Sunday 25 November 2012

The latest fruits of the 'ceasefire', constant attrition

Just as with Olmert in 2006 Netanyahu was desperate to end the war. And just like Hezbollah then, Hamas was ready to take full advantage with a demand that the security zone of a kilometer on the Gazan side of the border be done away with.

This was ostensibly in order that Gazan famers could like Israelis farm right up to the fence with Israel.

In 2006 Olmert agreed to a weak implementation of UN resolution 1701 without assurances as to the disarming of Hezbollah or tough rules of engagement for UN troops when faced with Hezbollah smuggling of weapons. It was obvious that as with Resolution 1559 Hezbollah would just rearm and fortify its positions right down to the Israeli border, having learned all the lessons necessary to make the next war more difficult for Israel.

We saw last week that Hamas had learned the lessons of 2008 with the IAF being unable to prevent firing of missiles from Gaza. Unlike in 2008 the missiles came in large salvos of up to 12, at times overwhelming even the superbly effective Iron Dome defense.

Our enemies learn the lessons, but Israel does not seem to.  The next war is based on how the last one ended, and this one ended disastrously. Hamas ended it not on its knees but firing hundreds of rockets at Israel daily.

And Hamas came out of this with major Israeli concessions, of extending their fishing rights up to 6 miles (useful for restocking missiles and other weapons). And Gazans are now able to approach the boreder fence making it all the easier to build kidnapping and bomb tunnels, to bring snipers and infiltrators closer to their targets.  Israeli farmers will thus be pushed away from their lands on the border just as the rockets have forced thousands of Israelis to leave the south of Israel.

Two days ago the border fence was already attacked by a mob of Gazan 'civilians' testing the army and today an infiltrator from Gaza got over the border, the first such case in a long time. He came close to killing a girl on a moshav.

The army is going to now be on constant alert because our enemies are just too close for comfort. They are on a high after having deterred Israel in the Pillar of Cloud operation, and they gained important concessions from Israel.

Netanyahu might bask in the reflected glory of Iron Dome, but that unbelievable system is defensive. It will not bring peace and security to Israel, and could even be acting further to undermine it. Iron Dome gives Israel more reasons not to attack back and destroy the infrastructure of terror in Gaza, more reasons to delay dismantling Hamas. And the longer the delay, the more difficult it will be. One day Israel will have to do it because islamist Hamas is about throttling Israel preferably in concert with arab allies such as Egypt.


Netanyahu was tested, and rather than destroy Hamas once and for all whilst Egypt is weak and divided, listened to his pacifistic general Gantz just like he did Ashkenazi before him and the international community. Netanyahu has again been found wanting, a superb speaker yet a mouth without substance.
Solders killed a suspected Gaza terrorist early Monday after he broke into a Jewish home and stabbed a girl before fleeing.

The IDF discovered a hole in the nearby Gaza security fence, and footprints from the area matched the shoes of the intruder, who had escaped to the Moshav Sde Avraham's greenhouses after he tried to kill the girl.

Soldiers caught up with him and tried to arrest him, and then shot and killed him when he tried to escape.

The wounded girl is in fair condition. She was stabbed in her family’s home in Moshav Sde Avraham, originally named Yesodot HaDarom. It is a southern community adjacent to Gaza and was founded in 1982 by victims of the expulsion from the Yamit communities in Sinai that was part of the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty in 1979. 

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