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TechnoratiAnalysis: 'I Don't See How This Ends Well' in Gaza
JERUSALEM - As Israel clamps down on the Gaza Strip and prepares for the possibility of sending thousands of soldiers into the Palestinian area controlled by the militant Islamic group Hamas, its leaders are facing a diplomatic conundrum: They have clear military goals but no political vision for how to end the confrontation.
![[The bodies of five Palestinian siblings lie at a hospital morgue following an Israeli air strike overnight in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza. Israel is bombing Gaza for a third day in an "all-out war" on Hamas, as tanks mass along the border and the Islamists fire deadly rockets to retaliate for a blitz which has killed nearly 320. (AFP/Mohammed Abed)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/gazamorgue1229.jpg "gazamorgue1229.jpg")
"I
don't see how this ends well, even if, in two weeks time, it looks like
it ends well," said Daniel Levy, a political analyst who once served as
an adviser to Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister who's now
leading the military campaign against Hamas as Israel's defense
minister.
Israel's expanding air strikes already have delivered a costly blow to the Hamas rulers in Gaza by killing hundreds of the group's soldiers and decimating its network of government security compounds.
Beyond that, though, Israeli leaders haven't explained what could bring the violence to a halt. Once the smoke clears, the rubble is removed and the dead are buried, Hamas is still almost certain to remain in control of the Gaza Strip, and its hard-line leaders are already vowing to strike back.
"To the extent to which there's a scenario where Israel wins a tactical round, it will again lose a strategic round," said Levy, a senior fellow at The New America Foundation, a liberal policy institute in Washington, D.C. that's providing ideas and personnel to the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.
Israel's ongoing campaign is already creating an early foreign policy test for Obama, who's pledged to make Middle East diplomacy an early priority when he takes office next month.
On Sunday, Obama chief lieutenant David Axelrod offered tacit backing for Israel, blaming Hamas for sparking the conflict as the Bush administration also has done. If Obama continues to offer similar unqualified support for Israeli military action, it could make it harder for him to demonstrate to the Arab world that he's a more even-handed middleman than Bush has been.
Israeli officials Sunday said their top priority is to destabilize Hamas and cripple its ability to keep firing the crude rockets into southern Israel that have killed seven Israelis in the last two years.
Here the Israeli government appears to have learned a lesson from its bungled 2006 war in Lebanon against fighters from Hezbollah, another militant Islamic group. There, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert failed to achieve his main goals: Forcing Hezbollah to return the two Israeli soldiers whose capture sparked the 34-day war and silencing rocket fire from Shiite Muslim militants in southern Lebanon.
"What we want to do is significantly reduce the rocket fire," said Miri Eisin, a reserve colonel in the Israeli Army and spokeswoman for the Israeli government. "If Hamas says no more rocket fire, then we'll see where that goes."
Olmert and his government, however, refuse to negotiate directly with Hamas until the group, which is supported by Iran and Syria, renounces its goal of destroying Israel.
The standoff worsened last year when, after winning 2006 democratic elections that were backed by the Bush administration, Hamas seized military control of Gaza in a humiliating rout of forces loyal to pragmatic Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Since then, Israel and the U.S. have been trying to provide political support to Abbas by trying to revive stagnant peace talks and helping to rebuild his security forces in the West Bank, between Israel and Jordan.
The goal is to show the Palestinian voters who propelled Hamas to political power in 2006 that Abbas and his pro-Western government are a better alternative.
"We have a dialogue with the Palestinian Authority," said Eisin. "You don't have an alternative to that at the end of the day."
If anything, however, the U.S.-Israeli effort has pushed Abbas and Hamas farther apart and made re-uniting the rival Palestinian factions more difficult.
That leaves Israel, the United States and Abbas with few diplomatic options: Hamas refuses to abandon its pledge to destroy Israel while Israel and the U.S. refuse to talk to Hamas until the group does. Abbas, meanwhile, refuses to reconcile with Hamas until the group surrenders control of Gaza.
16 Comments so far
Show All"Olmert and his government, however, refuse to negotiate directly with Hamas until the group, which is supported by Iran and Syria, renounces its goal of destroying Israel."
Youve got to laugh at this. As if Hamas could wipe israel off the map. What a joke. These israeli leaders cant really be that stupid as to really believe this can they? What ulterior motives do they have for spouting such bullshit??? Could it be that war and conflict serves their ultimate aims and peace would undermine them?
No gods No masters!
post your comments to the Obama transition team at the following address:
http://change.gov/ (main website)
http://change.gov/page/content/contact/ (page to provide comments)
He talks about change, lets hope for a change in this direction as well.
Regards,
I am a citizen of the USA, and I am ashamed and I say may the Israelis and the Bush administration burn in hell
I question whether Israel's goal is truly to stop Hamas but rather to provoke more terrorist attacks so they can cry crocodile tears of victimhood while stealing Palestinian land and crushing Gaza's elected government. Hint you can can see the exact same dynamic in miniature here with the Zionist posters, their goal is NOT to promote dialog but rather provoke us into saying anti Semitic things to discredit us.
