THE BEST OF A BAD SET OF CHOICES
By Avi Davis

The outbreak of open hostilities between the State of Israel and Hamas this week should put to rest at least one notion: that no one should rely on the word and deeds of terrorists. During the period of a supposed six month truce (tahadiya), the group that others have called the legitimate representatives of the people of Gaza, had launched more than 329 rockets and mortar shells into Israel, most of them during the month and a half after November 4.

During the past week alone, over 300 rockets have been fired into southern Israel. That amount might seem modest by comparison with 10,000 rockets of the past five years. But it was enough to show that any deal or negotiation with the Palestinian group is a Faustian bargain, which will only reap a bitter harvest of broken agreements and continued hostility.

Given this reality, what then is the purpose of a ceasefire or truce, now being urged upon the Jewish state by Europe? The answer is that there is no purpose, other than to salve Europeans’ fears of riots by Muslim populations in their own countries. A ceasefire will only give Hamas increased legitimacy among its own people as having withstood Zionist aggression while adding to its stature in the wider Arab world. It will allow it to regroup, rearm and encourage further world aid in making the next contest far more deadly.

But on the other hand, an invasion of Gaza, which has been in the offing since the day the Israelis departed three and half years ago, is also problematic. In the cynical Hamas game plan, the more fiercely the streets of Gaza burn, the better – for world sympathy will be drawn to Palestinian suffering and Israel will be pushed even deeper into the swamp of moral obloquy in which many in the world media would like to see it sputter and drown.

So for Israel, the Gaza adventure will soon become a zero sum game – a series of bad alternatives from which it will need to select the least damaging. No one can predict what kind of price Israel will pay in such an invasion, either in human or public relations costs, but it frankly now has little choice: it must either crush the terrorist menace on its southern border or else come to grips with the realization that the long term survival of its polity is at deep risk.

That is bold statement to make about one of the most sophisticated military powers in the world and the lone democracy in the region. But without intervention, the range of Hamas’ rockets is only going to grow, well beyond 40 kms where one rocket landed on Tuesday morning and destroyed a Be’er Sheba kindergarten. Increased clout will bring further deadly equipment to the Hamas arsenal from IUDs to a version of the Fatah missile which Hezbollah has deployed in Lebanon and can supposedly cover all of Israel. Hard though it is to imagine, Israelis within a few years could experience a bombardment nightmare on the level of the London Blitz. With the coordination of the 15,000 strong Hezbollah rocket arsenal in the north, major population centers within Israel could be subject to short and medium range rocket assault on a daily basis. Between ceasefires, ordinary human activity in commerce, transportation and tourism would grind to a halt and the economy would be devastated. Life in the country’s central urban hub would become intolerable.

Such a scenario would be unimaginable in any other modern democracy and Israel should not have to contemplate it. An invasion which deals a knockout blow to Hamas as a military and political force, re-establishing a necessary Israeli military presence in Gaza and even, if necessary, civilian control, is the best of a bad set of options. While it might expose the country to the lashing of world opinion, it would nevertheless free it from the dangers of deadly southern front and allow it to concentrate its energies on defeating the menace in the north while preparing for a likely confrontation with Iran. It would also establish an example in defiance that other world democracies, beset by their own border threats, would be advised to follow.

And what of ordinary Gazans, caught in the cross fire between their terrorist operatives and Israeli troops? No one should forget that a majority of these same Palestinians and their ancestors have been continuous shuttlecocks, lobbed back and forth for a century by a series of brutal leaders. These leaders have willingly sacrificed their peoples’ security, livelihoods and welfare in the name of unabated armed conflict with the Zionists. Israel, a democracy at war, charged with the responsibility of defending its citizens and confronted with such an obvious threat to its existence, does not now have the luxury of exclusive concern for Palestinian life. That worry rightfully belongs to Hamas. Maybe the question then is not what the Israelis could do to further protect the lives of Palestinian non-combatants, but what the Palestinians have not done in the same regard.

The Bush Administration, until now, has been acquiescent in Israel’s drive to crush the Hamas threat. That sends the right message. To urge restraint now would be to create the conditions in which terrorists win important psychological and public relations victories – the kinds of triumph that will set the region on a road toward a conflagration of much graver proportions in the not too distant future.

The Western Word - An International Weekly Digest   1-2-2009