Since my last post on the subject militants in Gaza have fired a further 125 rockets and mortars into Israel. These included both short range and longer range rockets. The overwhelming majority of these have either been intercepted by the Iron Dome system or have fallen in open areas. Some though did succeed in hitting structures such as electrical substations leaving people in the Ashkelon area without power. A handful of civilian homes have also been hit including one in Eshkol where one person was seriously wounded although their condition has since been upgraded to moderate.
In response the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have carried out 20-30 further air-strikes into Gaza. These have struck rocket launch sites but it has become clear that the IDF mission has shifted towards assassinating senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters. This has included two fighters of undeclared allegiance who were killed in central Gaza City and six Islamic Jihad fighters who were killed while preparing a rocket for launch at an undisclosed location. The big scalps of the night though have been the deaths of Raed Attar, Muhamed Abu Shamala and Muhamed Barhoum who were all killed in a single air-strike in Rafah. While I'm unsure of Barhoum's role Abu Shamala was the commander of Hamas military wing in the southern region of Gaza, Attar is a very senior Hamas official who is believed to have taken command of their tunnel operations from Muhamed Deif when Deif was promoted to overall command. It was Attar who commanded the operation to kidnap Gilad Shalit and is suspected of being behind the attempt to kidnap Hadar Goldin.
Despite Palestinian claims to the contrary the civilian death toll from this latest round of fighting has been extremely light. For example there have only been 22 reported deaths overnight and not only are we certain that the majority of them were fighters we can actually name 11 of them.
In response to this fresh round of fighting Israeli Prime Minister last night addressed the nation. In this speech Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a great blow being dealt to Hamas which seemed to be a reference to the attempt to kill Muhamed Deif yesterday and the expansion of the operation to target more senior Hamas figures. Netanyahu went on to speak on the need for patience from the Israeli people during the operation.
This last point struck me as fair comment because the facts of the situation dictate that this is going to be a war of attrition. That is to say that Israel's success or failure will come from their ability to wear down Hamas capacity to fight by destroying their stores of weapons and killing their fighters. Unlike the tunnel threat which has been completed and required boots on the ground in Gaza this next phase of the operation may not require another ground operation and with now only the hard targets located in the heavily populated areas of Gaza left a ground operation carries with it increased risks of both civilian casualties but also Israeli military casualties.
The problem is that the Israeli public seem to be getting extremely frustrated at the length of time that this war has gone on for and that is increasing the pressure on Netanyahu. For example the reaction to the announcement that Netanyahu was going to speak that I got from everyday Israelis was deeply sarcastic and even the leader of the normally quite moderate opposition Labor Party came out to publicly accuse Netanyahu of being more worried about maintaining his governing coalition then protecting Israeli civilians. This strikes me as a very worrying development not just for Israeli politics but also more seriously for the Palestinians.
Netanyahu's big achievement has been keeping the conflict between Israel and Palestine at such a low level that many Israelis have been able to almost forget that it has been going on. As a result the Israeli economy has grown steadily under Netanyahu and much has that growth has been drive by dynamic start-up businesses in the hi-tech sector. With many young Israelis now able to live fulfilling lives on the back of this economic growth they have become less and less interested in religious and political causes that demand the increasing expansion of Israel and the subjugation of the Palestinians. This was reflected by the strong showing of the Yesh Atid Party who unusually for an Israeli political party don't really have a policy towards Israel.
As a result more Israelis then ever before are happy to support both a two state solution and a peace process providing neither really affects how their go about their everyday lives. By launching this long war of attrition Hamas has once again forced the conflict to the centre of every Israelis minds and a lot of the old attitudes are once again coming to the fore. So if this war causes the Netanyahu government to fall or even changes the attitudes of a significant number of Israelis I am worried that the best ever chance of peace between Israel and Palestine could be lost for a generation or even longer.
Another development that I found interesting is that yesterday evening Hamas warned international airlines to avoid Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport from 03:00 (06:00 local) today presumably because they were going to start shooting rockets at it. This seems to have been an attempt to force a repeat of the shortlived international ban on flights to Israel that we saw early on in the conflict. Although I think this began as an attempt to put internal pressure on US President Obama it was largely received by the Israelis as a form of sanction and therefore a sort of victory for Hamas. This time though not a single airline or airline regulator responded to Hamas' threat and in the end I don't think Hamas even bothered attacking the airport. This really highlighted to me that Hamas really don't seem to have realised that in the last two to three weeks international support has very much shifted away from them and back towards Israel.
The first reason for this has been the way that Hamas has conducted itself during the cease-fire negotiations. By rejecting a series of very reasonable offers that have been tabled by both Israel and Egypt in favour of firing more rockets and in the process breaking cease-fires Hamas have revealed themselves to be very much the aggressors in this situation. This obviously makes it very hard for people who have no real bias in the situation to be sympathetic to Hamas and the problems it has succeeded in bringing upon itself.
The other big factor has of course been the situation with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq. Although the Hamas I am used to is nowhere near as bad as ISIL its current military wing does seem to have rather been swept up in ISIL's delusional propaganda. With ISIL's true methods and objectives being laid bare for the World to see international opinions have very much hardened against them with even previously staunch supporters such as the UK calling for military action to destroy them. As a result the Gulf States such as Qatar that back ISIL and also back Hamas are now very much out in the cold internationally. So while Obama might look to increase the pressure on Israel as a way to apologise for taking extremely limited military action against ISIL it seems that nobody else in the international community is in any mood to do Qatar or Hamas any further favours.
16:55 on 21/8/14 (UK date).
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