IDF Commanders: Time for decisive war move after IDF victories in Shejaiya, E. Rafah and Khan Younes - http://www.debka.com/article/24122/IDF-Commanders-Time-for-decisive-war-move-after-IDF-victories-in-Shejaiya-E-Rafah-and-Khan-Younes-
Senior IDF commanders said Wednesday July 23 that the time had come for a decisive war move. Breaking up the Hamas' subterranean tunnels would take weeks, they said, but the critical encounter for completing their military mission and bringing the war to a close was still to be fought after three key IDF victories: The battle for Shejaiya grabbed the headlines, but the confrontations in eastern Rafah and eastern Khan Younes in the south were just as important.
The commanders are now urging a large-scale assault on the bunker complex housing Hamas' top military command and infrastructure. They say it is up to national leaders, i.e., the security cabinet, to determine the military's next move and the disposition of the forces present on the battlefields of the Gaza Strip.
The tank units could undertake the opening moves for the next, critical stage of the Israeli operation at no more than hours' notice.
Political circles in Israel agree that after Hamas rejected all the ceasefire proposals floated, the next stage is the war's expansion for its closing shots. There is no word yet on how they are to be conducted.
The Western diplomats and Palestinian Authority officials who met Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal in Qatar Sunday were amazed to hear him assert that Hamas was winning the war against the IDF and confident of being able to keep going for a long time, debkafile's military and intelligence sources report.
On Monday, July 21, Meshaal told one Western official: "In Gaza we see that the IDF is slow and clumsy. Our forces are mobile and flexible, including our rockets which we can move quickly from one place to another."
Asked about Hamas' defeat in Shajaiya, where a Gaza City suburb, home to 100,000 Palestinians, was razed to the ground, he declined to comment.
After Israel learned of Meshaal's comments, the IDF was instructed Monday night to demolish the empty home of Mohammed Deif, head of Hamas military wing. Israeli war planners believe Deif is the brain behind Hamas' war, along with Izz-e- din al Qassam Brigades commander Marwan Issa.
While their forces were in retreat in the Gaza Strip, Hamas diplomacy won a strong point against Israel by a rocket that hit close enough to Ben-Gurion Airport to persuade US and certain European airlines to suspend their flights.
The rocket landed at Yehud, which is not far from the runways of Ben-Gurion airport and Airport City which houses a business and shopping center and Israel Aircraft Industries.
By Tuesday night, 85 international flights were cancelled by all American and a few European airlines. The Israeli El Al and Arkia moved fast to expand their service to and from Israel to fill the gap.
Early Wednesday morning, US Secretary of State John Kerry declined a request by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to intervene with the Federal Aviation Administration-FAA to rescind its ban on US carriers' flights to Israel.
Kerry said he could not interfere in this and that anyway the FAA reviews its decisions every 24 hours. The European carriers are unlikely to resume their flights to Ben-Gurion so long as the Americans observe the ban.
debkafile's military sources note that Hamas' success in disrupting civilian air traffic to and from Israel exposed a hidden side of its war on Israel. Most of the nearly 2,000 rockets fired over the last 16 days did not miss Israel's urban centers by chance, although many were deflected by Iron Dome interceptors. Hamas was focusing on strategic targets, such Israeli Air Force bases and facilities in the south and center. When IDF communiqués report that rockets land in open areas, this does not necessarily rule out their explosion in or near military bases.
Israeli forces are fighting hard to win their first battle against Hamas, a savage and tenacious enemy - http://www.debka.com/article/24120/Israeli-forces-are-fighting-hard-to-win-their-first-battle-against-Hamas-a-savage-and-tenacious-enemy
The battle for Shejaiya, the Hamas stronghold on Gaza City's outskirts, was still unresolved Tuesday, July 22, indicating that the Islamists were not giving up. Indeed, fresh Hamas reinforcements appeared to have taken up new positions in the battle zone during the night. They may have arrived through Hamas' many-branched tunnel system.
Every few hours, the IDF spokesman releases two sets of figures: Israeli casualty statistics and the number of IDF strikes against Hamas. He has little to say about Israel's military movements. Neither Israeli nor foreign correspondents have been permitted to accompany IDF troops fighting in the Gaza Strip - a policy the IDF has pursued since the second Lebanon war of 2006. Military leaders are therefore free to manage the data, human and electronic, coming out of the war, including images from the various fronts, without independent coverage. The public sees the same IDF surveillance footage day after day.
