Today's Situation

COMING SOON: THE IDF IN GAZA , September 06, 2007

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert convened his security cabinet on Wednesday afternoon, to discuss Israel's response to the ongoing Qassam attacks by Palestinian factions on towns and communities in the western Negev.

Rather than approve the wide-scale military operation that some ministers had been advocating, the cabinet authorized the IDF, the Foreign Ministry and the Justice Ministry to examine the option of taking punitive action again against the civilian population of Gaza any time a Qassam is launched or a mortar fired.

What at first appeared to be a creative if bizarre suggestion by Vice Premier Haim Ramon - turning off the water and closing electricity supplies for a couple of hours in response to rocket attacks - now seems close to becoming official Israeli policy. Yedioth Ahronoth describes the plan as 'a civilian penal plan for Gaza.'

According to The Jerusalem Post, Olmert opposed the idea of civilian punishment, since he believes it would be unlikely to effectively stop the rockets, and would bring in its wake a huge international outcry.

And while the security cabinet refrained from giving the military the green light to pour troops into Gaza, Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned after the meeting that 'the IDF is moving closer to an extensive ground operation, in order to halt the rocket fire and the strengthening [of militant organizations].'

According to Haaretz, military sources say that as long as the tension is high along the Syrian border, IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi objects to large-scale action in Gaza because of the difficulty of operating on two fronts without massive drafting of the reserves.

Israel Radio adds that in the meantime, portable shelters are being deployed in open areas of Sderot and the surrounding areas, and rocket-proof bus shelters are also being built in the town.

Also on the Gaza front, Haaretz reports that Israel has submitted a new proposal for an exchange deal involving kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. The report does not provide any details of the proposal, or how it was relayed to Hamas, although it quotes Hamas sources as saying that at least more than one European government is mediating a possible deal. Maariv adds that the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Shalit's captors may permit a representative of the organization to visit him. Angelo Gnaedinger made the statement following a meeting with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Gaza Strip. According to the paper, Haniyeh also released a statement calling for a solution to the impasse, but did not refer to a possible Red Cross visit. He said he was hoping for a prisoner swap that will end the suffering of the Palestinian prisoners and close the Shalit file. Haniyeh added that he was not the address for the request and that the issue was entirely in the hands of the kidnappers.

Finally, all the paper report that the prime minister is set to eschew tradition and will not be granting interviews to mark the Jewish New Year, which is celebrated next week. It has been customary for the prime minister to give interviews twice a year to the media, before the New Year and Passover.

According to Arutz 7, Olmert's aides said that the prime minister wants to keep the lid on negotiations with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and that he prefers to spend time working on the issues instead of talking about them. Haaretz adds that aides claim the interviewers often attempt to 'anger the prime minister in an effort to get a better headline than their competitors.'

THEY ARE ALL RIGHT: Writing in Yedioth Ahronoth, Alex Fishman examines the options facing Israel as it tries to counter the threat of terrorism from Gaza and concludes that the situation is so complex that all of the arguments for and against a wide military operation there have some degree of merit.

"The euphemism they use is 'maintaining the flexibility of the political echelon.' In simple language, it is known as playing for time. To be even more accurate, we should say that what the security cabinet decided yesterday was, more or less, to try and get through the holiday period unscathed. Governments have every right to make legitimate decisions of this kind, on condition that they do not simultaneously create the false impression that they are actually doing something, that they do not hoodwink the public and create the illusion that they are half-way to finding the ultimate solution to the problem.

In the not too distant future, we will see and hear a lot of performances, rhetoric, muscle-flexing and pyrotechnics. Tanks will go into Gaza and will pull out of Gaza, bulldozers will thunders into Palestinian towns, the Golani and Givati brigades will be called into action, will round up suspects, will destroy things and will leave scorched earth behind them. There will be a lot of activity on the Gaza front; like today, only more so.

On Sunday, the cabinet will be presented with the 'basket' of civilian measures that it aimed at tightening the siege of Gaza. This, too, sounds excellent. After all, some of the country's smartest men are sitting around discussing the best way out of our current predicament. The problem is that when the whole operation is a facade, there is a tendency to make stupid mistakes. For example, the IDF yesterday discovered - without warning - seven Qassam launch sites. The army has known about them the whole time. It had set up look-out points to be able to observe them, planted ambushes nearby and waited for the cell to arrive. The metal pipes themselves are worth nothing without the terrorists. They are manufactures in Gaza and sold by the kilo. But someone seemed to think that by issuing photographs of these things, they would be able to appease public concerns. Shame. This is how one loses an important operational tool for creating a show.

