on opening Gaza's main gateway, the Rafah crossing into Egypt.

A Hamas spokesman said: "We in Hamas are committed to what we have declared."

The group, which has tight control of power in Gaza, has said all the area's militant groups would abide by the truce.

The Israeli envoy to the talks, Amos Gilad, said that Israel would hold Hamas responsible for any attacks from Gaza.

"This is not a peace agreement ... A calm means that there is no type of terror, there is no difference if it comes from 'a' or 'b,"' he said. "It's clear that if there won't be attacks on us, the army activity will be in accordance."

Wiki page listing rocket attacks from Gaza, 2008: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rocket_and_mortar_attacks_in_Israel_in_2008

Wiki page listing rocket attacks from Gaza, pre-2008: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Qassam_rocket_attacks

Graph of rocket attacks from Gaza, 2001-2007:
400px-Qasam_graph2002-2007.svg.png


The wider context is the thousands of rockets fired into Israel since its unilateral withdrawal in 2006. A deal was agreed but Hamas did not stick to their side of the bargain, i.e. stopping the flow of rockets.

You don't seem to recognise this at all when you say,

Nonetheless, there was a recent ceasefire, and the ceasefire was egregiously breached, and then unilaterally ended by Israel when they attacked Gaza on November 4th sparking a response form Hamas and other groups. Thus repeating a pattern which is almost as old as the conflict itself. Israel has repeatedly and flagrantly breached ceasfires, truces, treaties and agreements over the last 40 years.

All of which may or may not be the case (ha!), but certainly here Israel closed the borders in response to continued rocket attacks that have (almost eight years after the first attacks) united Israeli society. And so for Hamas, either Gaza is their problem and they broke the ceasefire, or it is not their problem and they cannot claim a single counterterror operation as deus ex machina.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Is now a pertinent time to bring up Israel's sponsoring and support of Hamas after it's formation as a response to the PLO's peace offensive?

Is there any evidence for this? I've read it a thousand times and never once seen any.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
The position of Hezbollah is pretty interesting. They couldn't possibly allow Hamas to be completely crushed. So if Israel does try to destroy them, Nasrallah will surely have to open a second front.
 

vimothy

yurp
You think so? I'm not convinced -- Nasrallah is bloviating as much as any arab leader, but surely doesn't want to fight Hamas's war for it. The political situation in Lebanon is so tenuous and the response in 2006 was so devastating, I suspect Hezbollah will sit and watch. The IAF is pretty much free now to attack Hezbollah and/or Lebanon, should it need to, and Nasrallah must be well aware of that. Looks like Israel does retain a deterrent capacity after all.
 

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
Israel is like a child who responds to incessant pinching by taking out a magnum, and blowing off the head of its antagonist.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Israel is like a child who responds to incessant pinching by taking out a magnum, and blowing off the head of its antagonist.

Wow, do you know many children who do that?:slanted:

Thought Freedland was talking a fair amount of sense this morning.
But there is a massive risk here. Such a victory will not just achieve Cast Lead's original stated aim, namely altering Hamas's calculus - reducing its incentive to fire rockets at civilian targets inside Israel - but could topple the Hamas government altogether.

Israeli officials deny that regime change in Gaza is either likely to happen or the goal of their mission. But that may end up being the result: intelligence reports suggest the organisation has been eviscerated, its ability to govern all but destroyed.

Israeli leaders will crow at that; their poll numbers will surge. But it will surely prove a pyrrhic victory. For what would be the consequences of crippling the Hamas administration in Gaza? Israel would be confronted with a sharp dilemma. Either it would have to stay, resuming the occupation it sought to end in 2005 - a notion with zero popular appeal in Israel. Or it would have to withdraw, leaving behind a huge and dangerous question mark.

For Gaza could become a vacuum, rapidly descending into Somalia, a lawless badland of warlords and clans. A new force could seek to replace Hamas. Most likely it would be even more radical: al-Qaida has long been pushing at the edges of Gaza, eager to find a way in.

