From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Sat Jan 10 2009 - 00:03:40 EST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/10/gaza-israeli-strategy-military-political
More, but worse
Editorial: Israeli leaders are as disunited about their goals as they are
unclear about how to achieve them
"We are very violent," Lieutenant Colonel Amir, commander of an Israeli
combat engineers unit, admitted as he explained that he will use any method
to prevent casualties among his troops. Meysa a-Samuni would not disagree.
She is the 19-year-old survivor of the shelling of a house in the Zeitoun
district of Gaza in which 30 people died, six of them members of her
family. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs would
not disagree either. It told us how Israeli soldiers had rounded up 100
Palestinian evacuees and put them in the house, which then was shelled,
although the UN stopped short of saying the shelling was deliberate. But it
did accuse soldiers of preventing the Red Cross from evacuating the wounded
for three days. A few doors away, four children were found cowering next to
the body of their dead mother.
None of this is new. Those who remember the details of past military
campaigns waged by Israel, a country which claims higher moral standards
than its neighbours, will experience an overpowering sense of deja vu. But
the governments who let the Gaza campaign continue by undermining calls for
an immediate ceasefire, are just as responsible. They, too, have
Palestinian blood on their hands. At the UN security council on Thursday
night, a last-minute call from the White House, led to a US abstention on a
resolution demanding a ceasefire. The result was that Israel did not have
to take it seriously, although neither did Hamas. Within hours, prime
minister Ehud Olmert dismissed the resolution as "not practical" and vowed
to continue the offensive. Those (such as Christian Brose, former
speechwriter to the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice) who argue that
Barack Obama will be a successful president because he will stick to the
foreign policy he inherits from George Bush, rather than change it, are
getting what they wish for.
To get a sense of what the Arab world is seeing on its television screens
from Gaza, readers should log on to the English language website of
al-Jazeera, a channel which does not spare its viewers the footage of
bereaved parents holding the dead corpses of their children up to the
camera. If anyone thinks these images from Gaza will moderate opinion in
the Arab street, cause them to reject Hamas and Hezbollah, and produce the
"pragmatic internationalism" that the Washington foreign policy
establishment dreams about, they delude themselves. Tens of thousands took
to the streets of Jordan, one of Israel's staunchest Arab allies, demanding
the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador. Is this progress towards an
acceptance of Israel as their neighbour?
So now what? More of the same, only worse. Having concluded that, after 15
days of intensive bombardment, their forces have yet to translate military
gains into political advantage, the Israeli army has only two options: to
retreat or press on. Hamas are still intact as a military organisation.
They continue to fire rockets, and have started to attack Israeli fixed
positions around Gaza City and the major refugee camps. If Israeli forces
retreat, their leaders face awkward questions in an election campaign about
what has been achieved. If they press on, they face equally searching
issues: what can further military action do to change Hamas's calculation
that they are withstanding and enduring? War has its own momentum, and if
the endgame is the dismemberment of Hamas, there is only one way to do that
- house-to-house fighting and reoccupation.
This campaign was months in the planning, and it has gone largely according
to military plan. Hamas had not produced a surprise and has deployed its
own forces conservatively. And yet Israeli leaders are as disunited about
the goals as they are unclear about how to achieve them. They have tactics
but lack strategy. The death toll could triple and they could be in the
same position this time next week.
ontent
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More, but worse from Israeli strategy in Gaza
This article was first published on guardian.co.uk at 00.01 GMT on Saturday
10 January 2009. It appeared in the Guardian on Saturday 10 January 2009 on
p34 of the Editorials & reply section. It was last updated at 00.04 GMT on
Saturday 10 January 2009.