Israel Batters Hamas —- Kerry to the Rescue

Posted By P. David Hornik On July 21, 2014 @ 12:39 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 24 Comments

As of Sunday evening, on Day 13 of Operation Protective Edge, Hamas was still fighting on against Israel, although its prospects didn’t look good.

With Hamas’s rocket fire on Israel intensifying two weeks ago, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, with Iran’s nuclear program the main thing on his plate, kept ordering only small-scale retaliatory strikes from the air, hoping to avoid a larger conflict. But Hamas kept firing—more and more. So Israel launched Operation Protective Edge—but still tried to keep it limited, without boots on the ground in Gaza.

On Wednesday morning Netanyahu made an adroit move, publicly accepting an Egyptian ceasefire proposal. Hamas turned it down flat. Netanyahu, who told the Israeli public in a televised address on Sunday evening that he has been in constant contact with the leaders of the U.S., Canada, Britain, Germany, France, and other countries, undoubtedly drove that point home to them.

With Israel’s diplomatic position strengthened, and with Arab media growing harshly critical of Hamas, Hamas responded by…escalating the war. On Thursday at dawn the Israeli army spotted and repelled a group of 13 Hamas terrorists who had infiltrated into Israel through a tunnel from Gaza, on their way to perpetrate a massacre at nearby Kibbutz Sufa. The near-catastrophe was a pivotal moment that put an end to Israel’s boots-on-the-ground debate.

On Thursday night Israeli infantry, tank, and engineering units entered Gaza. The stated goal was to find the tunnels along the border—in which Hamas has invested vast sums and years of work—and destroy them, removing an intolerable danger of murderous attacks and kidnappings from residents of southern Israel.

In his speech Sunday evening Netanyahu spoke of somewhat broader aims—“an extended period of calm and security” and “inflicting serious damage” on Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza. While the IDF has indeed been finding and destroying tunnels, Sunday also found it locked in heavy fighting in the Shejaia neighborhood of Gaza City, a Hamas stronghold.

Which brings one to the issue of casualties.

People who complain of “asymmetry” and “disproportion”—meaning that something has to be wrong because Israelis aren’t dying—could feel somewhat better on Sunday evening, as the IDF officially announced that the total of soldiers killed since Israel invaded Gaza on Thursday night now stood at 18, 13 of them in the previous 24 hours. As for the Palestinian side, the death toll since the war started reportedly came to over 400, including 65 in the fighting in Shejaia on Sunday.

On the Israeli side, sensitivity to casualties is particularly high, and Netanyahu devoted a good part of his speech to the issue on Sunday evening. But with most of Israel under constant rocket fire for almost two weeks, and ongoing infiltration attempts from Gaza, Israelis will tolerate the casualties because they know the alternative is an Israel that is no longer viable.

Palestinian casualties are, of course, a different matter—the cause célèbre not only of Israel-bashers but also of Western governments that typically start pressuring Israel for a ceasefire as soon as it starts seriously fighting Palestinian terror.

The reasons for the “asymmetry” between Israeli and Palestinian casualties should be clear by now to anyone who is informed and has a conscience. Israel invests vast sums to protect its citizens, particularly with the Iron Dome missile-defense system; Hamas positions weapons stockpiles and command centers in and under mosques, schools, and hospitals. Israel goes to extraordinary lengths to warn Gazans of impending strikes, and encourages them to leave conflict zones; Hamas orders them to stay where they are.

It gets down to the moral difference between a democratic state with a Jewish ethos and a terror organization with a jihadist ethos. But it’s a distinction to which the world seems particularly resistant.

There were already signs of trouble on Sunday when U.S. secretary of state John Kerry—who has publicly made statements supportive of Israel and critical of Hamas—was caught in an open-mike moment bitterly criticizing Israel for Palestinian casualties and implying that he needed to come to the rescue.

A short time later President Obama chimed in with a call in a similar spirit to Netanyahu—in which he announced that Kerry was on his way.

Hamas is isolated, despised by most of the Arab world, caught in a vise between Israel and the fiercely anti-Hamas regime of Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt, inconsequentially supported by Turkey and Qatar, and in serious danger of sustaining a major, lasting blow.

