Will there be another Gaza war?
By YOSSI MELMAN/J.Post/07/03/2015
A year ago this week, Israel launched its third war in Gaza in less than seven years. The first was in December 2008 and the second in November 2012. Simple calculation shows that the time elapsed between the first and second campaigns was nearly four years.
While the cease-fire between the second and third wars lasted just 19 months, on average it can be calculated that every 22 months Israel has found itself facing the same problem in Gaza. So, with the same calculation, Israel can expect another round in Gaza in the spring of 2016. But Middle Eastern realities are not mere products of statistics.They don’t necessarily adhere to the scripts written by the planners. Sometimes the military battles generate surprising twists in the drama.
The last war, codenamed by IDF computers “Protective Edge,” could be one of these unexpected events. It has the potential for a long-term tacit or formal arrangement between Israel and Hamas, one that could put an end to the rocket launching, sporadic or systematic, from Gaza and could bring quiet and tranquility for the residents of southern Israel. In that sense, the last Gaza war could turn out to be a mirror image of the Second Lebanon War in 2006. That war exposed many tactical weaknesses of the Israel Defense Forces but, on the strategic level, empowered Israeli deterrence. The inhabitants of northern Israel have for nine years since enjoyed and benefited from a peaceful border as Hezbollah is deterred from attacking Israel. Something similar can emerge in the South. The situation Israel has witnessed in the last 12 months on the Gaza front is complex; alongside hopes, it contains risks and danger that another war is on the horizon.
What were the war’s flaws and weakness? It lasted 50 days and was not only the longest of all three Gazan campaigns, but also the second- longest war in the history of the State of Israel after the 1948 War of Independence. During Protective Edge, Israel was bombarded with nearly 5,000 rockets, more than in any other of its military clashes, including the two previous Gaza wars and the Second Lebanon War. For its critics, the war was also too long. But there was a reason for it. The political echelon led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, as well as the IDF leadership, were concerned about reducing Israeli casualties, which due to the urban and densely populated terrain could have been higher than the 67 soldiers who died in battle.It was also said that Israeli intelligence failed to have accurate information about the number, size and spread of the tunnels Hamas had dug to be used as a surprise weapon.
But this claim is not true.
Based on military sources, this writer wrote in October 2013 – nine months before the war – that Hamas had built 20-30 tunnels.Surely, IDF Military Intelligence and the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) did know that Hamas had dug 30 tunnels leading in the direction of Israel. And, indeed, during the war the IDF found and destroyed all of them. The problem, however, was that, even though the information was conveyed to the government, neither the IDF’s top generals nor the cabinet ministers fully grasped the full strategic meaning before the war. Still, the war results, as we analyze them today, are satisfactory. It was a limited war because the declared goals were limited. Israel didn’t wish to topple Hamas because that would have meant once again conquering Gaza, which is a small territorial enclave with a big but very poor population of 1.8 million inhabitants.
Conquering Gaza – which from a military point of view could have been achieved within days – would have resulted in many casualties to both IDF troops and Palestinians. And it would have forced Israel to once again be the occupier and daily provider of Gaza. Israel did not want to be in this position. Bearing in mind that Israel had no serious alternatives other than to end the war the way it did, its achievements were numerous. A growing wedge was created between Hamas and Egypt, which perceives the Islamist organization as a threat to its own national security and accuses it of supporting and collaborating with the terrorists of Islamic State in Sinai. The security cooperation between Jerusalem and Cairo has reached unprecedented levels. Both countries are partners in the war against terrorism, which this week in Sinai caused the Egyptian Army heavy casualties by the hands of Islamic State and showed how painful and formidable a task it is.
There is no military solution to Gaza.
The third Gaza war will be judged successful only if the southern border is truly peaceful. This is only possible if a long-term agreement is reached among Israel, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt – with financial support from Qatar to rebuild and help Gaza normalize the life of its inhabitants.Without a deal that will politically and economically regulate and administrate life there, Gaza will never be rehabilitated. Even worse: The situation will deteriorate and Israel will be confronted with Islamic State, a worse and more brutal enemy.
Global Terror: France’s Islamic problem
By ZVI MAZEL/J.Post/07/04/2015
With the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo and at the Hyper Cacher supermarket, France has experienced a heightened level of Islamic terrorism since the beginning of the year. Yet it is strangely reluctant to tackle the phenomenon, which threatens the whole of Europe. In the past Islamic terrorism has mainly, but not exclusively, targeted Jews. Mohammed Merah had killed two French soldiers and wounded a third before murdering Jewish children and teachers in Toulouse. French security services are working round the clock to prevent further attacks, meeting with little to no success. Only recently they prevented large-scale attacks on the country’s vulnerable churches. However, with radical organizations working within the large Muslim communities, which are to be found everywhere now, and with a Muslim population estimated at six million, security services have their work cut out.
