Living near Gaza can be a traumatic experience. Over the past six years, thousands of rockets and mortar rounds have been launched across the border into Israel. On a bad day, every few hours there is a bang, or a number of bangs. One does not know where the next rocket will land.
Now that the six-month truce with Hamas has come to an end, and rocket attacks have picked up, Israelis are once again confronted with the question of how to bring quiet to their border with Gaza. Unfortunately for those who live near Gaza, the Israeli government is unlikely to take the sort of decisive action that would put an end to the rocket fire.
For all the thousands of Qassam rockets that have fallen on Sderot and other communities, relatively few Israelis have died as a result. Indeed, only 16 people have been killed by rockets and mortar fire from Gaza into Israel. In part, the low rate of Israeli fatalities is due to the primitive nature of the rockets — simple metal tubes with fins soldered to them, small warheads and no guidance mechanism whatsoever. In part, it is due to the countermeasures taken by the Israeli army, which have grown increasingly effective. Mainly, though, it is because Hamas does not want things to escalate and get out of hand, hence the very high percentage of rockets that, especially of late, have landed in open spaces without hitting anybody.
Still, the situation is intolerable — and yet it is tolerated. That says something significant about the state of Israeli society. The war with Hezbollah in the summer of 2006 revealed what Israel has become after 25 years of fighting opponents much weaker than itself, first in Lebanon and then in the occupied territories — a weak country with a weak government populated by a people with little appetite for a real fight.
Judging from the fact that the border with Lebanon has now been absolutely quiet for more than two years, there is little doubt that Israel could put an end to the rockets. A major military operation involving both significant land incursions and sustained bombardment would almost certainly make Hamas think twice about allowing Gaza to be used as a launching pad for rockets. Such an operation, however, would take time and might well involve serious casualties. In response, Hamas would likely immediately step up its barrages, targeting cities deeper within Israel with rockets that might reach as far as Beersheba. For this, neither the Israeli government, nor the army, nor the people, has the stomach.
As long as a rocket — God forbid — does not hit, say, a school and cause massive casualties, the situation on the border with Gaza will persist, perhaps interrupted by an uneasy truce or two. And as long as the rocket attacks persist, all parties will keep using the situation, or trying to use it, to their advantage. For the various splinter groups inside Gaza that are responsible for much of the rocket fire, it is a way of justifying their existence. For Hamas, it is a way of asserting its right to lead the Palestinians, and to show that it’s not afraid of confronting Israel, in contrast to President Mahmoud Abbas.
For Iran, which has a large finger in the pie, the attacks are a way of showing the Arab world that Tehran is in charge of the ever-popular struggle against Israel. To various do-gooders around the globe, the situation presents an opportunity to meddle in a faraway country about which they know nothing. Inside Israel itself, the rocket attacks play into the hands of the right. They serve as a powerful argument against further withdrawals from the West Bank and, indeed, against making any concessions to the Arabs in general.
As President Shimon Peres noted recently, had the Palestinians put an end to their follies and shown a modicum of sense they could have had their state, long ago. As long as they do not, and as long as the rockets keep coming without doing too much damage, the present situation will persist — and neither the inhabitants of Gaza nor Israelis living nearby will have quiet.
Martin van Creveld is an Israeli military historian and the author, most recently, of “The Culture of War” (Random House).