The defense minister was at the IDF's Gaza Division headquarters until 1 A.M. on Tuesday. He came to study the army's plans and to assess the level of operational readiness and competence. Also present were the deputy chief of staff, the head of the Southern Command, the divisional commander, other senior officers and Shin Bet operatives deployed in the field. Barak did not hear any rabble-rousing there; no one said we should tear them apart or launch a major attack. The army's assessment is very sober. As far as the military is concerned, there is no point in launching a limited operation in a small area, and dedicating a large number of troops to it, simply in order to wreak havoc and then withdraw. The damage would outweigh the benefits. If conditions are not right for large-scale, rolling operations that could lead to some positive and far-reaching outcome - the army believes it is better to wait and to continue the holding operations with more resources and troops.

Those who advocate a broader operation - the heads of the Southern Command, for example - present a picture of Hamas growing in size and strength, which will, they say, lead inevitably to a conflict. So it is better, they argue, to do it at a time that suits Israel best, rather than waiting until Hamas arms itself with even more sophisticated weaponry. The Shin Bet talks about deterrence: the need to make Hamas pay a heavy price. And then there is the moral argument: the fact that Sderot residents feel as if their government has deserted them.

Among the arguments against such an operation at this time is the international peace conference that the United States is hoping to organize in Washington in November. A massive IDF operation in Gaza would put an end to that. And as long as there is continued tension between Israel and Syria on the northern border, it is impossible for the IDF to concentrate large numbers of troops in Gaza. Even a large-scale incursion into the Rafah border area is problematic, since no one can predict how events will unfold there. Sderot itself is also not ready for a massive IDF operation. Perhaps the army would be best advised to wait a few months, during which time the Defense Ministry can significantly upgrade protective measures in Sderot. Then, of course, there is the Jewish holiday season. So the government plays for time, tries to get through the holidays in one piece and will make up its mind thereafter.

Until a decision is finally made, the euphemism machine has come up with the phrase 'tightening the siege and the civilian-economic pressure on Gaza.' In simple language, this means coming up with a plan to harass civilians and to disrupt civilian life in Gaza. Hamas relies heavily on public opinion, and so Israel needs to pressure public opinion. We must make life in Gaza so uncomfortable that it is hard for Hamas to govern. Hamas leaders are now convinced that they are capable of restoring order to the streets of Gaza, and that Israel will not dare to touch the basic humanitarian needs of the civilian population: electricity, water, fuel and basic foodstuffs. When there is law and order, when there is electricity and when there is food on the plates - a regime can remain in power indefinitely. Israel is hoping to break this formula. Not to completely shut off the electricity, but to harass the Palestinians. The hospitals have generators, so there will be no humanitarian disaster. The worst that will happen is that some parts of the Gaza Strip will not be able to watch television for a few hours. The same tactic can be applied to gasoline supplies. Let them start using a horse and cart again. And Israel can also prevent the transfer of salaries from the Ramallah to civil servants in Gaza.

There is also a moral aspect to the economic pressure on a civilian population: before sending in soldiers to Gaza for an operation that will no doubt cost lives, the government must be sure that it has tried all the alternative methods of achieving its goals. And the economic-civilian option has not yet been tried. So before we send in the tanks, we should at least try it.

Incidentally, the army claims that economic pressure on a civilian population will not lead to Hamas' collapse. It says that exactly the opposite will happen: it will merely shorten the length of time before Hamas' other paramilitary operations force Israel to respond with overwhelming power.

They are all right. The government is quite right when it seeks to play for time. The army is right when it says it does not want a military operation that will only get half the job done. The Shin Bet is right when it argues that Israel must extract a heavy price from Hamas. The residents of Sderot are right when they demand security. And Ehud Barak was right when he said yesterday that, in the end, there will be no choice but to invade Gaza.

It's such a pity that were are putting so much energy into being right, logical and measured - because Israel will not be the side to determine the timetable for a military confrontation in Gaza. Like always, it is terrorism that will determine what happens and when - at a time that is least convenient for Israel. The timing will be determined by the next Qassam and the next terrorist who infiltrates Israel."

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NO RESPONSE: Writing in Maariv, Yael Paz-Melamed urges the government to stop responding to Palestinian rocket attacks and to inform the other side that the regional conference planned for November in Washington will go ahead irrespective of the attacks.

