As Israeli armour and infantry thrust deeper into the teeming Gaza Strip last week in a concerted attempt to inflict still more crippling blows against Hamas after a punishing one-week air campaign, Israel announced it would not return to the status quo ante. Three weeks after Hamas aggressively broke an already shaky six-month ceasefire and thereby invited the wrath of an unfettered Israeli military response, Israel made it clear that the rules of the game had irrevocably changed.
Amid shortages of food, water and medical supplies in the besieged Gaza Strip and a growing civilian toll, Israel firmly rebuffed increasingly frantic calls by the United Nations, the European Union and the Arab world for an immediate truce. Israel’s rationale, supported by the vast majority of its citizenry and the Diaspora, was that if Israel acceded to these international pleas and abruptly halted Operation Cast Lead, it would have achieved little of lasting significance and only strengthened the hand of Hamas and its radical, rejectionist allies, Iran and Hezbollah.
Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, must be held fully responsible and accountable for the latest round of fighting. Hamas, which opposes a two-state solution and thus Israel’s very existence, brought this tragic and avoidable conflict upon itself by breaking the ceasefire that Egypt had laboriously produced.
Hamas – which violently seized control of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority in a coup in June 2007 and then proceeded to transform it into an armed camp – did not lift a finger to enforce the truce. The blinkered, ideologically bound leaders of Hamas permitted smaller factions, such as Islamic Jihad, to sporadically shell Israeli communities and allowed armed fighters to try to infiltrate the border fence. And as always, Hamas continued to import Iranian long-range rockets, arms and munitions through a maze of tunnels from Egypt. Amid these provocations, Israel acted with relative restraint.
This past November, in the first such incident of its kind since the truce went into effect on June 19, Israel and Hamas clashed in a direct confrontation after Israeli troops destroyed a tunnel perilously close to the border. Israel had a well-founded fear that Hamas intended to use it to abduct yet more Israeli soldiers. It will be recalled that Israel launched its last big incursion into Gaza, in June 2006, after Hamas attacked an Israeli outpost and kidnapped Cpl. Gilad Schalit, who remains imprisoned despite Israel’s best efforts to free him.
As a result of last November’s flareup, Hamas abandoned the ceasefire, such as it was, and began firing hundreds of short and long-range missiles at Israel. On Dec 25, Christmas day, 80 such projectiles hit Israel. Israel’s outgoing prime minister, Ehud Olmert, issued a dire warning, saying that devastating consequences lay in store if Hamas did not cease and desist. Meanwhile, in Cairo, Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, told Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that Israel’s patience was wearing thin. “Enough is enough,” she declared, saying that the situation had become unbearable and intolerable.
Several months prior to Livni’s appearance in Cairo, Defence Minister Ehud Barak warned Hamas that “a serious operation” into Gaza – an invasion – could be expected if Hamas did not come to its senses.
Willfully ignoring Barak’s warning, Hamas let the ceasefire run out. Hamas was intoxicated by its warped and arrogant assumption that Israel would step back from the brink before invading Gaza, a poor, congested sliver of land that Israel unilaterally relinquished in 2005 and which is populated by 1.5 million Palestinians, the majority of whom are refugees from previous Arab-Israeli wars.
Israel launched the first phase of Operation Cast Lead on Dec. 27, explaining that no self-respecting country on earth could tolerate a next-door terrorist entity threatening and endangering its civilian population. Hamas was aware of the possible consequences, Israel having declared war on Hamas in 2004 after assassinating its supreme leader, Ahmed Yassin. Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, their obligatory verbal blasts against Israel notwithstanding, rightfully blamed Hamas for igniting the latest round of fighting.
This time, Israel means business. For one week, the Israeli Air Force and navy bombed strategic and symbolic targets in Gaza, blasting rocket launchers, weapons storage depots, metal work shops, smuggling tunnels, government buildings, communication facilities, and the legislature. The homes of top-ranking Hamas officials were also targeted, and among the commanders Israel killed was Nizar Rayyan, who once brazenly said, “We will never recognize Israel. There is nothing called Israel, neither in reality nor in the imagination.”
As well, Israel bombed mosques and civilian buildings where weapons were deliberately stored. In reckless fashion, Hamas placed them there to score propaganda points against Israel.
In an attempt to avert a humanitarian crisis, Israel permitted convoys of trucks bearing food, water, medicine and fuel into Gaza. But Israel cordoned off Gaza to journalists, correctly fearing that stark and disturbing images of injured and dead Palestinians and of gutted buildings would play into Hamas’ hands and force it to agree to a premature ceasefire.
Despite the bombing sorties, which claimed the lives of hundreds of Palestinian fighters and civilians, Hamas continued firing rockets and mortars at Israel, killing three civilians. Some of the missiles struck long-suffering localities such as Sderot and Ashkelon, but others reached as far as Ashdod, Beer Sheva and Yavne, validating Israeli fears that Hamas had vastly improved and upgraded its arsenal during the six-month calm.
Unable to deal effectively with this vexing problem by air power alone, Israel initiated the second phase of its offensive with a ground invasion on Jan. 3. In what was described as fierce fighting in northern and eastern Gaza, Israel captured largely uninhabited areas where rockets and mortars have been launched. And in a replay of the urban warfare Israel conducted in southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006 and in the West Bank in the spring of 2002, Israel expanded and deepened its operation by attacking fortifications, bunkers and crowded neighbourhoods. Nevertheless, Hamas remained standing, pummeling Israeli towns as far away as Gedera, which is only 30 kilometres from Tel Aviv. Last week, the Home Front Command suggested that Rehovot and Rishon LeZion are also within rocket range.
In this war of self defence against the forces of Islamic radicalism, Israel wants to “change the equation” and create “a new reality” in the region, as Livni and Barak have succinctly explained. Israel’s short-term objective is to restore tranquility in the south so that 900,000 Israelis can live in peace and not be intimidated by Hamas rocketry. In this connection, Israel seeks a durable and permanent ceasefire based on a new and rigorous monitoring system. (The Israeli government should not lift its current blockade of Gaza until Hamas recognizes Israel, renounces terrorism and accepts agreements signed by Israel and the Palestinian Authority. With Hamas implacably hostile to Israel, Olmert can safely dismiss Hamas’ demand to extend the truce to the West Bank.)
Beyond these aims, Israel’s objectives should be to disable, if not destroy, Hamas’ military infrastructure. In addition, Israel should attempt to weaken the aggressive and irresponsible Hamas government in Gaza – which has brought only misery, hardship and bloodshed to its people – and to reassert its deterrent power following the inconclusive war in Lebanon.
Israel cannot afford to lose this war, because anything less than a victory will be interpreted by Hamas as a defeat and embolden its cocky allies, Hezbollah and Iran.
So a hasty ceasefire can wait. Hamas must be crushed. But will the international community grant Israel sufficient time, understanding and leeway to do what is absolutely necessary?