WarSclerotic

Op-Ed: Obama’s Gaza Game, Israel National News, Daniel Greenfield, July 31, 2014

(The article assumes that President Obama has a coherent strategy. Does he, or is he merely incompetent and/or detached from Mid East reality? — DM)

Obama’s initial support for Israel’s war on Hamas was only to the extent necessary to bring the terrorist group to the negotiating table. And then once Hamas comes to the negotiating table, the White House will back its demands against Israel in exchange for getting the Brotherhood on board with its agenda.

While Israelis are fighting and dying, families huddling in bomb shelters and soldiers going off to face death, the men and women in suits and power suits moving through the great halls of diplomacy are using them as pawns in a larger game.

During the Cold War, Israel was a pawn in a larger struggle between the US and the USSR. Now it is back to being a counter in a larger game.

Israel’s function within the great halls of diplomacy was always as a lever on the Arab states. It was not an end, but a means of moving them one way or another. When the Arab states drifted into the Soviet orbit, the “Special Relationship” was born. The relationship accomplished its goal once Egypt was pried out of the Soviet orbit. It has lingered on because of the emotional and cultural ties of Israel and the US.

Now Obama is using Israel as a lever to push Egypt back into the Islamist camp. Egypt’s rejection of the Muslim Brotherhood broke the Arab Spring. Political Islam, which seemed to be on the ascendance, is back to being a freak show represented by terrorists and Turkey’s mad mustachioed dictator.

Egypt was where Obama went to begin the Arab Spring. Egypt is still his target. Israel is just the lever.

The reason Israel was never allowed to truly win any wars was because it was being used as a lever. By being a “good lever” during the Cold War, it could damage Egypt enough that the latter would come to the negotiating table overseen by the US and move back into the Western sphere of influence.

Israel couldn’t be allowed to win a big enough victory because then there would nothing to negotiate. Likewise, Israel wouldn’t be allowed to keep what it won because then there would be no reason for Egypt to come to the negotiating table. Sometimes Israel would even be expected to lose, as in the Yom Kippur War, to force it to come to the negotiating table.

Swap Egypt for the PLO and that’s how the disastrous peace process happened. Then swap the PLO for Hamas and that is where we are now.

Obama’s initial support for Israel’s war on Hamas was only to the extent necessary to bring the terrorist group to the negotiating table. And then once Hamas comes to the negotiating table, the White House will back its demands against Israel in exchange for getting the Brotherhood on board with its agenda.

Israel is just the means; the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islam are the objective. That objective may mean the end of the West, but those striding boldly through the halls of diplomacy are not worried.

The real target of the Hamas campaign wasn’t Israel; it was Egypt.

Egypt’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood had included Hamas. That crackdown worried Hamas far more than anything that Israel was doing. Meanwhile the Muslim Brotherhood’s loss of power meant a major setback for the sugar daddies of the Arab Spring; Qatar, Turkey and their Western allies.

The new alignment had placed Qatar, Turkey, Obama and the EU in one row, while Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the PLO were in another row. The latest phase of the Gaza War between Israel and Hamas was meant to break apart that alignment.

Obama’s tilt toward Iran had encouraged Sunni Muslims to throw their backing behind ISIS leading to significant gains in Iraq. Qatar and Turkey, backers of both Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, then used ISIS to push the myth that the only counter to Al Qaeda was the Brotherhood’s political Islam.

Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, political Islam and the Jihadist bands, have always been two sides of the same coin, but the argument remains a persuasive one in the great halls of diplomacy.

Egypt had bottled up Hamas to avoid a repetition of the jailbreaks, terrorist attacks and street violence that had freed Morsi and Brotherhood leaders and later enabled Morsi to attempt a takeover of the Egyptian military.

The path to putting the Muslim Brotherhood back in power in Egypt runs through Hamas.

Hamas attacked Israel. There was enough backing for Israel’s attack on Hamas to get it to the negotiating table. But once a ceasefire offer was on the table, Egypt would no longer be calling the shots. Instead the deal would come through two of Hamas’ state sponsors; Qatar and Turkey.

For this to work, Obama had to keep a leash on Israel, giving it permission to fight and then pulling it back at the critical moment. Meanwhile Egypt would be surprised to learn that it was no longer setting the terms of the ceasefire based on the same old arrangement, but that its place would be filled by Qatar and Turkey. Their ceasefire terms, approved by the US, would loosen the blockade around Hamas.

Egypt had attempted to hold Hamas to the original ceasefire terms. That was not in the interests of the White House. The ceasefire negotiations had to be sabotaged with a political intervention on behalf of Hamas. And who better to conduct that political intervention than Secretary of State John Kerry?

