Tag: Israel

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Josh Rogin and Eli Lake autopsy John Kerry’s failed Gaza ceasefire proposal:

Two Israeli government officials told The Daily Beast that Israel could not agree to the Kerry draft proposal because it felt it would constrain the Israeli Defense Forces from finishing their mission to destroy the tunnels in Gaza. Yet Kerry’s proposal explicitly did not include a call for the IDF to withdraw from Gaza during the ceasefire. What’s more, U.S. officials told the Israeli government that tunnel work would be able to continue during the ceasefire, as it had during the previous short-term pauses in the fighting.

The Israeli government was not confident the IDF would be able to continue tunnel destruction inside Gaza during the ceasefire. The officials in Jerusalem were not willing to commit to any timeline for completing the tunnel mission because they were still discovering the extent of the tunnel network and thought the mission could take as long as three weeks to complete.

Saletan considers that demand a reasonable one, given the extent of Hamas’ tunnel complex:

One possible compromise might be a cease-fire that forbids further IDF movement in Upper Gaza but allows the IDF to continue demolishing Lower Gaza. No more tunnel hunting on the surface, but you can finish imploding the bunkers and passages you’ve already found. Both armies would object, but civilians on each side would be protected. If Hamas refused the deal, the IDF would keep moving through Upper Gaza to hit Lower Gaza. Israel would have to be held accountable, to make sure it respects the distinction and pulls out expeditiously.

In the longer term, each side needs more. Gazans need reconstruction aid, open borders, and autonomy. Israelis need an end to rocket attacks. All of these goals could be served by destroying the tunnels and weakening Hamas.

So what then could possibly explain the foul insults that senior Israeli officials leaked to the press? The proposal was a “strategic terror attack?” Jon Stewart noticed the contempt last night (see above), and he’s not the only one. You’d think the Israelis might have some appreciation for, say, the Iron Dome, which was made possible in part by Obama’s initiative and millions of US aid. But nah. The more US money the Israelis get, the more contempt they exhibit toward the US. Adam Taylor rounds up some of the commentary:

On Sunday, Ynetnews  the English-language Israeli Web site of Israel’s most-read newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, published an article titled “Obama’s wars on Israel.” The author, Guy Bechor, also singled Kerry out:

This isn’t the first time Kerry is caught smiling at Israel while inciting against it behind the scenes. But not just towards Israel. This is also a betrayal of the moderate axis of the Middle East – Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia – as well as encouraging and rewarding jihadist terror, and a betrayal of all the real American values.

At the Times of Israel, a Web site that boasts of its independent politics, analyst Avi Issacharoff wondered if Kerry was “merely naive,” or if the United States was now aligning itself with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Apparently in response to Israel’s conniptions, the US declined to veto a “presidential statement” from the UN Security Council demanding an immediate ceasefire:

A U.N.-based European diplomat … said Washington’s move was “an expression of discontent” and a signal that the United States might be willing to go further in taking action against Israel than before. It was the first time that the U.N. Security Council had taken a formal action on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since January 2009, when George W. Bush’s administration abstained on a resolution calling for a “durable” cease-fire to pave the way for Israel’s military withdrawal from Gaza. At the time, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States essentially agreed with the goal of that resolution, which was supported by the council’s other 14 members, but that U.N. action threatened to harm mediation efforts in Egypt to resolve the crisis.

More, please. Keating sees a faint glimmer of hope – maybe:

I suspect that some of the anger being directed at Kerry is just deflecting attention from the fact that the two sides have what still seem to be irreconcilable demands. Kerry’s dialogue with Qatar and Turkey began only after Hamas rejected an earlier, Egypt-backed proposal. If Kerry had stuck with pushing the Egypt plan, he might have avoided becoming a punching bag in the Israeli media over the weekend, but it likely would have been equally useless in terms of the goal of stopping the bloodshed.

The only good news is that even without much chance of a permanent cease-fire, the two sides do seem to be putting out signals about de-escalating the conflict, though they haven’t been on the same page about the timing and terms.

Exclusive: CNN’s Wolf Blitzer goes inside Hamas tunnel, about 45 feet underground. IN-69MO pic.twitter.com/MmG1l74EkY

— CNN Newsource (@CNNNewsource) July 28, 2014

Ben Caspit attributes the Israeli public’s willingness to stomach a ground invasion of Gaza to the discovery of Hamas’ network of tunnels leading into southern Israel:

It should be remembered that had Hamas not rejected the Egyptian cease-fire initiative, Israel would not have discovered the scope of this threat, and Hamas would have continued digging and expanding its tunnel network, right until the moment it was deployed.

