The Strategic Price Of Israel's Gaza Assault

Palestinians carry a wounded man from a building struck by an
Israeli missile strike in Gaza City. Majed Hamdan / AP

From Time Magazine:

A hot war in Gaza was not how Israel planned to appear on the strategic agenda of Barack Obama when he takes office in January. Its leaders had hoped to keep the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the backburner of the new Administration, which Israel hopes will make Iran's nuclear program its overriding priority in the Middle East. Instead, the weekend bloodbath in Gaza — the deadliest since Israel occupied the territory in 1967 — will cast the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an urgent crisis demanding a response from Washington, and highlighting the failure of the Bush Administration's and Israel's policies on Hamas in Gaza.

The air strikes that began Saturday, in which Palestinians claim at least 280 people have been killed, marked a dramatic escalation of a high-stakes strategic poker game between Israel and Hamas. Over the past seven weeks, each side has calculated the odds of outbidding the other, and even as Hamas, and the civilian population it represents, paid a heavy price in human casualties over the weekend, it may nonetheless retain a strategic advantage.

Read more ....

My Comment: The title of this article should have been .... "The Strategic Price For Israel In NOT Assaulting The Gaza Strip". From my perspective Israel had very little choice but to respond. The economic blockade was choking Hamas in the Gaza strip ..... giving them the only alternative but to drop the truce and resume rocket attacks to restore their legitimacy in the eyes of the Palestinians.

In return, Israel had to respond. Failure to do so would have put them in a very delicate situation in front of their enemies. Weakness has always resulted in more bloodshed in the Middle East. A thousand may die in the next few weeks, but the toll would be higher (in the long run) if nothing was done now. Such has been the sad state of Middle Eastern Affairs for centuries.

The Time's assertion that this is a failure of Israeli and White House strategy is ridiculous. Hamas .... unlike Fatah (even under Arafat) .... has always been very clear on their ultimate goal of destroying the State of Israel. This has always been a non-negotiable condition for Hamas. From my perspective negotiation and compromise is impossible with people who are dedicated to your extermination. I guess the Time's reporter for this article and his editorial managers have a different point of view while residing in their comfortable New York City offices.

As a result this war was sooooo predictable. I have been looking at my posts for the past year on this issue .... and they are universal in the observation that any truce will only be used as a tactic by both sides to resume the conflict between each other. This war is supported by the populations of both sides. The people in Gaza clearly gave this mandate to Hamas in elections two years ago, and public opinion has been strongly tilting to the hawks in Israel for the past year.

If there is an area where I have been wrong, it is in my guess on when this conflict was going to resume again. I personally never thought that the truce would last 6 months. Come to think of it .... no one really did.

What will be the outcome after this conflict .... probably more of the same. Until public opinion changes on both sides, this conflict will continue in perpetuity.