While things seem to have calmed down today over the past two days the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian factions in Gaza has continued to escalate. On Sunday (24/8/14) 140 rockets and mortars were fired into Israel while on Monday at least 120 were fired. These firing have included all types of weapon but there seems to be a continuing focus on shorter range rockets and mortars in particular with only a handful of the longer range rockets being fired into central areas of Israel where Tel Aviv is located.
On Monday night two mid-range, military grade Katyusha rockets were fired into the upper Galilee region of northern Israel from Lebanon. This raises the possibility that the conflict could be expanding to include Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as Hamas in Gaza. This would be very bad news because while Hamas has an estimated 20,000 rockets Hezbollah has in excess of 100,000. However despite once being close allies the predominately Shia Hezbollah have had a major falling out with the predominately Sunni Hamas over a range of issues and Syria in particular. As a result Hezbollah have so far not been in any great rush to join Hamas in this latest round of fighting.
Therefore I think the rocket fire from Lebanon has been the work of a single rouge cell that is trying to put pressure on Hezbollah leadership to put their joint opposition of Israel ahead of any differences they have with Hamas. This means that Israel's decision to respond to the rocket fire with artillery fire is a risky one because if Hezbollah feels it is under attack from Israel it is much more likely to respond by attacking Israel. That said though the Israelis may well have been targeting the rocket launch site and given the history of the situation if Israel didn't return fire in response to what is now a total of 3 rockets being fired from Lebanon it would leave absolutely everyone totally confused.
Also on Monday Israel was again hit by fire from Syria into the Israeli occupied Golan Heights. On this occasion though it was mortar rather then rocket fire and does seem to have been accidental. After all the Golan Heights was the route al-Nusra Front (ANF) used to hand over US hostage Peter Curtis on Sunday night meaning that their fighters would have been in the area at the time. As for Curtis' release itself the involvement of Qatar suggests that a ransom was paid. However it is also apparent that the threat of US air-strikes mean that ANF are very keen to separate themselves from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Imagine what would happen if the US actually started carrying out meaningful military action.
Aside from the interjections from Lebanon and Syria Israel has responded to the escalation from Gaza by intensifying its operations. On Sunday the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) carried out 65 air-strikes into Gaza while Monday they carried out between 50 and 60 strikes. As always a priority for the strikes has been to eliminate rocket and mortar launching sites into Israel. These included a mortar position located in a school in the Shejayia district of Gaza City.
The IDF have also continued its strategy of assassinating senior militants with quite a lot of success. On Sunday alone they succeeded in killing an as yet unidentified militant travelling on a motorcycle in Beit Lahiya and Mohamed al-Goul who acted as Hamas central banker as he was being driven through Ramal district of Gaza City. On Monday they succeeded in killing the suspected leader of the Army of Islam which operates under the command of Hamas. It has also been confirmed that Israel succeeded in killing the head of the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) on Saturday (23/8/14). The reason for the confusion was that the authorities in Gaza listed him as a civilian casualty.
Amid the intensification of the IDF's operation it appears that they have also taken to destroying a large number of buildings that have been used as command centres, weapon stores and weapon manufacturing sites. These have included tower block in the Al-Zafier district of Gaza City that was destroyed on Saturday and a Mosque in Beit Hanoun that was destroyed on Monday along with the Basha tower office building that was destroyed overnight and the Italian Plaza which was destroyed on Monday and a similar complex that was destroyed on Sunday in Rafah. Although from the footage of these last three targets it would appear that apartment blocks were targeted they are actually large, mixed use sites containing residential, commercial and industrial units. In all of these strikes the standard warning procedure of telephone calls followed by a "roof knock" was followed meaning that there were no fatalities linked to any of these strikes.
All of these targets were being used for a military purpose and there were legitimate targets. After all even if you don't kill any fighters if you destroy a building you deprive the enemy of that building along with any equipment that was stored there. This is particularly important for commerical buildings because with the large rooms, good connections to the power supply and things like loading docks they lend themselves to being used as weapon stores and weapon factories. However there is also a suspicion that Israel has destroying large buildings such as this in response to diplomatic efforts by the European Union (EU).
Following Operation Cast Lead in 2008/9 the EU heavily invested in re-building Gaza's infrastructure. Now that a lot of that infrastructure is being destroyed again the EU are quite annoyed and seem to be blaming the Israelis rather then Hamas. So in response the EU is circulating a document at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) which is supposed to bring an end to the fighting. This proposal seems intended to offend the Israelis because it treats Hamas and Israel equally and demands that Israel hands over control of its security to the EU which considering that Israel isn't even an EU member state massively undermines Israel's national sovereignty. The plan also suffers from a number of quite serious structural flaws. For example it takes at its core a 2005 Egyptian proposal that not even Egypt has agreed to. Also peace is rarely something that can be imposed from the outside. As such the Israel's could well be destroying a lot of its big targets in an effort to push back against the EU's plan.
The EU's plan also seems to be meeting with a degree of opposition from the US who have also begun circulating a UNSC plan of their own which is intended to rival the EU's plan. After all the US has made it perfectly clear that it wants to be the ones to bring peace to the middle east so are in no mood to let the EU steal their glory.
Meanwhile in actual peace efforts Egypt has resumed its role as mediator despite the US' attempt to accuse them of carrying out air-strikes in Libya. By Sunday rumours were beginning to circulate that all sides were very close to an agreement. By Monday it was apparent that all the Palestinian factions had agreed to a cease-fire except for Hamas. This of course raised the possibility that Israel could agree a cease-fire with everybody except Hamas. Today though it was announced that Hamas had also agreed to a cease-fire that will come into effect at 16:00 (19:00 local) today.
Obviously the full details of the cease-fire agreement have yet to be made public. However it seems to be based around the third compromise suggested by the Egyptians which would gradually see Gaza being moved towards parole by the incremental lifting of restrictions of the flow of goods into Gaza in return for the stopping of rocket fire from Gaza. Crucially it seems to be an open ended cease-fire which removes possibility of a return to fighting for at least the next month.
17:00 on 26/8/14 (UK date).
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