One senior Cabinet member I spoke with this week described that possibility to me: “Imagine,” he said, “that we are in the middle of a conflict with Hezbollah up north. Our top-notch infantry brigades are up there, in the north, when suddenly Hamas deploys its network of dozens of tunnels all at once. Some 2,000 Hamas commandos suddenly burst out of them and embark on a killing spree, slaughtering thousands of people in the cities and towns across Israel’s south, from Sderot through Ashkelon, Netivot and Ofakim, maybe even all the way to Beersheba.

Who would stop them? The police? The air force? It would take weeks to clean up the mess, and at the end of the entire process, we would find death and destruction across southern Israel. I know,” the minister continued, “that it sounds like a figment of the imagination, but based on what we are discovering these days, the scenario is far more realistic than it is imaginary. In this region, the reality easily exceeds anything we can imagine.”

But in a translation provided by J.J. Goldberg, Nahum Barnea debunks the Israeli government’s claim that the tunnels came as a surprise to them:

When the Cabinet agreed to the Egyptian cease-fire proposal in the middle of last week, was it aware that Gaza was teeming with tunnels, dozens of which reached into Israeli territory? The answer is, Yes. In an extended effort, over a period of years, Military Intelligence mapped out the underground world of Gaza. Not all the tunnels were identified, not all the openings and routes were located, but the magnitude of the threat was known. It was found not only in the secret material that reaches the prime minister’s desk, but even on YouTube: Military Intelligence chief Aviv Kochavi included the story of the tunnels in a lecture he gave at the Institute for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv. …

Netanyahu was not the first to war against the tunnels. He takes the name of the tunnels in vain. As prime minister he hadn’t seen the tunnels as a threat that justified a military operation — before and during Pillar of Defense in 2012, before and during Protective Edge in 2014. He chose to take a risk. When he said, in reply to a question from Udi Segal of Channel 2, that he hoped the problem of the tunnels would be solved through diplomatic means, he knew the sentence had no grounding in reality.

Jonathan Freedland senses “a weariness in the liberal Zionist fraternity,” as the Gaza war once again forces the Israeli left to wrestle with the dissonance of their principles and their loyalties:

But underlying this fatigue might be a deeper anxiety. For nearly three decades, the hope of an eventual two state solution provided a kind of comfort zone for liberal Zionists, if not comfort blanket. The two-state solution expressed the liberal Zionist position perfectly: Jews could have a state of their own, without depriving Palestinians of their legitimate national aspirations. Even if it was not about to be realized any time soon, it was a goal that allowed one to be both a Zionist and a liberal at the same time.

But the two-state solution does not offer much comfort if it becomes a chimera, a mythical notion as out of reach as the holy grail or Atlantis. The failure of Oslo, the failure at Camp David, the failure of Annapolis, the failure most recently of John Kerry’s indefatigable nine-month effort has prompted the unwelcome thought: what if it keeps failing not because the leaders did not try hard enough, but because the plan cannot work? What if the two-state solution is impossible? That prospect frightens liberal Zionists to their core. For the alternatives to two states are unpalatable, either for liberal reasons or for Zionist reasons.

Former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin believes Netanyahu’s decision to reject the Hamas-Fatah unity agreement was a mistake:

Israel should have been more sophisticated in the way it reacted. We should have supported the Palestinians because we want to make peace with everybody, not with just two-thirds or half of the Palestinians. An agreement with the unity government would have been more sophisticated than saying Abbas is a terrorist. But this unity government must accept all the conditions of the Middle East Quartet. They have to recognize Israel, renounce terrorism and recognize all earlier agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. … But I would warn against believing that the Palestinians are peaceful due to exhaustion from the occupation. They will never accept the status quo of the Israeli occupation. When people lose hope for an improvement of their situation, they radicalize. That is the nature of human beings. The Gaza Strip is the best example of that. All the conditions are there for an explosion.