"The situation is so complicated that the there was someone in the defense establishment who proposed stopping the import of cigarettes to the Gaza Strip. Perhaps this way, the residents of Gaza would finally understand that they have to physically block the Qassam launchers from attacking Sderot. As a smoker, I am not making light of this creative proposal, and I say it has even got an outside chance of succeeding, because if I were asked to chose between a cigarette and electricity, I am not sure what I would chose. Above all, of course, this is not a matter that should be joked about. Images of tiny babies screaming in fear, after a Qassam lands a few meters from them, make even the moderates among us want to abandon all moral proportions when it comes to the innocent residents on the other side. And let there be no mistake about it - cutting off the electricity and water from infants on the Palestinian side, of from any civilian population that has committed no crime, is immoral - even if it comes in response to the Palestinians' own immoral deeds.

The key word here is 'response.' The State of Israel is strong, independent, democratic and boasts some of the greatest minds in the world is still a country without direction, which is run according to a policy of response and responses to our response. Had there not been a television crew on hand on Monday to record in real time the fear of death that has been hovering over Sderot for seven years, and had we not seen with our own eyes the fear on the faces of parents and children alike, it is highly doubtful that the cabinet would have convened to discuss way of collectively punishing the civilian population of Gaza.

We should not be complaining about the IDF. Even if they were given a chance to beat the terrorists, and to a large extent it is being given that chance, it simply cannot provide the goods, since all it knows is military means. We have already learned that military means help solve the problem in the short term only or not at all.  Fortunately for all of us, the army and its current leader realize that force has its limitations. The Second Lebanon War brought with it several achievements - such as the understanding that force cannot get you everything.

The way ahead should be paved by the government, especially by the person elected to head the government. We cannot go down the path that Hamas is trying to pave for us. Hamas is trying to do this all the time and, unfortunately, most of the time it succeeds. Take, for example, what it says day and night about the planned international conference, between the Qassam attacks of the past few days. 'It is clear that they want to prevent the conference going ahead,' say they spokespeople and the strategic advisers. 'They know that if they continue firing Qassams they may manage to kill someone, and then the conference will not be able to go ahead - certainly not in the format that the U.S. is working so hard for.'

Is it possible that the world's only superpower and the strongest nation in the Middle East alter the format of a hugely important conference according to the whims of a bunch of murderous Islamic Jihad members who find a small piece of land from which to fire a Qassam - before fleeing for their lives? The short answer is yes. This is the situation and this is how it has been for some time. We have not removed any illegal outposts for years, in order not to reward violence on the other side. We are not even considering any sort of meeting - secret or otherwise - with Hamas leaders, in order to try and reach some armistice or ceasefire. If we did, they would think that violence has paid off, and so on. A whole slew of clichés and mantras, bandied about by mediocre politicians who do not have - and never had - a path or a direction.

What this means is that, instead of allowing the IDF to win the battle, we are allowing the most extreme Palestinians to determine policy in the Middle East, thereby recording a de fact victory. Our behavior is proof for them that violence does, indeed, pay off. It is possible that if Israel were to announce to all the lunatics on the other side, that the Washington conference would go ahead no matter how many Qassam rockets they fire at us, and that the policy decisions we reach will not be influenced by their violent crimes, that they would realize that it is not enough to hide between civilians homes and to fire Qassams at Sderot.

But in order to alter this balance of fear, between one of the strongest countries in the world and a gang of murderers, our leaders need to stop reading opinion polls and to start leading."

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FINDING RAMON A JOB: Writing in financial daily Globes, Mati Golan says that Haim Ramon's proposal to cut off water and electricity to Gaza is illegal, immoral and unlikely to have the desired effect.

"Haim Ramon has two problems. The first is what to do with the large amount of free time that a minister without portfolio has at his disposal; the second is how to create the impression that, despite the fact that he does not actually have a job to do, he is doing something. Ramon found one typical solution to both of these problems: He throws the media a headline that causes the entire nation to sit up and take notice of him, and his name is in the headlines from first thing in the morning until he next attention-grabbing headline.

This week, Ramon's headline (in Yedioth Ahronoth on Tuesday) was: 'Disconnect Gaza from electricity and water.' Obviously, he did not mean arbitrarily and did not mean for ever, but was proposing that Israel tell Hamas that, every time a Qassam is fired, Gaza will go without power for a couple of hours.' And what about the response of the rest of the world? Ramon believes that the international community would 'understand.' They problem here is that there is no issue of 'understanding' here. International law defines such actions as 'collective punishment.' And that is before we even mention that such a punishment would primarily harm the weak and the poor. That is all we need - for people who have never in their lives even seen a Qassam, yet alone fired one, to start dieing because Israel cut off their electricity.

