Israel about to launch ground incursion into Gaza; Hamas tunnel attack foiled

The thirteen Hamas fighters emerged from the tunnel about forty meters inside Israel, and about one-and-a-half kilometers from kibbutz Sufa. Israeli surveillance drones showed the fighters carrying large quantities of explosives. Their goal was probably to attack the kibbutz, kill as many kibbutz members as possible, than retreat into the tunnel – and back into Gaza – with two or three hostages.

They started to move toward the kibbutz, but hearing the buzzing sound of the drone above them, chose to run back into the tunnel, the opening of which was bombed from the air within five seconds after the last fighter disappeared into it. They left most of their gear — weapons, ammunition, explosives, RPGs, hand grenades, bullet-proof vests – behind them. Eight of the thirteen Hamas fighters were killed, the other five escaped.

In iron Dome, Israel has found a solution to Hamas’s rockets, but it has not yet found a solution to the strategic threat posed by Hamas tunnels. It now appears that the Israeli cabinet, which meets in a couple of hours to discuss the war, will authorize a limited land incursion into Gaza, the aim of which will be to locate and destroy Hamas’s offense tunnel network.

Note that Hamas has also built an intricate system of tunnels under residential areas in Gaza, where the organization keeps its rockets and other arms, and where the organization’s leaders hide during encounters with Israel.

Cease-fire haggling
Egypt on Monday proposed a cease-fire outline to Israel and Hamas, a cease-fire which was to go into effect Tuesday at 02:00 EST (09:00 Israel time). On Tuesday at 07:00 Israel time (midnight EST) the Israeli cabinet accepted the Egyptian proposal — two cabinet ministers voted against acceptance — and two hours later Israel halted all military operations against Hamas.

Hamas, however, rejected the Egyptian proposal. Some journalists write about differences between Hamas political leaders – those who live outside of the Gaza Strip like Haled Masha’al and Moussa Abu Marzook, and those who live inside the strip, like Ismail Hanyia — and Hamas military leaders like Muhammed Deif, the commander of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Even if there are such differences, they do not matter much because the military wing of Hamas usually acts on its own calculations and preferences, and is not subservient to the political wing.

In a Tuesday, 19:00 press conference (12:00 noon EST), Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, and Chief of Staff Gen. Benny Ganz announced that Israel was resuming the military operations, and hinted that these operations would be escalated and intensified.

“This morning I convened the cabinet ministers and we decided that Israel would accept the cease-fire,” Netanyahu said. “I said that if Islamic Jihad and Hamas continue to fire on Israeli cities, I would instruct the IDF to act forcefully against them, and that is how we operated this afternoon. The air force bombed several targets across the Gaza Strip, and these strikes will continue. Hamas will pay the price for its decision to continue this campaign.”

“Israel will harm anyone who tries to strike the citizen of Israel,” he said. “When there is no cease-fire, out response is fire. The political front, the home front and the operational front are working together simultaneously… It would have been preferable to solve this diplomatically, and that is what we tried to do, but Hamas has left us no chance but to expand the operation against it. This is how we will operate until we reach our goal, the restoration of quiet through a significant blow to terror.”

One indication of such an escalation: shortly after the press conference, recorded telephone messages from the IDF to residents of two Gaza City neighborhoods, Zeitoun in the south and Shuja’iyya in the east, to evacuate their homes ahead of intensified Israeli military strikes against these neighborhoods.

Hamas built many rocket launchers next to residential and public buildings in these two neighborhoods, and has also built a system of tunnels under these neighborhoods in which the organization stores rockets and other munitions, and in which the organization’s leadership hides.

The calls for the residents to leave are similar to warnings the IDF made by phone calls and leaflets on Sunday to the 20,000 residents of Beit Lahya in north Gaza to leave their homes ahead of heavy bombardment by the Israel Air Force (IAF) of these neighborhoods in an attempt to destroy arms depots, rocket launchers, and underground tunnels.

Hamas had urged the residents of Beit Lahya to stay put so they could continue to serve as a human shield to Hamas weapons and fighters, but the Beit Lahya residents defied Hamas called and by now the city is empty.

