The conflict continues to escalate, with Israel launching a ground offensive and warning tens of thousands of northern Gazans to flee in advance of a major assault:
An estimated quarter of the 70,000 residents of the town of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza fled their homes early Sunday after Israel dropped fliers and made phone calls warning residents of upcoming attacks. The United Nations reported 17,000 Palestinians have registered in shelters. The warnings came after Israeli special forces briefly raided Gaza to destroy a suspected long-range rocket launch site. Meanwhile, rockets were fired from Syria and Lebanon into northern Israel. The rocket attack from Lebanon was the third such incident since Friday. No one has claimed responsibility for the rocket fire Monday morning, and no injuries were reported.
The death toll in Gaza, according to Hamas officials, stands at 172, with over 1,100 injured. Gregg Carlstrom believes the Israelis when they say they are out to destroy Hamas for good:
The Palestinian militant group is, in the estimation of Israeli officials, weaker than it has been in memory, and Israel senses the best opportunity it has had in a long time to permanently degrade or even eliminate Hamas as a political factor.
It’s not just that the Israelis are pounding Hamas from the air and rounding up senior Hamas officials; with help from their de facto ally across the border—Egyptian general-cum-dictator-cum-president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi—they have managed to keep Hamas’ supply tunnels to Gaza virtually shut down. Analysts estimate that the roughly $20 million per month that Hamas collected in tax revenues from the tunnels has been reduced almost to zero.
Based on their public statements, it’s clear that at least some Israeli hawks would like to do to Hamas what Sisi has done to the Muslim Brotherhood group from which Hamas once sprung: batter it into submission. Officials in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet have gone further, talking openly of a campaign to eradicate the group. Even Hamas officials admit they are worried. “I would say that, yes, the situation is not ideal,” Osama Hamdan, the head of Hamas’ foreign relations bureau, told me. “It’s certainly not as it was a few years ago.”
But as Juan Cole is quick to point out, it won’t work:
With leaders killed and rockets depleted, the Israeli hard liners probably believe, Hamas may be fatally weakened. At the very least, it will be less able to resist future episodes of lawn mowing in Gaza. The theory behind this campaign, however, is incorrect. Hamas is perfectly capable of building more rockets, even if they are smaller and have less range than the imported ones. And killed leaders can be replaced by their cousins.
Natan Sachs, however, doubts Israel actually wants to eradicate Hamas:
Even if Israel were to enter Gaza with ground forces, it’s unlikely to try and topple the Hamas regime, for fear of the immense cost of such an operation to the local population and to Israeli troops. Instead, Israel prefers a weakened, deterred, but effective Hamas. With the tunnels from Sinai now closed, a hit to the Hamas stockpile stands some chance of lasting longer than previous attempts, since it would be harder for Islamists to replace the lost weaponry.
But even if its weaponry were degraded, Hamas’s motivation to prove “resistance” to Israel will remain. Most acutely, this round of violence has the potential to reinforce the unrest — which had subsided — in the West Bank and in Jerusalem. A full blown Intifada, possibly coupled with attacks from Lebanon or elsewhere, could make this round of violence seem tame by comparison.
Previous Dish on the crisis in Israel and Palestine here, here, and here.
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