This sort of argument does not deter Ramon, because - as he puts it - 'no country in the world would be willing to accept its citizens' suffering.' Nicely put. But what has that got to do with cutting off electricity and water to Gaza? What does a country that seeks to alleviate the suffering that they enemy is causing to its citizens do? It uses the army that it has at its disposal. Because if we were able to solve international and military conflicts by cutting off electricity, what would we need an army for? All we would need would be a unit to pull the plug.

The message that Ramon's proposal send out is one of helplessness. We are unable to solve the conflict by political means, we do not have an army that is capable of stopping or even reducing the Qassam attacks. So let's just admit that we do not have neither the brain nor the brawn to protect ourselves and we have no choice but to revert to illegal and immoral means that cause more harm than good - to us as well

Perhaps Prime Minister Ehud Olmert should consider finding some sort of job for his good friends Haim Ramon. There has been talk recently of appointing someone to take responsibility for the state of the home front. What's wrong with that?"

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ISRAEL IS NOT RACIST: In its editorial on Thursday, The Jerusalem Post comments on the row that erupted last week when a member of Haaretz's editorial board referred to Israel as a racist state at a UN conference.

"Haaretz's veteran Arab affairs editor and editorial board member Danny Rubinstein caused a stir when he called Israel an 'apartheid state' at a UN conference last week. Also last week, Yedioth Ahronoth's main front-page headline blared, 'Racist Country,' based on its own investigative report comparing attempts by Israelis of Ashkenazi, Sephardi, haredi, Russian, Ethiopian and Arab background to apply for jobs and to place their children in kindergartens. It is bad enough when anti-Semites or those who reject Israel's right to exist spout such libelous nonsense. It hard to fathom why Israelis who would bristle at being labeled anti-Zionist do the same.

A distinction must be made between prejudice and discrimination, which exist in Israel as in any country, and declaring that Israel is racist as a whole or by definition. It would be foolish to deny that Israeli Arabs do not suffer from discrimination or that Ethiopian Jews are not victims of prejudice. The fact that Yedioth found that its faux Ashkenazi job seeker had better luck, despite his declared lack of experience, than the Russian, Moroccan, Ethiopian or Arab Israelis who sought a bartending position, though disturbing, is not terribly surprising.

Presumably, those labeling such prejudicial behavior 'racist' are trying to shock people into doing something about a real problem. Yet such semantic inflation does more harm than good: it blurs the vital distinctions between prejudice and real racism, and it provides fodder for real racism against Israel and the Jewish people.

Racism is when an entire group of people is considered inferior or superior by birth or physical characteristics. The Jewish people, which includes people of different skin color, ethnicity and cultural origins, is not a race. It is not possible to convert into a race. This has not stopped anti-Semites from pretending that Jews are a race, which is why it was appropriate for the UN General Assembly, in 1998, to include anti-Semitism among other hatreds to be investigated by a special monitor against racism.

Similarly, the term apartheid means formal political discrimination within a country on a racial basis. This obviously does not apply in Israel's case, first because Israeli Arabs are not a separate 'race' to begin with, and second because they have full political and voting rights, and are represented in the Knesset accordingly. Yesterday's laudable decision by Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit to grant citizenship to hundreds of refugees from Darfur again puts the lie to the racism charge, including the charge that the Law of Return means that only Jews can become citizens. All democracies determine citizenship criteria and preferences; so does Israel.

Nor can the apartheid argument be made regarding Palestinians in disputed territories under partial Israeli control. With the partial exception of Jerusalem, Israel has not sought to annex any part of these areas. Not only that, but Israel has dramatically demonstrated its desire not to rule over the Palestinians by unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza, at great cost to our societal fabric and substantiated risk to our security. Within Israel, and even within the territory west of the Jordan River, there is a Jewish majority. There is no issue here, as was the case under apartheid in South Africa, of a minority imposing its will on the majority, whether on a racial basis or not.

On the contrary, the origin and essence of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the struggle of a few million Jews to exercise their rights to national self-determination - as affirmed by the League of Nations and the United Nations and as opposed by 20-plus nations of the Arab world. It is not Israel that stands in the way of the creation of yet another Arab state, Palestine, but the refusal of some Arabs to give up their dream of destroying the only Jewish state, Israel.

In this context, it is morally abhorrent for Israelis to collaborate in the delegitimization of Israel by employing the false and evocative charges of apartheid and racism. If prominent Israelis say these things, how can we combat attempts to revive the UN's odious (and repealed) 'Zionism is racism' charge through the 2001 Durban conference and the follow-on meeting currently in the works?

