A Palestinian Hamas militant walks in the rubble of the destroyed house of Hamas militant Mohammad Abu Shmala, following an Israeli air strike in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Friday, Nov. 16, 2012. (Eyad Baba / AP Photo)
Hamas bears the lion’s share of the blame. Hamas and its friends fired off 600 rockets last year and 700 already in 2012, before Israel escalated its military operations. Hamas’s leaders have a million excuses about who started shooting whom first, and how, claiming, for example, that radical groups it couldn’t control fired most of the rockets. But a month and a half ago, Hamas claimed all the credit again. Whichever terrorist group actually did the shooting, Hamas had to know full well that if rocket fire against southern Israel continued, the Israelis would not put up with it and would fire back in spades—and that Gazan civilians would be killed. Knowing that puts the responsibility for those deaths on Hamas. It’s hard to escape the thought that some of Hamas’s leaders even revel in displaying Gazan casualties as a way of scoring propaganda points against Israel, at the expense of their own dead.
Hamas is smart enough to understand that Israeli leaders can’t cut them any more slack. Sure, even Prime Minister Netanyahu (let’s call him Bibi) understands that Hamas is more cautious than in the past, since, as a government collecting taxes and building assets, it now has a lot to lose. But Israel has little choice but to put the worst interpretation on Hamas’s actions, for an obvious reason: Hamas pledges to destroy the state of Israel. Hamas-lovers lose all credibility when they ignore that fact.
The Palestinian blame does not end with Hamas in Gaza, but runs to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. For sure, Bibi’s government has made peace prospects ever dimmer. But that, too, is not without cause. Bibi came to power in the wake of two failed Israeli peace efforts—efforts that Palestinian leaders rejected. These offers were made by Ehud Barak at the end of the Clinton administration, and by Ehud Olmert at the end of George W. Bush’s term. Olmert offered the Palestinians almost all of what they had been demanding—a state with safe passage between the West Bank and Gaza, a capital in East Jerusalem, a readjustment of Israeli settlements and 1967 borders, etc. When the plans were rejected, first by Yasir Arafat and then by current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli politics turned sharply rightward on peace efforts
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| Palestinians gathered on Friday around the body of a man identified as an Israeli collaborater Ashraf Ouaida in Gaza City. |
During this time, President Abbas has done little or nothing to prepare the Palestinian people for a peace settlement with a Jewish state of Israel. His people say he’s not politically strong enough to try, but that’s true for all leaders faced with difficult compromises with adversaries and enemies. Some step up to the plate with courage, and others, like Abbas, run away. How much courage would it take for him to ask that the Olmert proposal be put back on the table? He’s never come close to doing this, and the cost of doing so would not be great. In fact, he would benefit by putting the onus of political pressure back on Bibi. So when the blame is apportioned, Abbas and his fellow West Bank leaders have a good deal to answer for.
Bibi bears his share of the blame, as well. He would be very foolish to think that he could keep things calm with the Gazans and West Bankers without a serious peace process, and with ever-expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank. It just makes no sense to think that Palestinians will simply seethe in peaceful silence forever. It hasn’t happened before, and it can only get worse. At some point, it’s going to explode on Israel. Bibi, too, can parade excuses for his inaction on negotiations. He can point to past Palestinian rejections and argue that a new Israeli offer would be greeted as a sign of weakness. But those rationalizations find less and less resonance worldwide, even among those whose hearts are with Israel.
Bibi is losing support and sympathy for Israel in just about every corner of the globe, and most importantly in the United States. American politicians don’t like to question openly Israel’s reluctance to negotiate, but they feel it acutely and say so privately. If Bibi doesn’t try to resume serious peace talks with the Palestinians, he risks permanently damaging Israel’s vital ties with America.
Nor can Washington itself escape responsibility for the Gaza fighting. For four years, President Obama did little to foster talks. Now, he needs some courage and willpower of his own, plus a viable strategy. First, he will have to push both parties back to the table and show them he has a plan to avoid another failure. Second, he’s got to present that plan at the outset—at least an outline and presumably similar to the Olmert proposal, which many Israelis once liked. Third, Obama’s plan will need to add economic juice, especially for the Palestinians, financed by the Saudis and their Gulf neighbors. He should even extend these benefits to Egypt and a future Syrian regime. These goodies would add coherence both to the peace process and to U.S. policy toward the evolving Arab Spring.