Egypt, Israel and the PLO had not wanted Kerry to come. Israel’s former ambassador to the US had said that he was not invited. But he was caught on a hot mic saying that he was going to come anyway.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was even more unwanted, but Qatar transported him to Israel.

Kerry, the UN and Hamas had all become projections of Qatari state power into Egypt and Israel.

The US and the UN pushed for an urgent and immediate ceasefire. Israel accepted the ceasefire several times, but Hamas resumed firing each time. While Israel thought that this demonstrated its peaceful intentions, what it actually did was give Hamas the power to set the terms of the ceasefire.

Once Hamas had that power, meeting its demands became the key element of ending the violence.

One of Egypt’s remaining political assets had been the ability to turn off Hamas violence. Now Qatar and Turkey had demonstrated that it could no longer do that. With Qatar, Turkey and the US undermining Egypt, it could no longer pressure Hamas. Meanwhile the UN and the US were pressuring Israel to accept the Qatar/Turkey ceasefire terms favorable to Hamas and unfavorable to Egypt and Israel.

But diplomacy was never Kerry’s strong suit. His blatant Qatari intervention instead alienated everyone.

Netanyahu has chosen to extend the operation against Hamas. Backing him up are poll numbers which show that the vast majority of Israelis want the job done. The PLO now suspects that Obama is about to back a Hamas coup against it. And Egypt’s military has gotten a lot of recent experience watching Obama’s botched diplomatic strategies blow up in his face.

The real objective of this war was to undermine Egypt. Egypt was supposed to scramble into the new alignment by developing closer ties with Hamas and cutting a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood.

And if Egypt’s government wouldn’t cooperate, the Muslim Brotherhood might be able to tap into enough of the anti-Israel and pro-Hamas sentiment to topple the government a second time. But if Egypt remains opposed to Hamas and Israel pushes forward with a plan to demilitarize Gaza, then the goals of those in the great halls of diplomacy who are behind this war will fail.

Is Hamas calling it quits
posted at 12:01 pm on July 31, 2014 by Noah Rothman

All this talk of a negotiated ceasefire only lengthens the war. Without it, Hamas could very well be ready to quit. – LS

Over the course of the four-week-long conflict in the Gaza strip, Hamas, the governing authority in that territory, has rejected a variety of ceasefire proposals. Many of those were submitted by Arab negotiators, including Egypt and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. One ceasefire Hamas found favorable, submitted by United State Secretary of State John Kerry, was deemed so favorable to Hamas that Israel’s security cabinet rejected it unanimously.

On Thursday, a sign of hope emerged indicating that the conflict will soon come to a close. According to one unconfirmed report in the Arabic language Quds Press International News Agency, Hamas has consented to allow proxies to negotiate a long-term ceasefire agreement with Israel (translation of the text via Google):

Hamas and across the head of its political bureau, Khaled Meshaal, has given the green light to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to negotiate a long-term truce and discuss and amend the Egyptian initiative presented by President [Abdel Fattah] Sisi for both the Palestinian and Israeli sides, on the imposition of calm in the sector of the ceasefire by Israel and the resistance movements in the Gaza Strip.

There is plenty of reason to be skeptical of this latest report, the most glaring of which is the claim that Meshaal is amenable to a ceasefire negotiated by Egypt. While that Arab state enjoys a traditional role as a key negotiator in conflicts between Israel and the various Palestinian governing entities, Sisi has a cool relationship with Hamas.

As The New York Times reported Wednesday, the Arab states are leery of Hamas and view their rejection of a number of ceasefire proposals as irresponsible. The rejection of a ceasefire proposal submitted by Cairo, which The Times notes “met most of Israel’s demands and none from the Palestinian group,” has sapped the region of much of its goodwill toward Hamas.

“King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt the next day to commend it, Mr. Sisi’s office said, in a statement that cast no blame on Israel but referred only to ‘the bloodshed of innocent civilians who are paying the price for a military confrontation for which they are not responsible,’” The Times reported.

Egyptian officials have directly or implicitly blamed Hamas instead of Israel for Palestinian deaths in the fighting, even when, for example, United Nations schools have been hit by Israeli shells, something that occurred again on Wednesday.

Hamas is surely losing friends in the region, but they continue to be buoyed by the amount of support they have received in Western press outlets, on the streets of Europe, and in the United Nations. On Thursday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, accused both Hamas and Israel of crimes of war. That alone may lead Hamas to believe they can negotiate more favorable ceasefire terms down the road.

The Quds report is an interesting development, but there are many reasons to take it with a grain of salt. For now.

Crush the monster while it’s still small – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Difficult images of destruction are arriving from Gaza. They are being broadcast all over the world right now. When they are repeated again and again, they have a brainwashing effect. A sane person cannot remain indifferent to them.