With Israel losing “on the battlefield of perception”, Goldblog restates his argument for an Israeli-led, two-state settlement:

I don’t know if the majority of Palestinians would ultimately agree to a two-state solution. But I do know that Israel, while combating the extremists, could do a great deal more to buttress the moderates. This would mean, in practical terms, working as hard as possible to build wealth and hope on the West Bank. A moderate-minded Palestinian who watches Israel expand its settlements on lands that most of the world believes should fall within the borders of a future Palestinian state might legitimately come to doubt Israel’s intentions. Reversing the settlement project, and moving the West Bank toward eventual independence, would not only give Palestinians hope, but it would convince Israel’s sometimes-ambivalent friends that it truly seeks peace, and that it treats extremists differently than it treats moderates. And yes, I know that in the chaos of the Middle East, which is currently a vast swamp of extremism, the thought of a West Bank susceptible to the predations of Islamist extremists is a frightening one. But independence—in particular security independence—can be negotiated in stages. The Palestinians must go free, because there is no other way.

(Photo: Used artillery shells litter the ground on the morning of July 28, 2014 near Kafar Azza, Israel. By Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Daniel Berman doubts it:

In effect, what Israel can do militarily is to kill a lot of people, the majority of which will probably be Hamas members or supporters, but which will do nothing to politically advance Israeli security beyond demonstrating to Palestinians and their supporters that in favorable circumstances Israel can do what it wants with international support. I do not necessarily think that such a demonstration is value-less; I authored a piece earlier this week arguing that a key prerequisite of any peace agreement is a Palestinian recognition that Israel as the stronger party will get the better half of any possible deal. As such, I think demonstrating Israeli superiority could be of value.

Yet the Israeli superiority that needs to be demonstrated is political not military; no sane Palestinian believes they can defeat the Israelis in battle. … In the end there will be a cease-fire, and Hamas will have survived by virtue of the campaign they forced Israel to wage, even if every single current Hamas member in Gaza is somehow killed by the IDF. After all, Hamas is already being treated by mediators as an almost equal of Israel while the Palestinian Authority is all but forgotten. At that point what truly will have been accomplished?

That helps explain the Israelis’ furious response to the Kerry proposal. But all Kerry is recognizing is what Netanyahu has wrought. It is Netanyahu who proved that the PA’s moderate strategy is futile – since Israel has only rewarded that moderation with more aggressive settlements. It is Netanyahu’s hysterical and belligerent exploitation of the deaths of three Israeli teens that elevated Hamas to a position it would never have achieved on its own. And this awful cycle of extremism from Jerusalem has now forged a unanimous Security Council resolution for an immediate ceasefire. But once the dogs of war have been released, it’s hard to rein them back in:

Young men who were only first-graders during Operation Defensive Shield are now soldiers invading Gaza by land. In each of these operations there have been right-wing politicians and military commentators who pointed out that “this time we’ll have to pull all the stops, take it all the way, until the end.” Watching them on television, I can’t help but ask myself, What is this end they’re striving toward? Even if each and every Hamas fighter is taken out, does anyone truly believe that the Palestinian people’s aspiration for national independence will disappear with them?

Before Hamas, we fought against the P.L.O., and after Hamas, assuming, hopefully, that we’re still around, we’ll probably find ourselves fighting against another Palestinian organization. The Israeli military can win the battles, but peace and quiet for the citizens of Israel will only be achieved through political compromise. But this, according to the patriotic powers running the current war, is something that we’re not supposed to say, because this kind of talk is precisely what’s stopping the I.D.F. from winning. Ultimately, when this operation is over and the tally is taken of the many dead bodies, on our side and theirs, the accusing finger will once again be pointed at us, the saboteurs.

Noting that Israel has carried out over 2,400 airstrikes since the start of the war, Robert Beckhusen explains why Israel’s air power is so ineffective against Hamas:

Whether Israel is justified or not in attacking Hamas, the choice the Israeli military to rely heavily on air power to achieve its objectives has resulted in disproportionate civilian losses compared to the threat Hamas poses. … The result is that either way, Hamas will probably come out of the fight with enough Israeli dead on its hands to claim some kind of victory. Hamas will likely be hurting badly. But Israel’s reliance on air power to destroy Hamas’s rockets will also likely fall short. Without a political solution, the conflict will almost certainly resume again.

(Photo: The bodies of at least ten children arrived at Al-Shefaa Hospital morgue, having been killed by an Israeli strike on a camp public park on July 28, 2014 in Gaza. At least ten Palestinian children were killed and others injured on Monday by an Israeli strike on the western Gaza City Al-Shati Camp. Israel launched a series of aerial strikes on different parts of the Gaza Strip on Monday, the first day in the Islamic minor feast. By Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.)