A decisive Israeli win in this war will bolster Israel’s deterrence, discourage its jihadist foe Hizballah to the north, and demonstrate to the region that ideological jihad is a losing proposition and no match for Western military prowess. Obama’s “concern” and Kerry’s impending arrival are, then, very worrying.

It’s not on Israel, this time!

Arab rifts may complicate search for Gaza truce [Israel and Hamas]
http://news.yahoo.com/arab-rifts-may-complicate-search-gaza-truce-162358992.html

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3183170/posts

DOHA/CAIRO (Reuters) - The push for a Gaza ceasefire risks becoming mired in a regional tussle for influence between conservative Arab states and Islamist-friendly governments, with rival powers competing to take credit for a truce, analysts and some officials say.

The main protagonists are Arab heavyweight Egypt and the tiny Gulf state of Qatar, on opposite sides of a regional standoff over Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, and its ideological patron the Muslim Brotherhood.

Both camps suggest the other is motivated as much by a desire to polish diplomatic prestige and crush political adversaries as by the humanitarian goal of protecting Palestinian lives from the Israeli military.

“Gaza has turned very suddenly into the theater in which this new alignment within the Arab world is being expressed,” said UK-based analyst Ghanem Nusseibeh.

“Gaza is the first test for these new alliances, and this has affected the possibility of reaching a ceasefire there.”

He was referring to Qatar, Turkey, Sudan and non-Arab Iran, the main members of a loose grouping of states which believe Islamists represent the future of Middle East politics.

That camp stands in increasingly overt competition with a conservative, pro-Western group led by Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, most of whom are intent on crushing the Brotherhood and see it as a threat.

That cleavage is now apparent in the diplomacy over Gaza.

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This was the “new alignment” in the Middle East spoken about in a previous article from Israel, posted a few days ago! Now Gaza and Hamas is the fulcrum in the middle of this test of wills between these two major blocks. Israel has aligned itself with the Egyptian side, because both Israel and Egypt have the common goal of crushing Hamas, while the other side wants to save Hamas!

This was the earlier article ...

Euphoric Hamas needs to hear that Israel will oust it from Gaza if necessary
http://www.timesofisrael.com/euphoric-hamas-needs-to-hear-that-israel-will-oust-it-from-gaza-if-necessary/

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3182432/posts

The Qatari ceasefire initiative, first reported by the Times of Israel Saturday, illustrates how the continuing escalation of the conflict in Gaza has actually got nothing to do with Israel itself. Unfortunately, Israel has found itself tangled up in a battle of far wider proportions — a war between two competing axes in the Sunni Muslim world.

On the one side are Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, with Jordan and Saudi Arabia likely to join them in the next couple of days. On the other, Qatar, Turkey and Hamas, as well as other global supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood.

This is a proxy war for all intents and purposes. Make no mistake, Hamas remains committed to the destruction of Israel. But Hamas is firing rockets at Tel Aviv and sending terrorists through tunnels into southern Israel while aiming, in essence, at Cairo. It is backed in this by Doha and Ankara.

What arises from this state of affairs, and from Hamas’s baseless demands as they appear in the Qatari ceasefire proposal, is that this crisis is far from over.

Hamas is confident, even euphoric. In recent days, people who came in contact with the Palestinian terror organization’s leaders report that the sense they are broadcasting is that Hamas is besieging Tel Aviv, and that it will be starting its invasion of Israel shortly, not that the IDF is striking hard at Gaza, has its ground troops hitting Hamas in the Palestinian enclave, and is setting back the Hamas terrorist infrastructure by years ...

In a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Abbas in Cairo on Wednesday, Moussa Abu Marzouk, the deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau, dismissed Abbas’s pleas regarding a ceasefire, explaining that “what are 200 martyrs compared with lifting the siege [on the Gaza Strip?]”

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You thought this war was between Israel and Hamas! BUT, it’s now seen as a war between TWO COMPETING GROUPS in the Middle East, with Israel simply being used as a PAWN between them. The rockets are nonetheless real and damaging and people do get killed, but it’s REALLY not Israel as the focal point. If you understand that, things will fit together better, in your understanding.

Israel is “lining up” with the Egypt/Jordan/Saudi Arabia faction, as we’ve already seen with their cooperation with Egypt!

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