This policy reduces the hazards faced by Israeli forces and keeps their scale and identities secret from the enemy - and that is good for Israel's war effort.
On the other hand, it creates a widening gap between the "official version" and the real state of affairs on the battlefield. Since most people have access to relatives on the front - not to mention prolific rumor mills powered by the social media - the credibility of national war leaders suffers.
Official communiqués are studded with impressive figures. Tuesday morning, the IDF was reported to have struck 3,200 Hamas targets since the start of the operation. In the last four days, the soldiers located 23 secret tunnels and 36 shafts leading into Hamas' subterranean complex, and killed 186 Hamas operatives in combat. Israel lost 27 officers and men in the same period.
Those figures are telling in that they illustrate the hardships confronting the IDF from a ferocious enemy which refuses to crack under air or ground assault.
Because the Golani Brigades' losses in Shejaiya were so heavy, IDF chiefs had no choice but to disclose information about the combatants on this front. But no one, aside from the combatants and their officers, knows what is going on in the other arenas to which the five special IDF task forces have been assigned. There is no news for instance from the southern sector of Rafah and Khan Younes. or the northern towns of Shati and Zeitun. No one knows how many Hamas tunnels are left to be destroyed - and where - before the IDF claims to have completed this critical part of its counter-terror mission
By any military standard, the IDF has the edge over Hamas. But the battle still needs to be won.
This situation has stiffened Hamas' resistance to any of the ceasefire proposals taking shape in various parts of the region in the last couple of days. Its leaders feel strong enough to carry on fighting and holding out for better terms than those on offer at present.
Hostilities are therefore likely to drag out for an indeterminate period.
For Israel, the diplomatic clock is ticking too fast. As the warfare stretches out without a decisive battle on at least one Gaza front, the rising casualty toll threatens to undermine Israel's ability to stand up to the pressures of international truce diplomacy.
Hamas murders 25 Palestinians, blames Israel - Aaron Klein - http://www.wnd.com/2014/07/hamas-used-cease-fire-to-execute-suspected-collaborators/
Used cease-fire to execute suspected collaborators during 'humanitarian' truce
Hamas killed at least 25 Palestinian civilians it suspected of collaborating with Israel, according to sources close to Gazan jihadist organizations.
The sources, close to both Hamas and the Islamic Jihad groups, told WND that most of the extra-judicial killings of suspected collaborators took place during a brief "humanitarian" cease-fire four days ago.
The so-called collaborators were accused of leading Israeli troops to smuggling tunnels and providing intelligence on Hamas' infrastructure inside Gazan cities.
The sources said Hamas publicly blamed the killings of the Palestinian suspects on Israel, claiming the civilians were murdered Sunday during an Israel Defense Forces "massacre" in the Shujaiyeh neighborhood of the Gaza Strip.
The sources further said the civilian suspects murdered by Hamas were publicly celebrated by Hamas as martyrs killed by the Jewish state.
After Sunday's operation in Shujaiyeh, in which the IDF says it targeted Hamas's terrorist infrastructure, Israel agreed to a two-hour humanitarian cease-fire facilitated by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The stated purposed of the lull in fighting was to evacuate Palestinian casualties.
During the cease-fire, the IDF said Hamas violated the agreement by shooting at IDF soldiers. Nonetheless, Israel extended the cease-fire another hour.
Israel lost 13 soldiers during the Shujaiyeh operation Sunday. Hamas claimed Israel killed at least 66 Palestinians, mostly civilians, in that operation.
Israel says most Palestinian casualties were gunmen.
Israel vs. Hamas is a war between good and evil - By S. Daniel Abraham - http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.607131
For Israel, a ceasefire now will only guarantee another war in a year or two or three; the only effective strategy is the complete demilitarization of Hamas, a terrorist organization that has hijacked a country.
The most important thing for a country to know before it gets into a war is what its objective is. If Israel's objective is to destroy many of Hamas' rocket launching sites and demolish many of the tunnels Hamas has built to infiltrate terrorists into Israel then it has already succeeded. And if Israel wants to underscore that it is militarily far stronger than Hamas, then it has succeeded in that goal as well. Israel knows this, Hamas knows this, and the whole world knows this.
