Today's Situation

No addresses Monday, July 03, 2006

Shortly after the Israeli move this morning, the latest in the week-long retaliation for the capture of Shalit last Sunday, the three groups that claim to be holding him -- the Hamas military wing, the Popular Resistance Committee, and the Army of Islam -- issued a leaflet saying that they were extending a deadline until tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. for Israel to release all the Palestinian woman prisoners it holds (about 35), all the under-18-year-olds (about 300) and 1,000 of the oldest and sickest of the Palestinian prisoners. The leaflet says if Israel does not obey, it will ‘bear the consequences,’ but does not detail what that means.

The Israeli government’s official position, enunciated repeatedly by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert -- too often and too loudly, say many commentators -- is that there will be no negotiations for the release of the captive soldier. Israel wants forceful U.S. action against Syria, to pressure Hamas secretary general Khaled Mish’al, who is said to be using the kidnapping to wrest control over Hamas from the Hamas government in Gaza (the Hamas ministers from the West Bank are in Israeli custody, said to be facing indictment for membership in terror organizations). The U.S. has expressed support for Israel’s firm demand that it wants its soldier back, but it has also warned Israel against further deterioration of the Palestinian economy, destruction of the Gazan infrastructure, and harm to the Palestinian population. Israel keeps denying that Gaza, where unemployment is over 60 percent, half the population lives on less than $2 a day, and since last week, many have been without electricity, is facing a humanitarian crisis, calling such claims ‘propaganda.’ But under pressure from the U.S., it has allowed truckloads of food and medicines into the Strip, while blocking any exit from Gaza since Shalit was captured.

While Olmert and Peretz so far are vehemently against any negotiations to return Shalit, ‘sources in the defense establishment’ anonymously were telling Haaretz and Maariv this morning that ‘eventually someone will have to talk with someone,’ even if it is a mediator, and that Israel could release prisoners who are not terrorists, or even those who have served particularly long sentences and have renounced terror.

Perhaps. The problem is that while some Arab press reports today said that Egyptian mediators did get to meet directly with the Palestinians who captured Shalit, the captors appear to be living in a bit of a vacuum, disconnected not only from the Haniyeh government and the more moderate Abu Mazin, but even from the part of the Hamas military wing that does respond to orders from the Hamas government. Furthermore, the captors have won enormous sympathy in Palestinian public opinion, which now seems united in its demand that Israel release at least some prisoners in exchange for the captured soldier. Indeed, one military commentator last night said that the captors ‘are high, meaning euphoric’ and another pointed out that early in the crisis last eek, when it appeared that one of the three groups was ready to return the soldier, the other two groups said no. In other words, there is nobody in charge on the Palestinian side.

Inside Israel, meanwhile, Olmert is being backed in his absolutist rejection of any prisoner exchange by his popular foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, who was heading to Finland and Russia today, to drum up support for Israel’s position, and to seek Russian President Vladimir Putin’s help in pressuring Syrian President Bashar Assad to pressure Mish’al. But the public might be losing patience and was certainly not happy to see the headlines this morning quoting the head of the Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin, as saying that the affair could last ‘for weeks, months.’ Israel has been enjoying a year and a half of economic growth. The last thing Israelis want is a lengthy war of attrition against the Palestinians, who no doubt will try to resume suicide bombings, especially if the Israeli threats to assassinate Hamas leaders are executed.

The soldier’s capture is being compared to the assassination attempt on Shlomo Argov in 1982, the spark that launched the much planned Israeli war against the PLO in Lebanon, a military imbroglio that lasted 18 years. Shalit’s capture opened the way for the army, which has been pressing for ‘all-out war’ against the Hamas government since it was elected in January, to press its case to a government led by three people with no experience inside the defense establishment -- Olmert, Peretz and Livni. Indeed, it is important to recall that Livni was one of the few Likud ministers to vote against Ariel Sharon when he brought the plan to trade 400 Palestinians to the Hizbollah in exchange for three dead soldiers’ bodies and Elhanan Tennenbaum, an Israeli reserve colonel who was captured by the Lebanese group during an alleged attempt to buy drugs.

Meanwhile, there is no opposition to the Olmert line inside the government, and parliament’s opposition is mostly Rightist, huffing and puffing about how the disengagement from Gaza is to blame for the crisis and demanding even more forceful action against the Palestinians.

The ultimatum issued by the captors this morning prompted the ordinarily diplomatic Yitzhak Herzog, son of the late president and now tourism minister from the Labor Party, to tell Army Radio that ‘this is a war between the children of light and the children of darkness,’ and that there would be no capitulation to the captors.

As for the current state of the Israeli operation in Gaza, it has been painful collective punishment for the Palestinians of Gaza, particularly southern Gaza, but it has also been deliberately relatively bloodless, with only five deaths -- three last night when troops outside Rafah killed three armed men, two of whom were wearing explosives belts and were ready to blow themselves up against an Israeli force.

The parsing of the leaflet by Israeli commentators focused on the threat that Israel would ‘bear the consequences,’ if it does not release prisoners. Some said Hamas understands that Gilad Shalit is worth much more alive than dead. On the other hand, as Shaul Mishal, perhaps Israel’s leading Hamas expert said this morning, ‘there’s no address’ right now on the Palestinian side, even if Israel were ready to hand over prisoners. Mishal predicted that the meaning of the threat about Israel paying the price for not releasing prisoners would be that the captors will be able to take center stage in the Palestinian political arena. Mishal has been warning that the extra goals added by Israel to the release of Shalit -- the end to the Qassams, and the toppling of Hamas -- without engaging the Hamas government in dialogue for a wider ceasefire deal, will lead to the ‘al Qaida-ization’ of the Palestinian radicals. But Mishal is an academic, far from the inner circles advising Olmert. There, the talk is about submitting a bill to Knesset making it illegal to trade prisoners for kidnapped Israelis. It seems Israeli officials are prepared to sacrifice the hapless corporal from the tank corps, for the sake of all-out war against the Hamas, for some reason believing that will eventually lead to what they call moderation and pragmatism on the Palestinian side. In any case, on the thirtieth anniversary of the Entebbe rescue, there does not seem to be any military option for a rescue available to the IDF, nor does there seem to be an address on the Israeli side for negotiations to free the soldier.

Today's Situation || Yesterday's Situation