Yes, we might have another ceasefire, after more Gazans and Israelis are killed. And yes, the rockets and the air attacks would then stop for a while. But expect worse for all parties in this Palestinian-Israeli and Mideast horror show unless and until all realize that they themselves are to blame, as well as everyone else.
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Israel killed the military commander of Hamas in an
airstrike on the Gaza Strip Wednesda bringing the two sides to the brink of
a possible new war. The attack came despite signs that Egypt had managed
to broker a truce between Israel and
Palestinian militants after a five day surge of violence which saw more than 100
missiles fired out of Gaza and repeated Israeli strikes on the enclave.
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| Palestinians gathered around a crater caused by an Israeli strike. |
The combination of longer-range and far deadlier rockets in the hands of more radicalized Palestinians, the arrival in Gaza and Sinai from North Africa of other militants pressuring Hamas to fight more, and the growing tide of anti-Israel fury in a region where authoritarian rulers have been replaced by Islamists means that Israel is engaging in this conflict with a different set of challenges.
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| Palestinian militants fire a rocket from the northern Gaza Strip toward southern Israel on Thursday. For the past decade, Palestinians in Gaza have been shooting short-range rockets into southern Israel. But Palestinians fired a much longer range rocket that landed just outside Jerusalem on Friday, a move seen as a major escalation. |
Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip have fired thousands of rockets into southern Israel over the past decade. Yet the one that landed harmlessly in an empty field south of Jerusalem on Friday could be as significant as all of the rockets that came before.
With that lone launch, the Palestinians demonstrated for the first time that they now have the capability to send a weapon the roughly 50 miles from the Gaza border north to Jerusalem.
The Palestinians also delivered a powerful symbolic and psychological message by targeting the most fiercely contested city in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a place that both sides claim as a capital.
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Hamas officials say there’s only one condition that will put an end to the string of rocket attacks on Israel: an overthrow of the blockade of the Gaza territory that would allow for free movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza along with a guarantee that Israel will stop all attacks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to "significantly expand" military operations.
November 18, 2012 8:50 PM
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| An assault on Gaza City killed at least 11 people, including children. |
Ten Palestinian civilians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza, according to Palestinian medics. Fighting in the region entered its fifth day Sunday as Israel mounted airstrikes in response to rocket attacks by Hamas militants. The 10 civilian fatalities are the most in any single incident so far.
November 18, 2012 10:30 AM
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As the death toll in Gaza rose to 45 Saturday, neighboring countries began to take sides. The Arab League announced it supports Palestinian and Egyptian efforts to stop the Israeli offensive in Gaza. Especially important for Gaza occupiers is the backing of Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey, all U.S. allies with democratically elected governments. Not only does this represent a shift in the Middle East overall, where many leaders were once wary of Hamas’s hardline Islamist ideology, but the group’s new friends will help to give it a stronger reputation internationally.
November 17, 2012 3:30 PM
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| The Iron Dome system has repelled 245 rockets since Wednesday |
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of a possible “expansion” as his country’s assault on Gaza entered its fifth day Sunday. Israeli bombers continued to hit targets in Gaza, broadening the scope of their strikes to include government buildings. Israel’s onslaught continued with its deadliest strike so far, said to target a Palestinian militant tied to recent rocket attacks and likely to weigh on any discussion of a cease-fire. A rocket fired by Hamas militants and aimed at Tel Aviv was intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system Sunda.,
November 18, 2012 7:27 AM
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When Israel assassinated the top Hamas military commander in Gaza on Wednesday, setting off the current round of fierce fighting, it was aiming not just at a Palestinian leader but at a supply line of rockets from Iran that have for the first time given Hamas the ability to strike as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
The commander, Ahmed al-Jabari, had shifted Hamas’s low-grade militia into a disciplined force with sophisticated weapons like Fajr-5 rockets, which are named after the Persian word for dawn and have significantly increased the danger to Israel’s major cities. They have a range of about 45 miles and are fired by trained crews from underground launching pads.
Hamas had perhaps 100 of them until the Israeli attacks last week, which appear to have destroyed most of the stockpile. The rockets are assembled locally after being shipped from Iran to Sudan, trucked across the desert through Egypt, broken down into parts and moved through Sinai tunnels into Gaza, according to senior Israeli security officials.
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