Unfortunately, though, the achievement of all these goals is not enough. For Israel to accept or declare a ceasefire at this time will achieve nothing for Israel other than a guarantee of another war with Hamas in a year or two or three. And that is because nothing about Hamas will have changed. Before this war it was committed to the destruction of Israel and to murdering as many Israeli Jews as it could and this commitment remains paramount to Hamas. The only thing that will stop it is the total disarming of Hamas, a terrorist organization that has hijacked a country.
The United States learned this lesson seventy years ago when it confronted equally implacable enemies toward whom only one strategy could be effective: complete demilitarisation. In the case of Hamas that means, as it meant in the case of the Germans and the Japanese, complete demilitarization.
A Hamas that is permitted to maintain access to any missiles, any long-range weaponry, or any machine guns for that matter remains a life-threatening threat to the citizens of Israel. Although everyone knows that Israel has nuclear weapons, no one fears for a moment that it will introduce these weapons in its war against Hamas. Does anybody, including the Israel-haters and assorted anti-Semites who recently demonstrated in Paris, doubt that if Hamas had nuclear weapons it would try and drop them on Israel?
Israel's goal, therefore, is simple to state, but difficult to achieve. It must wipe out or take possession of all the missiles Hamas has, and it must destroy all the tunnels that Hamas uses to try and infiltrate Israel, and achieve a complete demilitarization of Gaza.
The Allies understood in 1945 that anything less than total surrender by the Nazis and the Japanese would guarantee their continued attempts to kill Americans and the other Allied forces. In those days, the Allies were far more indiscriminate in their bombing than Israel is today. Even prior to the use of the atom bomb, the Allied bombings killed some 25,000 civilians in Dresden, 42,000 in Hamburg and 125,000 in Tokyo.
Israel is doing everything in its power not to kill civilians, and it would succeed in that goal if not for Hamas' demonic placement of its missile sites in the midst of Gazan residential neighborhood and population centers. When Israel is threatened by Hamas missiles, it sends its citizens into bomb shelters. Gaza doesn't build bomb shelters (for one thing it doesn't want to divert concrete from building its terrorist tunnels), because the Hamas leaders want civilians, children in particular, killed, thereby hoping to turn world opinion against Israel.
One day, the Gazan people will realize what the Italian people realized too late about Mussolini, that he was never their friend and he didn't care if they died; that's why it was Italians who killed him. And one day the Gazan people will realize what the German people realized too late, that the man who caused them more misery than anyone else in the entire history of Germany was Adolf Hitler. And one day the Gazans will realize that voting into power a government that places missiles mixed in among its citizens' homes, thereby inviting attacks, is a government that despises them and despises their children.
Unfortunately, this realization does not seem to have come yet to Gazans. And that leaves Israel the responsibility of taking care of its own citizens. A world that is largely indifferent to the fate of Jewish lives can protest against Israel all it wants. But no country would allow another country - one which repeatedly announces its desire to destroy her and even puts that malevolent wish into its national covenant - to go on shooting missiles at her, and infiltrating terrorists past her borders.
In the meantime, Israel must continue to pursue peace with those Palestinians who, unlike Hamas, want to live in peace with Israel. Israel must offer a balanced peace proposal based on the 1967 lines with equal swaps, a demilitarized Palestinian state and Jerusalem divided by population, as an open multi-religious city of peace.
What Israel is doing now is an act of self-defense, and if innocent Gazans die it is by accident on Israel's part and by intention on Hamas' part. How dare anyone, any country, condemn Israel for trying to protect its citizen's lives? Israel sends its endangered citizens to shelters. Hamas makes no effort to build shelters for them. And that is all that one needs to know about the nature of the two sides in this conflict.
There is often ambiguity in wars. Rarely is it a question of a war between good and evil. This one is.
A "humanitarian" ceasefire would give Hamas time to find answers for Israeli Chariot-4's Windbreaker armor - www.debka.com
Thursday, July 24, the 17th day of the IDF's Gaza operation, Israeli ministers were discussing a possible "humanitarian ceasefire" in IDF-Hamas hostilities, which could last up to five days. According to debkafile's military sources, it is Hamas which, behind its tough stance, is keen on a pause - and not just out of sudden concern for Gaza's civilians. Its tacticians are desperate to find a chink in the Chariot-4 tank's Armored Shield Protection-Active Trophy missile defense system, known as the Windbreaker. The 401st armored brigade is the only IDF unit with this armor.