The French government has chosen a rather circuitous approach to the problem and set up a framework of dialogue with its Muslim minority – or, more precisely, with its religious leaders. The first meeting was held in Paris on June 14 – under the auspices of Prime Minister Manuel Valls and his minister of interior, Bernard Cazeneuve – with some 150 Muslim dignitaries, led by Dalil Boubakeur, president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, whose creation in 2003 was promoted by then-president Nicolas Sarkozy. The council has failed dismally to fulfill its intended goals – namely, promoting dialogue with non-Muslims and addressing Islamic terrorism – and has lost much of its prestige.
In the course of several seminars, the dignitaries were asked to formulate their demands, and they asked for more protection for their mosques, a stronger government response to what they called Islamophobia, the building of more mosques – 5,000 were mentioned – as well as more mundane subjects such as a greater supply of halal meat and imposing a special tax on that meat to finance building and other community needs. On the latter point the minister of interior stated that France, being a secular country, could not do so, but would see what could be done regarding the building of mosques as well as taking steps to ensure greater security for mosques and other community infrastructures.
One of the participants suggested turning churches into mosques; the outcry was such that he quickly retreated. Yet the bishop of the city of Évry went on the record to say that he would rather see a church become a mosque than a restaurant. This readiness to forgo centuries-old traditions raised quite a few eyebrows. Sensitive topics such as the problem of Islam in France, Islamic terrorism, the radicalization of Islamic youth and the fact that hundreds of them have joined the ranks of Islamic State were not discussed – in the words of the organizers, “in order not to insult the Muslim community.” Worse, there was no mention of anti-Semitism, one of the major problems in Europe today. The growing number of anti-Semitic incidents in 21st-century France has led more and more Jews to flee a country where Jews have been living for over a thousand years, yet France resolutely refuses to recognize Muslim anti-Semitism as well as renewed Christian anti-Semitism.
A matter of days after the conclusion of the meetings, due to be held again in 2016, one Yassin Salhi contributed his own take on the dialogue. Having decapitated his employer, he hung the severed head between two flags bearing the Shahada – the Muslim profession of faith, “There is no god but God and Muhammad is the prophet of Allah” – on the fence of a factory which, in the nick of time, he was prevented from blowing up. He had managed to post a selfie of himself with the severed head of his victim on his WhatsApp account and send it to a “friend” in Syria.
Interestingly, President François Hollande, rushing to the media after the macabre discovery, refrained from using the words “Islam” or “Islamic terrorism” and did not mention that there was an inscription in Arabic on the flags. It was left to the charismatic Valls to declare boldly to Europe 1 radio that France was under a strategic threat that would have to be tackled. “We are in a war of civilizations,” he said. He was immediately reviled by many members of his own socialist party and pilloried in the media. Yet, in the wake of the January attacks, Valls had already said: “We are at war against terrorism and radical Islam” and had pledged €100 million to the fight against terrorism.
Unfortunately little was done beyond setting up the dialogue framework mentioned above. The Left in France still insists in pretending that it is the Muslim community that is the first victim of Islamic terrorism. And the government still refuses to see that at the core of the problem is radical Islam and the sympathy it receives among not only the Muslim population but the extreme Left. Not only the media but also academic circles proclaim that a small extremist Islamic minority is responsible for all acts of terrorism, which they believe are “against the values of Islam.”
At the same time, on the other side of the Mediterranean divide, the highest religious authorities of Islam know only too well that Islam, as it is taught in schools and universities throughout the Islamic world and especially at Al-Azhar University and major Saudi Arabian universities, is at the core of the problem, and they are trying to address it. The Shari’a and its sources – Koran, Sunna and traditions based on the way of life of the disciples of the prophet Muhammad and his warriors – are the true basis of the attacks on the West, as they are the true basis of the actions of the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
There is an enormous amount of soul-searching among the greatest scholars of Islam, who are desperately trying to find a way to eliminate some of the most extreme texts in a curriculum which has remained unchanged for centuries. To date, only one man has done something about it. President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi of Egypt has launched a comprehensive review of school texts to eradicate calls to jihad and to extremism, a move that France – whose motto is “Freedom, equality and fraternity” – would do well to ponder, if not to emulate.
**The writer, a fellow of The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, is a former ambassador to Romania, Egypt and Sweden.