Those who protest against Israel are not only anti-Semites. They are human beings. It pains them. It pains most Israelis too. So how is it possible that despite these difficult images, despite the damage caused to innocent people, there is no other way but to deal Hamas’ military force a critical blow?ed casualty rate.’

The professional Israel haters, those who do it for a living and as a profession, like to compare Israel today to Germany in the 1930s. Let’s go down that same road.

In those days too, an anti-Semitic movement developed inside Europe, spreading hatred. Then too, many people thought that if something bad was happening in Germany, there was a need for a dialogue, reconciliation, understanding. Others thought it was a monster that only wanted to eat Jews, not the free world.

Between Chamberlain the appeaser and Churchill the aggressor – the majority supported reconciliation. We all know what happened next.

Let’s skip the horrible war for a moment, which claimed the lives of 60 million people. Let’s jump over to the horrific bombings of Dresden and Tokyo and to the two atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those were the incidents which concluded the war. Incidents which created havoc, destruction and horrors.

Let’s just assume that in the early stage, in 1938, instead of the Munich Agreement with the Nazi regime, those who thought the Nazis should be attacked would have had the upper hand. Let’s assume that France and Britain would have started bombing the Nazi regime’s centers of power, in the stages when most of its force could have still been destroyed.

It’s safe to assume that a considerable number of the casualties would have been innocent people. Why in the NATO bombings of Belgrade in 1999 as well, most of the dead were innocent.

What then? We know. Instead of great destruction, with tens of millions of casualties, there would have been a little destruction with tens of thousands of casualties. A little aggression against a little monster would have prevented huge destruction by a big monster.

In the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the picture is much clearer. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis of the 1930s did not speak, at least not openly, about annihilating Jews. The Hamas charter and the Hamas leaders, on the other hand, speak openly about annihilating Jews. And not just Jews, but also “Christians and communists.” And not just annihilation, but also “lebensraum,” which includes “conquering Rome, London and the two Americas.”

Hamas’ children’s channel instills an alarming amount of hatred against Jews. Hamas’ official channel asserts that “the Christians, the Jews and the communists must be destroyed to the very last one of them.”

They’re not just talking. It’s already happening in front of our eyes as we speak, in Musul in Iraq and in Raqqa in Syria. They are beheading their rivals, they are carrying out a mass slaughter. They are not hanging out in Musul’s bars, as the Nazis did in Paris. They are bombing them and the people inside them.

The US fought the Jihad’s extensions in Afghanistan and in Iraq. It failed. The Taliban is growing stronger. ISIS is conquering. Israel cannot afford to lose.

On this background, reconciliation can only take place, if at all, under the condition set by the European Union: A complete demilitarization of the Strip. Preferably in an agreement. The demilitarization must also include the incitement mechanisms. But as long as Hamas refuses – and Hamas refuses – it must be done forcibly. Now it’s still possible. Tomorrow it may be too late.

The killing and destruction are distressing. As long as Hamas not only talks about annihilation, not only refuses reconciliation, but also invests everything it has in huge terror mechanisms, tunnels and rockets, Israel will be committing a crime against itself and against the free world if it fails to take action to crush the monster. It should happen now, while the monster is small. If it doesn’t happen, in five years the free world will reach a big Dresden.

And one last thing. Sam Harris, an American philosopher, atheist and rationalist, published an article this week titled, “Why don’t I criticize Israel?” He does have some criticism. But his concluding sentence was: “The truth is, we are all living in Israel. It’s just that some of us haven’t realized it yet.”

Hey free world, are you listening?

Casualties in Gaza too high – US, BBC News, July 31, 2014

(I have yet to see any specific suggestions on how Israel could lessen civilian casualties in Gaza without effectively surrendering to Hamas’ missiles, tunnels and booby trapped “civilian” structures for peace program. Perhaps the U.S. Department of Defense could share ideas on how to do it. Or Hamas could be given more reliable missiles that would detonate in Israel rather than in Gazan civilian areas.– DM)

The US has said that civilian casualties in Gaza are “too high”, and called on Israel to do more to protect civilian life.

“The Israelis need to do more to live up to their very high standards… for protecting civilian life,” a Pentagon spokesman said.

The UN has also criticised Israel over the worsening situation in Gaza, saying people there are “facing a precipice”.

Some 425,000 Palestinians have been displaced by fighting, the UN says.

Meanwhile a senior Israeli official told the BBC that the army had “neutralised” 70 to 80% of Hamas’ offensive tunnel network.

Israel says it will not stop its operation in Gaza until all the tunnels – which militants use to infiltrate Israeli territory – have been destroyed.

Since Israel began its offensive in Gaza on 8 July, 1,400 Palestinians have been killed, most of them civilians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

It said 173 people had been killed within the past 24 hours.

