Are the Israelis better off now than a month ago?

A new report by the IHT has Israel responding to another Hamas rocket attack with airstrikes. The Israeli counterattack comes just hours after PM Ehud Olmert declared a unilateral ceasefire.

Olmert’s comments on the ceasefire are cryptic at best:

After 22 days of war against Hamas, and the deaths of more than 1,200 Palestinians and 13 Israelis, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insisted that “we have reached all the goals of the war, and beyond.”

Source: http://i2.cdn.turner.com/ cnn/2009/WORLD/ meast/01/07/israel.gaza/ art.night.afp.gi.jpg

A couple things to mention here. First, I don’t believe Israel’s goals were defined explicitly enough. Second, the severity of Israel’s military campaign only made the definition and achievement of these goals more complicated. Third, it’s not actually clear that Israel did in fact reach “all the goals of the war,” whatever those goals may have been in the first place. I’ll take each of these one by one.

DEFINING THE OBJECTIVE

The BBC described Olmert’s objectives as being two-fold:

• “…stop rocket attacks on southern Israel”
• “and to stop Hamas smuggling weapons into Gaza via Egypt…”

Pretty simple, but meanwhile, here’s what the Washington Post said:

But with a little more than a month until Israel holds elections, pressure has been building for the government to use this operation not just to weaken Hamas, but also to try to deal it a death blow.

So, right away, there appeared a distinction between public goals and private goals, stated objectives and unstated objectives. Israel’s massive ground offensive into the Gaza Strip only lent credibility to the notion that the IDF was seeking to destroy Hamas. We’ll obviously never know whether that was Olmert’s intention. But Israel’s overwhelming use of force certainly helps to give that impression.

PURSUING THE OBJECTIVE

Maybe it was just media hype, and collateral damage certainly happens in war, but it sometimes seemed as though Israel did little to limit civilian suffering over the course of the conflict.

• The IDF hit a U.N. school. (WaPo)
• It also struck the U.N. headquarters in Gaza. (AP)
• Israel broke a humanitarian truce just minutes after it went into effect. (CNN)

In most such cases, Israel had a valid military objective to pursue. But I wonder if the IDF’s actions might have been counterproductive. You don’t stop rocket attacks by hitting non-combatants, even accidentally. That’s a sure way to keep the violence going.

ACHIEVING THE OBJECTIVE

In fact, the violence continues today, even after Israel’s unilateral ceasefire. Even following the BBC’s simpler rubric, Israel hasn’t accomplished its mission. Rocket attacks are clearly still happening—so Olmert’s goal of stopping the rocket attacks did not succeed. And smuggling through the tunnels is as big a problem as ever.

The IDF hasn’t destroyed Hamas, nor has it made southern Israel any more secure than it was a month ago. In fact, it’s plausible that the area’s violence has had a destabilizing effect and polarized opinions on both sides of the conflict, making it that much harder to come to a full peace agreement.

The only thing different now is that a lot of people are dead, and the IDF now occupies Gaza. So in short, I’m not sure I buy into Olmert’s declaration of success.

On bin Laden and Israel

An audio tape from Osama bin Laden released today calls for jihad against Israel, reports the NYT.

Meanwhile, Israel says it’s killed several hundred Hamas militants, but it’s not expecting to crush the organization anytime soon. Israeli military officials estimate there to be around 15,000 fighters loyal to the group.

My question is, if Israel’s not in Gaza to destroy Hamas, and it hasn’t succeeded in rooting out and destroying the group’s enormous rocket arsenal, what is it doing there at all? Seems like the only thing the IDF has accomplished so far is killing UN relief workers and standing in the way of humanitarian aid.

What to do (if anything) with Israel-Palestine?

Source: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/images/mideast/jan-june09/0101_smokegaza.jpg

Andrew Sullivan offers some particularly poignant thoughts on the current spate of violence between Hamas and Israel.

I’m not completely sure what to think about these new developments. Andrew’s post suggests that the U.S. stay as far away as possible from them. Tactically, I think that makes sense. But strategically, there’s probably little to be gained by ignoring the problem. Extremism will continue to flourish. Israeli forces will continue pounding the Palestinians with overwhelming force. And the U.S. will take the blame for not attempting to stem the bloodshed—or worse, will be accused of turning a blind eye to the actions of what many see as its proxy in the Middle East.

So it looks like detachment from the issue isn’t really a long-term option. If involvement is necessary, then the next task is to determine what shape that involvement should take. So far, the U.S. has been fairly open in its support for Israel. That, in turn, has limited the White House’s legitimacy as an honest broker for peace. Logically, it follows that success probably requires a more even-handed approach.

The problem is that so far, nobody’s really been interested in even-handedness.