so says the Israeli Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit: “any other country would have already gone in and level the area, which is exactly what I thing the IDF should do – decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level it.” To be fair, he did suggest that the residents should be warned in advance. “We should let them know ‘you have to leave, this area will be taken down tomorrow’ and just take it down – that will show them we mean business. Sporadic actions are good,” added Sheetrit, “but they’re not good enough.” That makes him marginally less evil than a certain mid-European power sixtyfive years ago, which used to do the same but without warning.
Sheetrit offered this policy suggestion because of the continued Quassam attacks from Gaza. Usually these are represented as wholly irrational acts of terrorism, driven by the Palestinians inexplainable hatred of Israel (or “the Jews”) over here, when there even is an attempt to explain them, as usually we pretend there isn’t anything to explain: Palestinians fire rockets and Israel is sadly forced to respond. In Israel they don’t have the luxury of pretending this however, so you can articles analysing Hamas strategy even in mainstream newspapers. According to Haaretz, it seems like Hamas is actually attempting to use Quassam attacks as deterrence:
For each Israeli operation, especially if it involves a large number of casualties from the ranks of the organization, Hamas responds with a drawn-out rocket barrage of three to four days.
At its completion, Hamas lowers the intensity, until the next round of violence.
The latest example of this occurred last week. On Tuesday, nine members of Hamas were killed in an IDF operation.
Two days later, seven more Palestinians were killed, six gunmen and a civilian. Hamas fired, according to its press release, no less than 135 Qassam rockets and mortars between Tuesday and Saturday night, in addition to shooting from various smaller groups. On Sunday, Hamas stopped shooting.
The message: henceforth, every Israeli operation will result in a similar response. Hamas is hoping that Israel will agree, after repeated bombing of Sderot, to a tahdiye (calm) in the territories, and even believe they can bring about an end to the arrests that the IDF is carrying out in the West Bank.
Behind the Hamas decision lies the assumption that the Israeli leadership is wary of a large-scale ground operation. This is based on the traumatic experience of the Second Lebanon War and Israeli concern that it may suffer heavy casualties. Senior officials inthe Islamic organization believe that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is too concerned with his political future to risk initiating a broad IDF operation in the Strip.
Isn’t it refreshing to read newspaper articles that assume that organisations like Hamas actually have good reasons for their terrorism, rather than pretending that all terrorists are motivated by a crazy hatred of Israel or “our values”, whatever they may be?