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"We dreamed that the new state would be a place in which the next chapter of the Bible would be written as a prelude to world-wide redemption. After all, you are the Treasured Nation. We had great expectations. But now look at what you have done." Deacon of Sapir College, Professor Ze'ev Tzachor, explains in an interview with Meir Uziel how his British colleagues explain their hatred of Israel. Basic anti-Semitism is certainly a factor. When all is said and done, the Jews were expelled from England 200 years before they were expelled from Spain. The blood libels and yellow star are also a part of Jewish history in the British Isles. On the other hand, England also romanticizes the Bible. Both Nazism and Zionism found a listening ear in Great Britain. It was home to both Lindbergh and Wingate, both the Balfour Declaration and the White Paper. England is seen by many as the peak of Western culture. It is a bridge between Europe and America - just how many Israelis would love to see themselves - in a place among the nations. Today, the most significant intellectual attacks on Israel come from England. It is in England that General Doron Almog was almost arrested for "war crimes" and it is England that banned a certain Likud politician from entering its borders. "We had great expectations from you and look what you have done," the British say to us. If you have not written the next chapter of the Bible, then you are nothing more than colonialists. If you are not a light unto the nations - the light from which the Biblical elements of our culture can be sustained - then you are a blight upon the nations. For the political and military leaders of Israel, the above is Chinese. They do not concern themselves with the undercurrents of reality. As a rule, the entire 'post' culture busies itself with describing reality while it flees any attempt to understand it. But the result of all this 'Chinese' is that Israel's current leaders are obsessed with leaving the London legitimacy infusion open. Israel's present leadership has no tools with which to write the next chapter of the "Bible for the entire world." Instead, it defers to the values system of British academia. If the Torah does not come forth from Zion, it will come forth from the International Court in The Hague. The Western criterion for determining which side of a dispute is just is quite simple. According to Western values, the weak is the just. As Israel defers to the Western values system, it can never attack its enemies. All it can do is defend itself. Israel's right to its Homeland is nowhere to be found in the Israeli foreign relations lexicon. All that you will find there is 'Israel's right to defend itself.' If we dare initiate an attack, we may suffer the fate of Doron Almog. We will no longer be able to spend the weekend in London and we won't be able to shop at Marks and Spencer. We won't be able to forget who we are even for a moment. And then we will be stuck with our Jewish selves. That is why Israel's leadership does not even consider the simple, logical solutions to stop the attacks from Gaza. Turning off their electricity or placing an embargo on their fuel supply is impossible because these moves would collectively punish Gaza's civilian population. For the same reason, any military operation that would incur civilian casualties is unthinkable. Israel can only allow itself to fight as the underdog - only against an enemy holding a weapon in his hand. Civilian casualties will endanger our shopping trips to Marks and Spencer. In truth, the situation is even crazier than that. Israel funnels cash to Gaza so that they can shell Ashkelon. If we do not provide them with the cash, then they will shell Tel Aviv. And our fearless leaders cannot remain comfortably in their government positions if Tel Aviv is bombarded with Kassams or Grads. And anyway, we must leave the runway to Marks and Spencer open. So we pay. There are two ways for Israel's leaders to maneuver between shell-shocked southern Israel and Marks and Spencer and remain in power. The first option is to build protective barriers. That is fine with the British. But this option seems to have run its course. It is too expensive to build skyscrapers underground. The second option is to build a Separation Fence high enough to stop Kassams. But even Israel hasn't discovered an effective way to build a wall that can be raised like an accordion as the missiles fly ever higher. Lucky for us, the self-defense principle leaves us one more option that can just barely merit British approval. We must catch the assailants red-handed. But to do that, we must send our sons into the killing fields that have sprouted there since we expelled the settlers from Gaza. Many will be killed, G-d forbid. But the runway to Marks and Spencer will be wide open
For those who think young said...where is the thought process here? I missed it. Should the elephant care if it is bitten by the flea...Yes, if the flea carries bubonic plague As a young American Jew I am pretty dismayed at the Israeli government's actions and my own government's ability to be bullied by those in the US who equate any criticism of Israel with Anti-Semetism...I symphathize with your plight. You are embarassed by the existence of Israel, which still has to use war when sophisticated individuals such as yourself find nothing worth fighting over, except perhaps who is better, Angelina or Jen. Why dont you do something meaningful, like go to Gaza and serve as a human shield? Who knows, you could be as famous as Rachel Corrie
Yehuda which Planet do you come from? You take to Task Norman for telling the truth.For six decades now hard line Zionists had their grip on Western Media aand its morally degenertate politicians! When Israel was created throgh blackmail and bullying by Truman and his gang,one thing was made clear! UN Resolution had carved two states. Israeli leaders are on record that what we are getting now is only a beginning.We will get the whole of Palestine step by step. First the Israeli junta and their cohorts in Washington London and Paris collaborated by invading Egypt in 1956.Thanks to Soviet Union Gen Eisenhower asked France UK and Israel to get out of Suez canal and Arab land. Israel complied but its US collaborators made sure no future US President will tell Israel what to do! Then came 1967 war which everyone knows Israel launched and grabbed again more Arab lands.More Arabs were driven off from Egyptian Syrian and Palestinian lands. The UN passesd Resolution 242 TO WHICH USA put its signature. It died before any of its section was implemented! The rest is history! Israel which has enjoyed blind support from USA since then has violated every UN Law and International Law. USA aid totals 112 Billions USA complements of US Tax payers who do not even know about this drain on their pockets! The US Congress is a stooge of AIPAC and scores of Pro Israel lobbies who are expansionists!