Call me a conspiracy theorist or whatever if you must but that is my intuition as to how this all plays out. If that isn't the case the the Israelis aren't very bright because as this article points out the attacks AREN'T going to stop Hamas, only strengthen them. I think this Israelis are bright and playing a complicated crooked game. :(
Arabs are inferior to jews.
Isnt it obvious?
This is what underlines the story.
That's why no one cares that 300 are killed to 1 Israeli.
They are arabs, aka terrorists.
What truly is amazing is how rich Arab countries arent a little more pissed off about this.
They can do more.
Dubai just hosted an International Film Festival with Hollywood celebrities.
You would think they could spend their resources better.
The constant talk about palestinians stopping the violence is just a cover. All sides know they cant do it.
Its all about making sure that the jews stay in the ME and not get ideas about starting a homeland inside Europe.
Notice how the Iranian President's comments about why Europe didnt create a homeland for jews after WW2 and instead dumped it on the arabs?
All the focus is a misquote of his zionist regime wiped off the map comment.
The reasons the Arab states do little is that they tend to be brutal dictatorships where a small segement of the population leeches away all of the wealth.
Inside those countries are groups that are opposed to them and their policies.
In supporting Hamas they themselves risk fueling Militants inside their own countries.
How can a Mubaruk support the Palestinian struggle for Justice when he has been imprisoning like groups inside his own country in order to stay in power?
The reason the Arab states will not support the Palestinians is the same reason the US would always sponsor coups inside Socialist countries.
GwNorth
Other than the last sentence which I think needs a bit more clarification, I believe you are absolutely correct.
The reason why the leadership in the ME aren't responding is that they are dependent on the west to stay in power. Why do you think the US and UK kills democratically elected govt and kiss dictators in the region.....
There is another story on CD that talks about the uprising in the ME against this atrocity. Sadly the leaders dance to the tune of the western powers.
Yes, as SeriousCitizen says, it was a long-time planned attack by Israel. Under the cover of the night of the US election Israel killed some 10 Hamas militants (supposedly for trying to dig a tunnel) so as to provoke retaliation with those home-made rockets. Since then they have continued killing Gazans every couple of days to make sure the rockets keep coming. The plan is also evident in the keeping of the international press out of Gaza and even the UN representative, so as to avoid "bad publicity". Israel always takes its public relations seriously.
Maybe the US government should just disassociate itself from the conflict and stop sending all aid to both to give them an incentive to work it out among themselves with the help of the UN.
Besides Israeli lobbying, the only reason we are in Israel is that it is our largest military base in the Middle East, defending the oil that Obama will supposedly wean us off.
Meantime we could make peace with So. America and buy their oil instead until we can rely on green energy alternatives completely.
Works for me. Excellent post. Though I can't see the day when we cut our aid to Israel completely.
Gaza=Warsaw Ghetto
Silence is Consent.
This ongoing conflict has seeming made both sides 'insane' with hatred. It boils like sludge in a sick engine. Israel's retaliation is more than that, it is intended as a punishment, just like it's incursion into Lebanon was. Such an exaggerated response reveals the intention regardless of the spin. If you ask who is terrorizing whom? It looks like Israel is by far the most 'terrible terrorist,' since the supposed provocation pales in comparison to the response, which is not at all measured.
You do not see that you have turned Palestine into a huge concentration camp, complete with walls (What do you expect to happen when you push the already desperate into further desperation?). And it's like shooting fish in a barrel, isn't it? You say it isn't genocide, but if it smells like a duck, quacks like duck...well, you know the rub.
"This ongoing conflict has seeming made both sides 'insane' with hatred."
Excellent point!
We do not have to be passive as people of the United States. Ali Abunimah had some good points on DemocracyNow this morning. "If we want change, we have to make change", he said and listed suggestions. www.democracynow.org transcript will soon be online,the show is already online, both free. I just checked; the video is there. I listened to the show on WBAI www.wbai.org. Sometimes I listen, then read, sometimes I listen then view a show.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz (Dec. 27) reported that Israel has launched a PR campaign to persuade the world that its aggression is self-defense. Haaretz (Dec. 28) reported that Israel, not Hamas, broke the ceasefire and that Israel’s attack on Gaza has been planned for 6 months. It is not defensive retaliation to rocket fire. Haaretz (Dec. 29) asks “Whose is the voice for a million and a half of the most victimized people on the face of our earth, serially colonized, exploited, deprived of work, deprived of food, deprived of basic freedoms, deprived, decade after degenerating decade, of any semblance of a future?” The US government should look at facts, not Israeli PR propaganda, and take actions that fit US values and national interests. Killing the people of Gaza is against our values and against our national interests.