Today's Situation

The ultimatum passes Tuesday, July 04, 2006

While it is true that Israel’s position, as enunciated with ever increasing passion by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni -- with backing from Vice Premier Shimon Peres -- is that there will be no negotiations for Shalit’s release, the Egyptians continue their efforts to strike a broader deal for a renewed ceasefire, which would include not only the release of the soldier, but an end to Qassam fire into Israel -- in exchange for Israeli release of prisoners.

There were reports from Gaza, based on a statement by a Hamas official, that the captors had ‘pulled out’ of the talks with the Egyptians this morning, but since almost everything now is psychological warfare, that report might not be as significant as it was made to be in the noon news report. Turkey was sending its foreign minister to Syria to discuss the affair with Syrian President Bashar Assad, whom the Israelis hold ultimately responsible for the fate of the soldier, as the host of the Hamas secretary general Khaled Mish’al in Damascus. Mish’al is considered the overall commander of the Hamas group that captured the soldier last Sunday in a well-orchestrated guerilla attack on an Israeli military position on the southeastern Gaza border.

Justice Minister Haim Ramon, now considered one of the closest political allies of Olmert, said that ‘nothing changed’ as far as Israel was concerned, in the wake of the deadline passing without Israeli meeting the captors’ demands. Israel is not known to have made any counter-offer to the demand for the release of all the Palestinian women prisoners and all the prisoners under the age of 18 for information about Gilad Shalit’s physical condition (he is believed to have been lightly wounded, treated by a Hamas doctor) and 1,000 more prisoners for Shalit’s release.

The affair appears to have galvanized the Palestinians into a national consensus that Israel must free at least some of the estimated 9,000 Palestinians it holds in prisons. Polls show rising Palestinian confidence in the Hamas government, a third of which is being held in Israeli jails, arrested last week by Israel as it tried to press the Hamas government to move to free Shalit. But the Hamas government either doesn’t want the soldier freed, or it is unable to influence the captors.

The affair also appears to have galvanized Olmert, convincing him that he has it in his power ‘to change the rules of the game’ in the Middle East, by making it clear to potential kidnappers that there will be no deals for the release of hostages, under any circumstances.

For years, Israel has been trading prisoners it holds -- usually with an extraordinarily unbalanced formula -- for handfuls of Israelis held by captors, usually in Lebanon, by Palestinian groups and Hizbollah. The trades passed with some gnashing and wailing in Israel about giving into terrorists, but the deals were nonetheless made.

But the most recent trade, when Ariel Sharon gave up a few hundred prisoners to Hizbollah in exchange for the corpses of three soldiers taken from the Lebanese border at Mt. Dov and Elhanan Tennenbaum, a reserve colonel suspected of trying to strike it rich in a drug deal in Lebanon, turned many against such exchanges. There were two reasons for that -- one was that moderate Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas had pleaded with Israel to make a goodwill gesture and grant him the release of prisoners, but Sharon, for reasons he never explained, preferred to give prisoners to Hamas. The other reason was that Tennenbaum seemed to be such a sleazy character, that many Israelis felt a deal to get back the bodies of the three soldiers captured and killed by Hizbollah at the end of 2000 was tainted.

The Israeli argument is that making a deal for a hostage would only lead to more kidnappings, as if there is not a constant threat of kidnapping by both Hizbollah and Palestinian groups. Indeed, considering the sheer proximity in this tiny, crowded country of potential Israeli kidnap victims, whether soldiers or civilians, to potential Palestinian captors, it is amazing there have not been far more kidnappings than there have been until now.

West Bank teenagers routinely hitchhike from settlement to settlement, often left alone on empty West Bank roads. For them, it is a test of their ‘mastery’ of the Land. Inside Israel, where for decades hitchhiking was part of the military ethos, the Military Police crack down on hitchhiking soldiers, fining them heavily if they are caught trying to flag down a ride. Still, hitchhiking soldiers are not an uncommon sight.

Meanwhile, the Israeli operations continue in Gaza and the West Bank. So far, surprisingly, there has very little armed Palestinian resistance to the operations, which in Gaza consist of squeezing the southern Gaza region, where Shalit is believed held, and the northeastern Gaza area, where Qassam launches take place.

Israeli artillery is shelling empty areas in both places, to deter the kidnappers in the south from trying to smuggle Shalit out of the country and to deter Qassam launching crews in northeast Gaza from reaching their launch zones. Nonetheless, three or four Qassams were launched into the Western Negev overnight, as have been almost every night for months, causing neither injuries nor damage. Yesterday, one Qassam did spark a brush fire, but it was quickly put out by firemen.

One Qassam landed this morning within earshot of Sderot, where Prime Minister Olmert paid a brief surprise visit this morning, his first to the small town where nerves have been rattled by Qassams for the last four years. Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal, who has long called for decisive Israeli action against Gaza’s ‘terror infrastructure’ said it was a ‘very correct meeting, not heartfelt.’ Moyal said he ‘wants to believe Olmert’ when the prime minister promised that there would be quiet for Sderot when the IDF operations are over. Israel Radio’s correspondent said that people in the street were furious at Olmert, for only showing up in the township now and not months ago.

In addition, the nightly raids in West Bank cities, towns, and villages continue as IDF troops arrest those it suspects of being terrorists, or people the Shin Bet believes could lead to those it considers terrorists. Among those arrested in the last 24 hours were the suspected killers of West Bank settlement teen Eli Asheri, murdered last Sunday night. The three gave themselves up to Israeli troops who surrounded a police station near Ramallah, where the three had sought refuge. And just before noon, in the Jenin refugee camp, IDF troops neutralized a Palestinian car bomb meant for Israel.

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