Indeed, tension is escalating by the hour. In retaliation of Hamas provocations, Israeli ground forces invaded Hamas occupied areas and fought fierce battles accompanied by bombing blitz. Neither the Israeli side nor the Hamas seem willing to resolve the issue through negotiation, after years of failure, still failed to realize that military attacks are unlikely to deepen the crisis and longstanding differences. Apart from religious schism, which is probably used as a front for committing atrocities, both are adamantly entrenched in hardline dogma and dreams that could be realised with violence and bloodshed of many innocent lives.
The Hamas is testing the US presidential elect and Israel's threshold while the Israeli decision-makers may have overreacted to Obama's election campaign rhetoric. A clear signal must be sent to both sides that violence is intolerable.
Quote :
Despite the loss so far of about 400 lives in besieged, blockaded Gaza - one-quarter of them civilians, the UN says - the international community has been muted, saying Israel had a right to self-defence against the Hamas rocket attacks that allegedly provoked it.
But after six days of bombardment, there are ominous signs for Israel that its shock-and-awe military campaign may fall well short of its objectives, with repercussions being felt across the region and beyond. Despite bombing almost every reachable Hamas target within the narrow Gaza Strip, Israel has so far failed to achieve its only stated objective, of stopping Hamas rocket attacks into Israeli territory. On the contrary, Hamas has surprised observers by launching more than 400 rockets into Israel this week, killing four people.
It has been a salutary lesson in the limits of air power alone to cripple an enemy - especially a very poor one, unlike Serbia and its industry in the Kosovo War - and has placed Israel is an invidious position.
Militarily, it is clear that Israel is unlikely to achieve its objectives without a ground-based assault, a daunting prospect in the densely populated Gaza Strip and one that will inevitably lead to many more civilian deaths as well as Israeli military casualties.
Politically, there is a danger that such an assault would undermine international support for Israel, while strengthening Hamas's reputation in the Arab world. "It will be a great day for Hamas," says Diaa Rashwan of the al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "They will have the best of both worlds: to be a victim and a resister at the same time."
The best hope for Israel to avoid this scenario is for Hamas to cave in and accede to Israel's demands that it halt all rocket attacks. This appears unlikely, notwithstanding Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority Ismail Haniyeh's claim on Thursday that Hamas was prepared "to talk about all issues and seriously" if Israel halted its attacks and lifted its blockade on the Gaza Strip.
Israel maintains it will not consider any ceasefire that does not include a complete cessation of Hamas rocket attacks on its soil. It has also given no indication it would be willing to lift its blockade of Gaza that has crippled the economy in the enclave of 1.5 million Palestinians.
So why did this latest cycle of violence erupt, and what dangers does it pose for the broader prospects of peace in the Middle East?
It is apparent that Israel spent months planning its military campaign, with the aim of launching it after the shaky six-month ceasefire expired on December 19.
The Israeli Government has watched with growing dismay as Hamas, which still advocates the destruction of Israel, has entrenched itself in Gaza since it assumed complete control in June 2007 by winning the Palestinian Authority parliamentary elections in 2006, ousting the rival Fatah party from dominance and then expelling it from the Strip.
In response, Israel has sought to isolate Gaza, enforcing a strict economic blockade in the hope that Gazans would blame Hamas for their hardships.
The opposite has occurred, with Hamas consolidating its control over Gaza.
Hamas's continuing and provocative rocket attacks on Israel, especially in the weeks since the ceasefire ended, have given Israel a politically defensible opportunity to change this dynamic through military force.
Although Israel claims its assault is aimed only at ending the "intolerable" rocket attacks on its territory, its actions suggest a broader aim of crippling Hamas's power and authority in Gaza.
Israel has offered no clear explanation as to why these attacks have suddenly become so intolerable that they require a massive military response at this time. The clues to Israel's broader aims lie in the targets it has hit. Israeli F-16 fighters have bombed mosques and important symbols of government, including civic buildings and university compounds.
Israel contends that rocket launchers and ammunition were stored at those sites, but analysts believe the assault is a broader attack on the whole institution of the Hamas Government. Israel has been careful not to declare its aim as toppling Hamas. Its official war objective is to create "a new security environment" in and around Gaza, an ambition that is vague enough to allow for an honorable exit if the campaign turns sour.
This is a lesson Tel Aviv learned during its failed attack on Lebanon in 2006, when it vowed publicly to crush the militant Hezbollah and rescue kidnapped Israel soldiers but failed to achieve either. In that conflict the Iranian-backed Shia organisation emerged militarily and politically stronger.