Would either of those options appeal to Israel? Of course they wouldn't. As one Israeli commentator put it yesterday: "In this context the IDF is afraid of being too successful."

Israel's preferred scenario, having pushed Hamas out of the way, is for the pro-western moderates of Fatah to take over. But Fatah knows that to return to Gaza on the back of an Israeli tank is the kiss of death: they would for ever be branded collaborators with the enemy.

Israel may try to dump responsibility for Gaza on a coalition of moderate Arab states and others, including the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. But would any of them be willing to take it on? Analyst Ahmad Khalidi notes that the "amount of aid, reconstruction and psychological nursing is of such intensity" that surely no one would step in. Israel may be left recalling what Colin Powell once called the Pottery Barn rule: "You break it, you own it".

And from the rubble of Gaza, the attacks on Israel will surely resume. Hamas is too deeply rooted to disappear. New cells will arise, more filled with hatred and bent on revenge than ever. Already there are warnings of a return to suicide bombing, inside Israel and beyond. And, warns Khalidi, there would be no Hamas leadership - with undeniable discipline over its forces and the pragmatism to see the benefits of a ceasefire - to rein in these new, angry fighters. The great irony is that Israel may well decapitate Hamas - only to regret the passing of a Palestinian administration with sufficient stature to bring order.

Perhaps Israel's leadership will see this danger and hold back, pushing for a ceasefire that would be robust and externally supervised but would ultimately, if indirectly, amount to a deal with Hamas. If that is the outcome, it will be a strange kind of victory. For Israel could have got that through diplomacy, without causing the death, mayhem and damage to its international reputation now unfolding before our eyes. If it goes further, it will have removed one danger - only to have replaced it with one far greater.
 

vimothy

yurp
Thanks for the Freedland article. Totally OTM, alas. Recreating Somalia in the Gaza Strip seems to be where this is headed.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
That's exactly it, Vim: Nasrallah is desperate not to get involved. But if it gets to the point where Hamas are going to be eliminated he may have no choice.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Although Hezbollah is noted for its discipline, there are different ideological currents within the organization, and some members may be calling for action, Mr. Goksel said. Those voices would surely grow louder if Hamas appeared to be on the verge of being crushed or eliminated.

“If Hamas is really losing, it becomes crucial for Hezbollah to intervene,” said Ms. Saad-Ghorayeb, the author. “This isn’t just a war with Hamas; it’s a war against the whole resistance front,” meaning Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas.
 

vimothy

yurp
Yeah, I posted that Robert Worth piece upthread. And Amal Saad-Ghorayeb obviously knows her stuff. But Hamas are losing the war, and badly -- Hezbollah better move quick...

But that said, I don't know that it's obvious that Israel are trying to off Hamas for good. In fact, I don't think Israel know exactly what they're doing, only that it's going a lot better than last time.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Opportunity for PM to grow a pair over this nightmare: Brown urged to 'condemn' Israel

So what sort of response has there been to this internationally? Are the Israelis perhaps trying to get away with as much as possible while Bush is still in charge? Maybe not, Obama isn't exactly a died-in-the-wool anti-Zionist, is he...
 
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jambo

slip inside my schlafsack
The energy issue?

Estimated at 100 billion cubic meters of proven reserves, these discoveries potentially offer enough gas to meet Israel's goal of supplying 25% of its energy needs for more than 20 years - even without further imports [3]. The discovery has also raised realistic expectations of locating oil deposits beneath the gas fields.

Unfortunately for Israel, 60% of these reserves are in waters controlled by the Palestinian Authority, which has signed a 25-year contract with British Gas for further exploration in the area. Since this discovery, Israel has proceeded with the development of its reserves with the US-Israeli company Yam Tethys, but has been faced with an obvious dilemma over the Palestinian deposits [4]. Keen to secure the gas for its domestic market but unwilling to submit its sensitive energy supplies (and their profits) into the hands of the Palestinians, Israel has for the past 6 years pursued a policy of non-commitment, stalling and obstruction.​

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4909.shtml

Article from July '06.
 
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