The emptying of two Gaza City neighborhoods is an indication of a much larger operation by the IAF — not only because of the size of the neighborhoods and the number of residents asked to leave, but because many more of Hamas tunnels have been dug under the city so the area is much richer in important targets.

According to UN figures, so far only about 25,000 of the 100,000 residents of the two neighborhoods have left their homes.

Hamas’s demands
Hamas wants to emerge with some achievements from the current round. While Egypt, Israel, and the Palestinian authority say that the two sides should first agree to cease fire, and then discuss the various understandings which would undergird the relationship between Israel and Hamas. Hamas, on the other hand, wants to have an agreement in place on these broader issues before it would agree to hold its fire.

Among the conditions Hamas insists upon for accepting a cease-fire:

• Opening the border crossings between Egypt and the Gaza Strip
• Opening the border crossings between Israel and the Gaza Strip
• Permission to build a sea port in Gaza
• Permission to build and airport in Gaza
• The release from Israeli jails of all the Hamas prisoners who were released in exchange for Gilad Shalit – but who were taken back to jail last month after Hamas operatives in Hebron kidnapped and killed three Israeli teenagers. Israel has already announced that some the Hamas operatives taken back into prison will remain there because they had violated the conditions of their release
• Allowing Palestinian farmers to work their land all the way to the border with Israel (currently there is a security strip, or no-man’s land, on the Gaza side of the border for security reasons)

Hamas wants these and other achievements not only in order to emerge from the current round as victorious, but also because of its fear that Egypt’s true purpose is the weakening, and eventual destruction, of Hamas – in the same manner the post-Morsi Egyptian regime has finished off Hamas’s sister organization, the Muslim Brotherhood as a political force in Egypt.

Asymmetric war
The apparent difficulties Israel has so far experienced in stopping the launching of about 100 rockets a day against Israeli towns and cities is not the result of Hamas’s military power or Israel’s military weakness. The difficulty for Israel is that it is hobbled by adhering to a set of norms which makes it nearly impossible to eliminate the military capabilities of an organization such as Hamas.

Hamas has learned from the November 2009 war with Israel the same lesson Hezbollah has learned from its war with Israel in summer 2006: the two organizations realized that the best way to defend their respective war machines is to hide them among Lebanese Shi’a civilians (in the case of Hezbollah) or among Gaza civilians (in the case of Hamas).

In most countries the military is used to protect the civilian population, but in the cases of Hamas and Hezbollah, the civilian population is used to protect each organization’s military capabilities. Moral judgment aside, this tactic has proven effective against Western powers.

It is not possible for Israel to destroy all of Hamas’s rickets and launchers – and kill off its leadership – without destroying densely populated neighborhoods in Gaza and killing hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians.

It can be done, though: Russia, in the two rounds of war in Chechnya (1994-96 and 1999-2000) and Sri Lanka in the final round of its war against the Tamil Tiger (spring 2009) proved that if you have no moral breaks, you can defeat an insurgent movement. Both Russia and Sri Lanka used their superior military capabilities not for precision bombing and pin-point operations against insurgent targets. On the contrary, both countries resorted to all-out bombardment of and artillery barrages on civilian neighborhoods, towns, and villages. Russia killed about 220,000 Chechen civilians, and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes, while Sri Lanka killed about 40,000 civilians in its campaign. Chechen separatism has been defeated, and what remains of it has folded into a North Caucasus Islamist movement which uses suicide bombers in the name of Islam. The Tamil Tigers have formally ended their 30-year fight for Tamil independence.,

In a press conference last week, Netanyahu was clear:  “We can’t do what the Russians did in Chechnya.” Since Israel is not going to do in the Gaza Strip what Russia did in Chechnya or Sri Lanka did in the country’s north-east against the Tamils – and since Hamas knows this – then it should be honestly admitted that there is no strictly military solution to Hamas’s rocket launches. Or, rather: there is no military solution to the problem that Israel would be willing to adopt.

It should be noted that Hamas’s rockets have been spectacularly ineffective: Israel’s Iron Dome system, and the discipline of the Israeli citizens who know what to do and where to go in the event of an alarm, have so far prevented Israeli casualties (the only Israeli casualty was killed by an old-fashioned mortar round next to the Gaza border).