By James M. Dorsey
Synopsis
Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is likely to face
significant political problems at home and a far less
empathetic diplomatic environment abroad once the guns
fall silent in Gaza. Calls in Israel for an inquiry into
the government’s handling of the Gaza crisis and what is
being described as an intelligence failure regarding
tunnels built by Hamas are mounting. In addition, Israel’s
relations with its closest allies, the United States and
the European Union, have been bruised even if they
continue to uphold the Jewish state’s right to defend
itself.
Commentary
ISRAEL’S RATIONALE for its
assault on Gaza has shifted during the last three weeks of
almost uninterrupted hammering of the Hamas-controlled Gaza
Strip, one of the world’s most densely populated
territories. The war launched first to counter Palestinian
rockets fired in response to an Israeli crackdown on Hamas
operatives on the West Bank following the kidnapping of
three Israeli teenagers has since focused on underground
tunnels that potentially allow Islamist militia fighters to
penetrate Israel, and in recent days on critical
infrastructure such as Gaza’s power supply.
While Israel may be succeeding in severely damaging the
military infrastructure of Hamas and other Islamist groups
in Gaza, it realizes that international discomfort with its
heavy-handed approach that has cost the lives of some 1,300
mostly Palestinian civilians and wreacked devastating
material damage that will cost billions to rebuild, means
that it does not have a lot of time to militarily achieve
its objectives. It also is dawning on Israel that the
diplomatic and political price it may have to pay is rising
by the day. The war in Gaza will no doubt strengthen calls
for a boycott of and sanctions against Israel and could
accelerate EU moves to ban dealings with Israeli entities
based in occupied territory.
Intelligence Failure
Increasingly, proponents of Israel’s assault on Gaza, who
constitute a majority of the Israeli population, question
whether Israel could have countered Hamas‘ increasing
military prowess in ways that would have been less costly.
Military analysts, after four wars in the last eight years
against non-state actors, the Shiite Islamist militia
Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas, are calling for a review of
Israeli military strategy and reorganization of the armed
forces.
Revelations that the government long knew about Hamas‘
tunnelling operation but did not consider it a serious
enough threat to counter, have sparked demands for an
investigation of what the Israeli media and some analysts
are describing as an intelligence failure. At the core of
the alleged failure is whether the government and the
military ignored Hamas‘ tunnelling because it had in recent
years downgraded the security threat posed by Palestinians
and elevated Iran’s nuclear program to the most existential
threat the Jewish state was facing. As a result, Israel
focused its political, diplomatic, intelligence and military
energies on Iran rather than Hamas and other militant
Palestinian groups.
The revelations also raise questions on the government’s
real motive in first cracking down on Hamas on the West Bank
and then launching its attack on Gaza. Critics of Israel
charge that the government’s real goal was to prevent the
emergence of an effective Palestinian national unity
government that would group all factions, and that had tacit
support from Israel’s allies, because that would have made
it more difficult for Israel to sabotage peace negotiations
while maintaining a façade of seeking to end the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hamas strengthened
An indication of the political fallout that Netanyahu can
expect once the fighting in Gaza is brought to a halt, is
evident in Hamas‘ ability to reject ceasefires despite the
punishing Israeli assaults that do not involve a lifting of
the seven-year old Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza. Rather
than weakening Hamas, Israel’s attacks appear to have
strengthened it politically to the degree that it feels it
can impose conditions of its own in dealings with Israel
rather than simply respond to Israel’s requirements.
Israeli defence and intelligence sources say the threat
posed by the tunnels only became evident when Palestinians
taken prisoner in the early stages of the Gaza operation
disclosed plans for Hamas fighters to infiltrate Israel in a
bid to carry out a massive attack during this coming fall’s
season of Jewish high holidays. Until then Israel had paid
limited attention to the tunnels and discarded various plans
involving water ditches, drones, sensors and radars that
could have either neutralized the threat or alerted Israel
to them in a timely fashion.
The damage to Israel’s reputation and relations with its
allies is prompting Israeli leaders to consider whether it
should quickly end the fighting in Gaza despite Netanyahu’s
warning that Israelis should brace themselves for a long
campaign. Those considerations are being complicated by
Hamas, which is unwilling to let Israel that easily off the
hook and needs to show more than resilience to Palestinians
who have paid dearly in the group’s confrontation with
Israel. A lifting of the Gaza blockade would fit the bill.
Political accounting and military review
Hamas‘ demand also makes it more difficult for Israel to
claim that it has inflicted debilitating damage on the group
and that it may not survive politically because Gazans will
hold it to account. It also puts to rest Israeli claims that
Hamas is desperate for a ceasefire. Hamas has moreover
demonstrated that its command and control remains intact.
The Israeli drive to continue the assault on Gaza is fuelled
by the fact that the resolution of its two earlier
conflagrations with the group ultimately failed to produce
results. Israel agreed in 2009 to an unconditional ceasefire
in the hope that it had sufficiently weakened the group and
created enough of a deterrence. Three years later it hoped
that a vague, unsigned agreement mediated by Egypt would do
the job. Israel’s problem is that continuing the assault
would likely force it to expand its ground operations at
considerable military, political and diplomatic risk.
With military analysts noting that various incidents in
which rockets and mortars have killed Israeli soldiers,
questions are being raised about the military’s ability to
protect Israeli civilians despite the effectiveness of
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile defence shield. The
questions fuel demands for a post-war political accounting
and a military review.
«Despite many achievements that the army brass can point to,
the current war in Gaza reveals once again the necessity of
a comprehensive reorganization of the military. The training
of forces, the equipment in use, combat doctrine, and
operational plans — all will need to be thoroughly
investigated when the hostilities are over,» said Amos
Harel, the military correspondent of Ha’aretz newspaper.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies as Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, co-director of the Institute of Fan Culture of the University of Würzburg and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a forthcoming book with the same title