The danger for Israel, and for the West, is that if this attack on Gaza fails to achieve its objectives, Hamas could emerge damaged but with its prestige enhanced.
But how popular is Hamas in Gaza? Israel is gambling that its military assault will make ordinary Gazans blame Hamas, rather than Israel, and lead them to distance themselves from the militant movement.
The International Crisis Group says Hamas's relentless consolidation of power has eroded the group's popularity. "The movement has acquired a reputation for brutality," the ICG says. "They (Gazans) live under a regime that has yet to complete its transition from militia to civilian rule."
But those Gazans disaffected by Hamas may just as easily be thrown back into its embrace by the carnage inflicted by Israeli jets this week. The civilian casualties, including the heartbreaking tale of the Balousha family, who lost five of their daughters to an Israeli bomb, have predictably inflamed anti-Israeli feeling.
The Israelis always knew such casualties were inevitable. Even the most carefully targeted precision bombing was never going to be precise enough to spare innocent victims in one of the world's most densely populated strips of land. The entwining of Hamas and the local community in Gaza makes it impossible to target one without harming the other.
Israel destroyed dozens of smuggling tunnels that ran under the sandy border with Egypt and which Israel says are used to bring rockets and weapons into Gaza.
Yet that same tunnel network was also used to smuggle flour, fuel, baby milk and other vital supplies into Gaza to offset Israel's border blockage.
"The entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants," says the UN's regional envoy, Richard Falk.
Despite this, the West's response to Israel's actions has been generally supportive, with the US and others blaming Hamas for provoking the attack.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy was one of the few to level a portion of blame at Israel, condemning "the irresponsible provocations that led to this situation, as well as the disproportionate use of force".
Australia has stopped short of criticising Israel's actions, with acting PM Julia Gillard saying the nation "strongly condemns the firing of rockets and mortars into southern Israel by Hamas and other militant groups". "While recognising Israel's right to defend itself from such indiscriminate attacks, the Australian Government supports the UN Security Council's call for an immediate halt to all violence," Gillard says.
Israel has also found some unlikely allies in the Arab world, with Egypt and Saudi Arabia implicitly criticising Hamas and its rejection of co-operation with Fatah.
"This terrible massacre would not have happened if the Palestinian people were united behind one leadership, speaking in one voice," says Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal.
The mild response of moderate Arab nations such as Egypt and Jordan has angered Hamas's allies, Iran, Syria and leaders of Hezbollah. Egypt in particular has come under fire for sealing its border with Gaza during the initial Israeli attacks, cutting off an escape route.
More than two-thirds of Israelis are in favour of continuing air strikes, according to a poll in the Ha'aretz newspaper. Only 20 per cent supported a ceasefire, but ominously only 20 per cent supported a ground operation, suggesting Israelis have not forgotten the quagmire Israel's army got into in Lebanon.
There has been speculation that the timing of the Israeli offensive has at least partly been driven by the looming Israeli elections in February.
A successful operation in Gaza would deliver a timely boost to the fortunes of the Kadima-led coalition, which faces a strong challenge from Likud hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu. But Spectator magazine this week dismissed such cynicism.
"Israeli elections are indeed imminent," it wrote in an editorial. "But simply to interpret the military response as a cynical election ploy to shore up Tzipi Livni, Israel's Foreign Minister, and Ehud Barak, its Defence Minister (both candidates for PM), is to see the conflict through lazy Western eyes.
"From its foundation Israel has believed, correctly, that its very survival is at stake. Its leaders have acted accordingly, often in a fashion that baffles those fortunate enough not to live in nations encircled by foes that call for their extinction."
Yet Israelis themselves appear more cynical than Spectator would have us believe.
A December 26 poll in Israel showed that 55 per cent of respondents felt the Government's actions in Gaza would be motivated by "political considerations".
After a week of hostilities, there is no obvious circuit-breaker to this latest cycle of violence in Gaza.
Analysts believe the conflict could drag on for weeks, raising the prospect that it will deliver a foreign policy crisis for incoming US president Barack Obama.
While Obama has pointedly refrained from commenting on the crisis, Israelis have taken heart from a comment he made while visiting last July.
"If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that," the president-elect said. "And I would expect the Israelis to do the same thing."
And now they have. The days and weeks ahead will show whether this assault on Gaza is an ill-conceived waste of human life or the first historic step in bringing Hamas to its knees. History suggests there is little cause for optimism in the vengeful violence that is such a familiar pattern of response in the Middle East.
Extracts from :
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/st ... 37,00.html
Login
Register
Portal
Arcade
Search
