My Brother's Keeper: Month 2, Week 2, Day 7.

Yesterday night Israel's cabinet met in a marathon five hour session to discuss the nation's response to Hamas' breaking of a cease-fire that morning which left two Israeli soldiers dead and one missing presumed kidnapped. Obviously at a time of war the details of this meeting are being kept secret but the scene was rather well set by Yochanan Gordon's spectacular Times of Israel article "When Genocide is Permissible" although I think that title was missing a question mark.

Essentially within the Israeli government you have the moderate centrists led by the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who wish to conduct the current operation in accordance with Jewish values of freedom and justice by keeping an adherence to international law and humanitarian concern for the Palestinian people at the fore. Pushing against them you have extreme religious, Zionist parties such as Jewish Home who along with the more extreme wing of Likud want to use this conflict as an excuse to destroy Gaza so they can take control of its natural gas reserves and build some nice beach-front holiday homes. The extremists hand will only have been strenghend by Hamas' actions which have left the Israeli public in a state of outrage that is hard to imagine.

Further strengthening the extremists hand has been the relentless international anti-Israel propaganda campaign that this operation has triggered. Despite the fact that Israel has gone to great lengths to improve the conduct of its military and drawn up a battle-plan intended to minimise the risk to civilians everyone only seems interested in re-living the arguments and criticisms of 2008/9's Operation Cast Lead. A lot of the photographs I'm seeing on Twitter of supposed Israeli atrocities were out of date when I saw them being passed around during Cast Lead and some of them aren't even from Gaza at all. This propaganda has fuelled public opinion leading to calls for tough action against Israel from nations such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar who simply want to unseat Israel from its position as the region's dominant power. Faced with such an onslaught of hate many Israelis have got to be questioning why they should bother paying such a high price both in monetary terms and in the lives of their soldiers to protect Palestinian lives when they are going to be vilified as murderers whatever they do.

During this cabinet meeting the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) provided a demonstration of what they are capable of should the kid gloves come off by heavily attacking the southern town of Rafah and the Tuffah district of Gaza City. To their credit the IDF seem to have moved away from artillery fire. The one image of flattened buildings that news channels keep showing to illustrate the destruction of Gaza is actually of one city block in the Shejayia district of Gaza City that was destroyed on July 20th (20/7/14). That destruction was caused by artillery fire.

Instead the IDF have been focusing on air-strikes although gone are the telephone warnings and 'roof-knocks' that warn residents to evacuate. Although both types of weapon are being used the IDF seem to be favouring largish guided bombs over Hellfire-type missiles which can be fired through a window to target occupants of a single apartment while leaving the rest of the building unscathed. As a result there was an increased amount of property damage and an increase in civilian casualties as entire buildings were demolished leading to another gore-fest. However as always seems to be the case on social media the same Palestinian child can apparently die a dozen times over.

At the end of this onslaught Hamas confirmed that it did indeed break the cease-fire by attacking and attempting to kidnap an IDF soldier although it is now claiming that its fighters and the IDF soldier were killed in the immediate aftermath. This could well be true because it is one of the objectives of the IDF's response under the Hannibal protocol. However at this point I think Hamas would say just about anything to distance themselves from the incident and as far as I can tell they haven't provided the IDF with the last known co-ordinates of the fighters and their hostage so their remains can be recovered.

For those of you who are wondering I am referring to this soldier as "kidnapped" rather then "captured" is because if he had been captured Hamas would have registered him as a prisoner of war with the International Commission of the Red Cross (ICRC) and would release him at the end of the conflict. US President Obama's announcement that "We tortured some folks" seemed like a deliberate attempt to inflame Israeli public opinion further because it is telling that Israel thinks that a soldier is better off dead than as a Hamas hostage.

So far today it appears that the moderates within the Israeli government have continued to win out against the extremists. The IDF have announced that it will be withdrawing from Beit Lahia allowing residents to return to the area. This is consistent with the plan of dealing with the Gaza Strip in small sections allowing civilians to move between non-combat zones in order to stay safe. There have even being rumours that Israel is preparing to withdraw entirely from Gaza having completed their mission. I think this could be possible because having identified 30 or so Hamas tunnels the IDF has spent the last week surveying and mapping those tunnels meaning that they are now able to destroy them at a rate of three to four per day.

I am though a little worried that Israel may be tempted to rush into ending the mission. That is because victory in this operation is not going to come from some telegenic moment where the victors raise their flag over the enemy's HQ but from a tedious spread-sheet showing how much of Hamas' offensive military capabilities have been destroyed.


16:05 on 2/8/14 (UK date).