Good analysis:
Israel Wants to Win in Gaza, but Erasing Hamas' Accomplishments Won't Come Easy
Hamas' demonstration of its abilities in recent days, culminating in the massive rocket barrages into central Israel, forced the military to bolster its efforts in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday. Alongside the preparations for the next phase, the army has been striving to cast a positive light on everything that has happened so far.
The government and military have been wildly praising their own accomplishments, particularly the assassination of leaders of
Hamas' military wing. The hope is to somehow compete with the enemy's accomplishments. But this seems a hard sell – Israelis aren't fully convinced, one of the reasons that the flare-up might continue.
As both Israel and Hamas are not interested in a broader confrontation, nor they expect concrete victory or defeat – for now, both sides are playing mind games.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's problem is that Hamas has a more impressive string of victories thus far. The militant organization has appropriated the Palestinian struggle for Jerusalem, completely sidelining the Palestinian Authority. Hamas has sent millions of Israelis in the center of the country running for shelter and
disrupted traffic at Ben-Gurion International Airport.
Hamas also chalked up tactical wins including harrying the Iron Dome defense system with a huge number of rockets, some of which caused significant damage. The Islamist organization also carried out an anti-tank-missile ambush at the border that
killed a Nahal infantry brigade, apparently the result of the force's flawed discipline. Israel is still looking for an appropriate response, in the hope of boasting its own victory.
Netanyahu must soon decide between applying additional military pressure and compromising on a cease-fire agreement, with suboptimal terms. As with similar operations in the past, the effectiveness of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza is liable to decline the longer they continue. At the same time, there's a growing concern that the IDF makes mistakes that would cause losses on the Israeli side, or a large number of Palestinian civilian deaths that would prompt international criticism of Israel.
And there's another problem – Hamas' accomplishment so far could spin the heads of its leaders, persuading them to continue firing rockets at Israel for a few more days. More Israeli civilian casualties would put more pressure on the government to make good on the threats that politicians have been making for 15 years and to launch a wide-scale ground offensive aimed at bringing down the Hamas government in the
Gaza Strip.
Throughout his years as prime minister, Netanyahu has tried to avoid this trap. In the two large operations in Gaza during his tenure, he entirely avoided a ground incursion (Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012), or made do with a limited ground operation that focused on destroying cross-border attack tunnels dug by Hamas (Operation Protective Edge in 2014). Israel's 2014 campaign in Gaza stretched across 51 days and ended only after Israel assassinated several senior members of Hamas' military wing and destroyed high-rises housing Hamas headquarters.
This time, Israel is trying to put last things first; the destruction of the high-rises began on the first day of the campaign, the targeted killings followed on the second day. Israel wants to demonstrate enough deterrence to break Hamas' spirit and force it to halt the fighting. The IDF’s senior command, despite the occasional contradictory public statement, is no more excited about a ground operation than Netanyahu.
Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi's changes over the past two years have focused more on improving the IDF's ability to attack from afar based on precise intelligence. The IDF’s ground capabilities have not been tested for many years, beyond training exercises. It is not at all certain that the political leadership still believes it is possible to make effective use of the army's ground forces in Gaza, while guaranteeing major accomplishments and avoiding heavy casualties on the Israeli side.
Some senior Israeli officers are preparing for a long campaign, which could last up to a week, while Netanyahu is reiterating his
empty promises that “we will strike Hamas with blows they have not dreamt of.” But Israel is not really aiming to defeat Hamas – a goal that is not necessarily attainable – but rather to deter it by extract a heavy enough price to make it stop its attacks in the short and long run.
Deterrence is not a wall, it is a dialogue. Israeli deterrence did not suddenly collapse this week. It seems it has faded away over the seven years that have passed since the 2014 Gaza War, until Hamas decided this week to take the risk of opening a much broader campaign. Something has gone wrong in the way in which Israel understands Hamas, because it did not anticipate the organization’s intentions in advance.
For now – and this could still change – it seems the Hamas leadership is tolerating the price the organization has paid. So far, Hamas has lost a few dozen operatives, some of them relatively senior. During Protective Edge Operation in 2014 and Cast Lead Operation in 2009, hundreds of members of the Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad's military wings were killed. This time around, and taking into consideration its achievements, Hamas’ leaders still seem to think they did not make a bad bargain.
Dr. Michael Milshtein of Tel Aviv University, an expert in Palestinian affairs and a former senior officer in Military Intelligence, told Haaretz that Hamas has drawn one main conclusion from Operation Protective Edge: It’s better to dictate the opening steps of the conflict and their timing, instead of being dragged in by Israel. Nonetheless, Milshtein estimates that Hamas planned a short and effective campaign, which it could stop at a time of its choosing. It is possible that the continuation of the Israeli strikes will gradually harm the impression created by of Hamas’ accomplishments and force it to strive for a quick ceasefire agreement.
In the long term, another worrying question is what Tehran and Beirut are learning from Hamas’ success in attacking the Israeli home front. The number of rockets and missiles in Palestinian hands is nowhere near the number in Hezbollah's arsenal on the northern front, without even considering its high-precision missiles.
The Air Force and the Intelligence Corps are demonstrating a high level of ability to strike targets, but the Israeli home front has been left rather vulnerable. The political echelon is barely functioning and the public has little trust in its leaders; the inequality is protection from rockets is obvious to all and many civilians, at least those who live in the center of the country, are only now discovering the meanings of war. This puts Israel’s regular boasting about the power of its army and the country’s standing in the region in a somewhat different light. Life, as always, is a bit more complicated.
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www.haaretz.com