Some 58 Israelis have been killed, 56 soldiers and two civilians. A Thai worker in Israel has also died.

Hamas Planned War for Months in Advance, Says IDF, Israel National News, Kobi Finkler, Gil Ronen, July 31, 2014

Senior Southern Command officer says IDF was aware that pace of tunnel digging was tripled in February, was not surprised by them.

Gaza terror tunnel Flash 90

A senior source in the IDF’s Southern Command says the IDF was not surprised by the Hamas tunnel network, and seeks to dispel the widely held notion that the flareup in fighting in Gaza was an unintended result of the large-scale arrests of Hamas terrorists carried out by the IDF after the abduction and murder of three yeshiva boys.

Hamas began preparations for the “July War,” as he put it, in February of this year, and the date of July 15 was set for its launching four months ahead of time.

Contrary to most reports, the officer says that the tunnel threat was something “everyone” knew about, both inside and outside the military. However, he explained, “on a national level, no one wanted to hear about the tunnel issue.”

In February, he added, Hamas tripled the pace of the tunnel digging, especially in the southern Gaza Strip, and the IDF knew this. The tunnel diggers had previously worked one eight-hour shift per day, and began working three eight-hour shifts, around the clock.

“We watched them, we heard the work being done and we saw it advancing at a pace of 150 meters (500 feet) per month,” said the the senior officer, who added that the IDF prepared for a scenario in which dozens of terrorists would emerge from a tunnel shaft and attack communities or IDF forces.

“We put a company of soldiers in each community, we reinforced the units and we took down outposts so as not to endanger soldiers. We were ready for any situation and the fact is that in the infiltration near Sufa two weeks ago, the IDF was prepared, it stopped the vehicles that were on the route and attacked the terrorists from different angles.”

“Hamas, which built all of its expectations on the tunnels for four years, has some residual ability left and we will neutralize that, too, in the coming days,” he added. As he looked at the fields next to the border fence, he said: “No field was damaged here. We take the agriculturalists in our tanks to open the irrigation sprinklers, just so the field can continue to give fruit.”

Hamas’ UN schools, Israel Hayom, David Bedein, July 31, 2014

That rocket launchers were found at U.N. facilities is hardly surprising. Fifteen years ago, the Gaza-based employees of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency held elections to determine its union leaders. Hamas took advantage of the campaign and took over the entire school system. By 2012, more the 90 percent of UNRWA employees had become Hamas supporters.

As a result of the takeover, Hamas created an entire apparatus whose mission was to maintain its grip on all the Gaza-based UNRWA schools. The organization, Al-Kutla Al-Islamiya (the Islamic Bloc), changed the school curriculum and introduced new textbooks. Anyone looking at the subject matter would see an organization that is bent on disseminating its ideology to young Gazans.

The takeover of UNRWA was an inside job, carried out by the Hamas representatives who were assigned to each school and whose job was to recruit students to the Islamic Bloc. This ensured the schools had programs that prepared the pupils for the armed struggle against Israel. This includes their grooming as “would-be shaheeds [martyrs]” and brainwashing them on the “right of return.” To get a an idea of the indoctrination that is taking place in Gaza, it would suffice to look at the Islamic Bloc’s YouTube clips, which allegedly feature UNRWA instructors doing Hamas’ bidding.

My organization has also been documenting the UNRWA-administered summer camps for many years. We have been aided by a Palestinian team. The footage clearly shows that the campers are not introduced to the values of the U.N. but rather to the values of jihad, espousing the “liberation of Palestine” and the “right of return,” by means of an armed struggle.

Despite this being an open secret — all of UNRWA’s donors are in the know, including the United States and Israel — the organization is still considered a welfare and relief agency that could provide an “alternative to Hamas.” But if you ask Gazans what UNRWA has done for them, they would say “nothing,” (that is, except perpetuate their refugee status). Hamas knows the reason. It has a vested interest in ensuring that conditions remain unchanged and that the millions of greenbacks keep flowing in. This keeps the “right of return” relevant.

Donors use Israel to facilitate their transactions. It receives the money and hands it over to UNRWA officials who are affiliated with Hamas. Rockets and tunnels may be the most pressing concern right now, but over the long haul, it is the brainwashing and the stagnation among Gazan schoolchildren that should have us worried. It could lead to yet another unwanted conflagration.

Israel must insist on an international mechanism to follow the money, to ensure that the textbooks and teachers carry out the job they were hired to perform. Such a mechanism would primarily serve Gazans, by improving their lives. At the very least it will have helped reduce the threat Israelis face in the long run. We have had our fair share of committees of inquiries, we don’t need another one to investigate why Israel became complicit in funding the Hamas-dominated UNRWA schools.