The idea that such charges are being wielded to encourage Israel to be more flexible, or to highlight real discrimination, does not excuse them. It is possible to fight for legitimate political positions and positive change without resorting to libels; indeed, when critics reject baseless attacks, this tends to add to the credibility and weight of their constructive criticisms. There is much in our country that needs improvement, but anyone honestly seeking such advances, whether Israeli or not, must of necessity support the basic existence of the society he or she wishes to change."

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A PROCESS FOR ITS OWN SAKE: Haaretz's Aluf Benn says that a peace process for its own sake may still be politically viable in Israel, but that if Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wants to gain something from his talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, he needs to move on to more substantive issues.

"It's all political, say the prime minister's critics. According to them, the talks between Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas are only meant to enable Olmert to stay in power. When Ariel Sharon declared that he would leave Gaza, he received favorable media coverage, his files in the State Prosecutor's Office were closed and he achieved a coalition with the Labor Party. Olmert is trying to follow in his footsteps; he also wants to be an 'etrog' - in the same manner in which Sharon was safeguarded by the media from all harm because of the disengagement. [The etrog is the fruit used in Sukkot ritual, which is carefully protected from damage]. But in Olmert's case it's all talk: He is weak, Abbas is weak, and even if the two manage to reach an agreement, it will be worthless.

However justified the criticism is, it may be seen as a gesture of kindness to Olmert. It's fortunate that he has a political interest in holding talks with the chair of the Palestinian Authority; otherwise he would not be doing so. If Olmert believed that the talks are damaging his status among Israelis, he would have stuck with the diplomatic freeze and with the claim that 'there's no partner,' which he inherited from his predecessors Sharon and Ehud Barak.

The coalition and the public back him, and he would somehow repel the pressures of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Olmert's decision in favor of a diplomatic process testifies to the fact that even after the seven bad years of Camp David and the intifada, there is political value to a compromise with the Palestinians and it can be resurrected.

Olmert's problem is that neither his decision to hold talks with Abbas, nor his agreement to discuss the 'core issues' - permanent borders, Jerusalem and the refugees, which he once feared - is sufficient. Even if he arrives at the Washington summit without any additional terror attacks being perpetrated until then and reaches a reasonable agreement of principles with Abbas, and even if the Saudis come to the meeting with their senior leadership, the path he has chosen leads through dangerous minefields.

The first minefield consists of the vague definition of the negotiations' aims. When Olmert came to power, he presented a clear goal: to leave the territories in order to preserve Israel's Jewish majority. Now he is avoiding such declarations. He says that his talks with Abbas and the planned meeting in Washington merely constitute a preamble to additional, more detailed negotiations about the two-state solution. Inviting the Saudis was designed to provide backing and support for the weak Abbas.

Such talk arouses suspicions that the process was designed only for its own sake, and that Olmert has no clear plan for the day after the summit in November. The danger is that on the day following the widely publicized event and the friendly declarations, the talks will degenerate into depression and will have difficulty taking off amid the daily pains of the Qassams, the checkpoints and the internal problems. The great expectations will turn into disappointments, and once again it will be shown that there is no one to talk to and nothing to talk about, and the danger of a third intifada will increase.

The second minefield is Abbas' weakness. The Palestinian leader is afraid even to take responsibility for a few cities in the West Bank. How will he be able to build a state and enforce order and security? According to the vision of Olmert and Rice, the agreement will present the Palestinians with a 'diplomatic horizon,' and Abbas in turn will present it during elections and will win another mandate from the Palestinian public. But Abbas won the elections in the past as well - yet this did not make a strong leader. Even if he convinces his electorate to support the agreement, he will have difficulty implementing it, and Hamas will be able to say: we told you so. Olmert's fears that a 'shelf agreement' with Abbas will only be the starting point for additional Israeli concessions to be realized.

The third minefield is the negotiators' total lack of room to maneuver. In international opinion, the December 2000 Clinton plan for a final-status solution has become the reasonable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Olmert and Abbas cannot diverge from it, lest each of them be accused of making major concessions to the other side, and be removed from office. Since they cannot implement it either, their real efforts will be devoted to finding escape hatches and avoiding the truly difficult decisions. That is the background to Olmert's attempts to reduce the agreement of principles to one page of a general summary and to his announcement that it would be implemented in line with the road map; in other words, in long stages that are prone to obstacles and conflicts.

If Olmert wants his political interest to be translated into diplomatic advantage, he has to think carefully about the day after the summit in Washington. He should ask Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak what happens when the beautiful expectations are destroyed. A picture with the Saudi prince in a white galabia would be a nice diplomatic achievement for Olmert, but the results of his policy will be decided in the West Bank and in Gaza, and not on the lawn in Washington."

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