A breathing space for terror
The ‘peace at any price’ brigade are purring as expected over the Hamas /Israel six-month‘ceasefire’. As exemplified by a particularly feeble-minded editorial in today’s Times, they believe it’s a hopeful development. What they seem unable to grasp is that, as far as Hamas is concerned, this is not a cease-fire as understood by the west but a ‘hudna’ or 'tahdiya' which is a tactical pause in the fighting to allow breathing space in which to re-arm, replenish one’s forces and then resume the war with even greater ferocity. The reason Hamas was so desperate for this tahdiya was that Israel was doing it damage – not serious enough, but nonetheless debilitating. Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, on the other hand, was very reluctant to do what should have been done in these circumstances by inflicting even more damage upon Hamas. Instead, driven by political imperatives such as the need to stop the bombardment by Hamas of southern Israel, pressure from America and the EU, and above all by the necessity to have a peace ‘achievement’ to parade as his corrupt administration staggers towards a general election, Olmert has managed to send a catastrophic signal of Israel’s weakness and manifest inability to do what has to be done to protect its citizens, strengthen Hamas not only in Gaza but the West Bank too, and thus hand yet another tactical victory to Iran – putting all of us in yet greater peril. As Michael Oren writes in today’s Wall Street Journal:
The Egyptian-brokered cease-fire yields Hamas greater benefits than it might have obtained in direct negotiations. In exchange for giving its word to halt rocket attacks and weapons smuggling, Hamas receives the right to monitor the main border crossings into Gaza and to enforce a truce in the West Bank, where Fatah retains formal control. If quiet is maintained, then Israel will be required to accept a cease-fire in the West Bank as well. The blockade will be incrementally lifted while Cpl. Shalit remains in captivity. Hamas can regroup and rearm.
The Olmert government will have to go vast lengths to portray this arrangement as anything other than a strategic and moral defeat. Hamas initiated a vicious war against Israel, destroyed and disrupted myriad Israeli lives, and has been rewarded with economic salvation and international prestige.
Tellingly, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who once declared Hamas illegal, will soon travel to Gaza for reconciliation talks. Mr. Abbas's move signifies the degree to which Hamas, with Israel's help, now dominates Palestinian politics. It testifies, moreover, to another Iranian triumph. As the primary sponsor of Hamas, Iran is the cease-fire's ultimate beneficiary. Having already surrounded Israel on three of its borders -- Gaza, Lebanon, Syria -- Iran is poised to penetrate the West Bank. By activating these fronts, Tehran can divert attention from its nuclear program and block any diplomatic effort. The advocates of peace between Israelis and Palestinians should recognize that fact when applauding quiet at any price. The cost of this truce may well be war.
Echoing this analysis Noam Shalit, father of the kidnapped Corporal Gilad Shalit, has threatened to sue the Israel government for failing to make the cease-fire conditional on his son’s release -- and further endangering his life because Israel’s consent to the reopening of the Gaza crossings will enable his son’s abductors to smuggle him out to an unknown destination.
The Israeli defence official who brokered the ceasefire, Amos Gilad says however that the crossing will only be re-opened if Shalit is returned; but his statements about what this ceasefire consists of and the part played within it by the re-opening of the crossing are highly ambiguous. That is because, like so many in Israel’s military and security establishment, he is almost certainly horrified by what his political masters are forcing him to do. As Amos Harel observes in Haaretz:
What Gilad cannot say is that the choice of tahadiyeh was first and foremost a political one. From the moment Olmert and Barak reached the conclusion that they did not have public support or political breathing room for a large ground offensive in Gaza, the die was cast.
Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi understands the coalition picture, but there are quite a number of senior officers below him who see the agreement as a big mistake. In their eyes, Israel has not even attempted to try a long list of measured operations that are less than an conquest of the Gaza Strip, but if tried, might have forced Hamas to accept a cease-fire from a completely different position. Brigade-level operations in the strip were halted a long time ago, and no attempt has been made in recent times to threaten the lives of senior Hamas officials.
A broken-backed Israeli Prime Minister trying to dodge the fall-out from corruption charges; a broken-backed American President trying to tick a spurious box on his office score-card; a morally and culturally eviscerated Europe in thrall to the belief that appeasement avoids war; no wonder Iran is thumbing its nose at all of us.