So many anti-Semites reading the Forward (representing themselves to be "progressive" Jewish anti-Semites). ... Well, help is now on the way for Sderot, and the more dead arab terrorists the better. ... The Jew haters of the world, including the "liberal media" will try to cast Israel's war with the arab terrorists as Israeli "massacre", "aggression", or "dispoportionate force", and other obvious terrorist propaganda, but at last the battle is joined. Jews should monitor the media, including the erstwhile "Jewish" media to see if it tries to undermine Israel again. Watch the Forward carefully to see if it publishes any skewed, clever, sanctimonious, corrosive, "balanced", anti-Israel propaganda, or whether it (as a Jewish publication obviously should) provides full-throated support for Israel's belated bold war on the arab enemies of the Jewish people.
The "liberal" anti-Semitic media is already spewing arab propaganda: The blood libels against Israel have already begun. A British defense writer, Sean Rayment, blasted Israel in a Telegraph (UK) blog today, "The attack on the Gaza strip is proof that Israel is addicted to violence. Slaughtering 155 civilians, many of whom are women and children, can not be justified." An absolute blood libel. No military force in the world is as careful as the Israeli Defense Forces in differentiating combatants from the civilians surrounding them. Note this report from Bloomberg: "Most of the Palestinian dead were members of the Hamas security forces, including police chief Tawfiq Jaber and the head of the organization's Security and Protection Service, Ismail al-Jabary, said Taher Noono, a spokesman for Hamas. " Pictures from Gaza indicate this fact. Note these photos of Palestinian security forces hit in their bases. These are uniformed combatants of a force that declared war on Israel, and they are very legitimate targets according to international law. But now comes the "fauxtography" so prominent in the Lebanon war. A Washington Post photo essay posted the two pictures above of the Palestinian combatants along with a picture of Palestinian wounded in a Gaza hospital. The picture was accompanied by this caption: Palestinian children and a man wounded in Israeli missile strikes are seen in the emergency area at Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Saturday, Dec. 27, 2008. Israeli warplanes demolished dozens of Hamas security compounds across Gaza on Saturday in unprecedented waves of simultaneous air strikes. Gaza medics said at least 145 people were killed and more than 310 wounded in the single deadliest day in Gaza fighting in recent memory. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra) (Khalil Hamra - AP) The children appear healthy. Would the photographer and caption writer, Khalil Hamra, fake a picture? Yes. Khalil Hamra is the credited AP photographer for many of the pictures of the International Solidarity Movement activities in Gaza, including those of Rachel Corrie. To recall, Rachel Corrie was an American activist who attempted to stop an Israeli bulldozer from destroying Gazan tunnels in 2003. Corrie slipped under the bulldozer, was killed and became a shaheed of the left. Hamra's pictures include this one of Corrie burning an American flag (left). A search of Google images shows hundreds of Hamra's pictures of grieving Palestinians as well as Palestinian dead and wounded. His many pictures of Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters and military exercises suggest that Hamra could almost serve as Hamas' official photographer.
If the Israelis had gone back to the 1967 borders, and abandoned the settlements, they could have had peace too. This cycle of revenge is making things worse for everyone, except for a few Israelis and Arabs who profit from it.
Come on, Norman. Israel can withdraw from the territories captured in 1967, and she can abandon her settlements - but she won't get peace in return. Where did you read that this is the whole list of Arab grievances? The Palestinian side, just for one of many obvious examples, is also demanding that the descendants of the refugees be allowed into Israel. I can understand that an outsider doesn't know all the aspects of the conflict. It's obvious that you probably don't read books in Arabic (or Hebrew), and perhaps you haven't read the Hamas Charter, and much more. But surely even a casual viewer of the TV news understands that the conflict is not merely a border dispute of territory the size of a "postage stamp" - and that the Arab world is busy challenging the very legitimacy of Jewish statehood. Surely, you are aware of the fact that before 1967 (before the capturing of the West Bank and the building of settlements) there was a conflict in the Middle East. There are other grievances that have apparently slipped by you.
As a young American Jew I am pretty dismayed at the Israeli government's actions and my own government's ability to be bullied by those in the US who equate any criticism of Israel with Anti-Semetism. This is not about propaganda or "liberal" media outlets, the facts alone are enough for most of the world and myself included to look hard at this conflict: Four Israeli's dead, compared to 370 Palestinians? Regardless of the instigation by Hammas this is unwarranted. Should the elephant care if it is bitten by the flea? Israel loves to hit back and prove it's strength, but what has this accomplished? I recognize the need for Israel, I support Israel, but that doesn't mean that Jews MUST support everything Israel does. This is not some helpless fledgling state, and they can obviously take care of themselves, so why do American Jews lobby like it's 1948? The old ideologies in the U.S. of liberal vs. conservative - the "me" generation's selfish gift to the world - are going to stripped away by a new larger generation just beginning to make it voice heard. We will vote for leaders who work toward compromises, not wins or losses against the other side. Let's hope this attitude has some influence on the middle east.