The Gaza war continues, despite an uneasy calm during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which began today, and renewed calls for a more permanent ceasefire. During the halt in the fighting on Saturday, Gazans assessed the damage to their homes and neighborhoods, discovering scenes like the one above:

Some Shejaiya residents had held out hope their homes would be spared only to find utter devastation. Ahmed al-Jamal, a 60-year-old grandfather, sat on a plastic chair in front of the wreckage of his home. “I had no idea it was destroyed,” he said. He stared at the floor, picking absently at a piece of wire by his foot. “I came to get my things during the cease-fire and I found nothing. I don’t know where we’ll go.”

Meanwhile, Israelis have reacted with fury to John Kerry’s proposal for a cease-fire, which includes an easing of the blockade of people and goods in the Israeli-occupied urban prison. Kerry’s crime was to include Hamas’ regional allies, Turkey and Qatar, in the negotiations, to be based on the 2012 Egyptian proposal. The president also reiterated to Netanyahu that he wanted any cease-fire to allow for a normal life for Gaza’s residents. The Israeli cabinet leaked Kerry’s proposals and leading Israeli figures could not believe what they were reading. Actual relief for Gazans? Negotiations with Hamas’ allies even as Israel is on the verge of “victory”? Here is alleged moderate Ari Shavit letting it rip:

The Obama administration proved once again that it is the best friend of its enemies, and the biggest enemy of its friends. The man of peace from Massachusetts intercepted with his own hands the reasonable cease-fire that was within reach, and pushed both the Palestinians and Israelis toward an escalation that most of them did not want … If Israel is forced to ultimately undertake an expanded ground operation in which dozens of young Israelis and hundreds of Palestinian civilians could lose their lives, it would be appropriate to name the offensive after the person who caused it: John Kerry.

What the Obama administration proved is that the US and the world would prefer not to have to keep witnessing these bloodbaths and want to get to the real roots of the conflict. It’s understandable that the Israelis simply believe that US foreign policy is about backing them and paying them for the privilege, but this administration has at least attempted to forge a policy in America’s rather than Greater Israel’s interests.

David Bernstein has a similar take on Kerry’s proposal, now backed by all 15 members of the UN Security Council:

It’s truly awful; it meets most of Hamas’s demands, and none of Israel’s. Even the left-wing Ha’aretz carries this commentary from its diplomatic correspondent: “The draft Kerry passed to Israel on Friday shocked the cabinet ministers not only because it was the opposite of what Kerry told them less than 24 hours earlier, but mostly because it might as well have been penned by Khaled Meshal (leader of Hamas). It was everything Hamas could have hoped for.”

Adam Taylor offers a less tendentious take:

To understand why Kerry’s cease-fire plan failed, it helps to understand what a “cease-fire” really means in the reality of the current Israel-Palestinian conflict. While it’s not exactly a war, the conflict has been escalating and de-escalating for years, occasionally flaring up into full warfare at points. In this context, Kerry’s cease-fire doesn’t really look like a chance for a return to peace: It looks like a break from fighting and a return to a lower, yet still uncomfortable, level of hostilities that will probably soon flare up again. Israel has targeted Gaza, with the hope of crushing Hamas, four times since the Palestinian Islamist group came to power in 2007. Even if a cease-fire is agreed on soon, a betting man might predict the two sides will be trying to reach another one in a couple of years.

That’s a big problem. Numerous public opinion polls have shown that for all the international criticism of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, it remains popular within Israel. … “Israel must be permitted to crush Hamas,” is how Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States from 2009 to 2013, put it in an op-ed for The Post published Thursday. Reports that Israel hopes to expand its ground operation suggest that may be the way things are heading.

In any case, Juan Cole argues, a ceasefire is not enough:

Gaza is not a country, that Israel can be at war with it. It is a tiny strip of land surrounded by Israel from land, sea and air, which is kept from exporting its made goods for the most part, faces severe restrictions on imports, and therefore has had imposed on it a 40% or so unemployment rate. Some 56% of Palestinians in Gaza are food insecure. Gaza is recognized by the international community as an occupied territory, with Israel being the occupying power. If being occupied by Israel were so great, by the way, why is Gaza so badly off?

Hamas keeps rejecting any ceasefire that does not include a provision for the lifting of the siege of the civilian population. I heard the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, speaking after the meeting of diplomats in Paris, and he spoke about a settlement that allowed for the social and economic development of the Palestinians. What a joke! France has done nothing practical to end the blockade or allow Palestinians to develop. So a cease-fire that does not include an end to the blockade on Gaza by Israel is not a cease-fire, it is a pause in the war.