Hamas has tried to stop these tanks with two kinds of advanced guided anti-tank missiles, the Russian Kornet-E, and the 9M113 Konkurs. But Windbreaker repels them and blows them all up.
Wednesday July 23 the IDF deliberately placed brigade commander Col. Sa'ar Tzur, one of the outstanding commanders in Operation Protective Edge, before TV cameras, while standing in front of a Chariot-4 tank.
He spoke at length about the brigade's unstoppable performance under anti-tank missile fire. Those missiles are blown up without penetrating the tanks' armor, he said, and are powerless to slow their advance.
Hamas has found no answer for the Active Trophy defense system, any more than it has for the Iron Dome anti-missile defense batteries, which keep Israeli civilian populations safe from its rockets. Both systems are home-made, developed by Rafael advanced armed systems industries.
Hamas is not giving up, which is why it is holding out against a long ceasefire, but aiming for just enough time to come up with new stratagems, debkafile's military sources say.
This was the message conveyed in the statement Hamas leader Khaled Meshal made Wednesday July 23 in Qatar: He rejected a long-term ceasefire, but left the door open for a "humanitarian" pause.
While its forces have taken serious punishment, most of Hamas' underground command and military infrastructure is still far from knocked out. But if the Israeli military decides to go for a decisive coup against those core facilities - defined by the Israeli security cabinet's euphemism of "expanding the operation" - Hamas chiefs expect it to be spearheaded by a fleet of Chariot-4 tanks hurtling towards them behind the protection of their impenetrable "Windbreakers."
To maintain any kind of draw with the IDF, Hamas stands in urgent need of two resources: 1) Technology for neutralizing the Windbreaker; and 2) Missiles able to pierce it.
While Khaled Meshal haggles with ceasefire brokers in Qatar, his agents are known to have appealed urgently to Tehran to find the weapons they need and deliver them at top speed to the Gaza Strip - possibly from Libya by the Iranian-terrorists' arms smuggling route through Egypt.
A reference to this appeal was made in a comment by a senior military intelligence official Wednesday, when he disclosed that Iran had promised to rebuild Hamas' military machine, including its rocket production and launch systems. Hamas and Tehran also broached the problem of the Chariot-4 armor. Both fully understood that unless it can be solved, Hamas may have no way of defending its high command and arsenal in their elaborately furnished underground bunkers.
US Secretary of State John Kerry has all these facts to hand, fed by a steady stream of intelligence from US informants in and over the battlefield. His efforts for a ceasefire are based on his perception that Israel has so far not managed to inflict a clear defeat on Hamas and needs to expand its operation to tip the scales.
He calculates that if Israel launches its final thrust, which has not yet been approved, it will not accept a ceasefire before achieving its goal, and this may take at least a week to ten days.
But if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon hold off on Israel's decisive attack, then negotiations can start for a truce of some kind, while both sides size up their respective situations and decide whether or not it is to their advantage.
'Their God changes path of rockets in mid-air' - Joe Kovacs - http://www.wnd.com/2014/07/their-god-changes-path-of-rockets-in-mid-air/
Terrorist said to marvel at Israel's supernatural protection
As Israel continues to deal with the threat of terrorist rockets flying through its skies, a recent newspaper headline trumpeted the possibility of supernatural protection.
"Their God changes the path of our rockets in mid-air, said a terrorist," was the headline in the July 18 edition of the Jewish Telegraph.
It was a partial quote from Barbara Ordman, who lives in Ma'ale Adumim on the West Bank.
Her exact quotation was: "As one of the terrorists from Gaza was reported to say when asked why they couldn't aim their rockets more effectively: "We do aim them, but their God changes their path in mid-air."
She opened her piece by noting: "In October 1956, [Israel's first Prime Minister] David Ben Gurion was interviewed by CBS. He stated: 'In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.'"
Ordman also noted religious texts, specifically the Jerusalem Talmud, teaches Israelis not to depend on miracles for survival.
"It argues that we must not desist from our obligations and must not wait for miraculous intervention from the Supernatural," she writes.
After her mention of the divine diversion of enemy rockets, she said, "When our God is not busy doing that, He is ensuring that the high-tech brain power of our 'start-up nation' is working overtime to produce yet another Iron Dome battery to help protect our cities and us."
The headline is now being shared worldwide on Facebook by "Sid Roth's It's Supernatural" page, with thousands of likes and a variety of comments including:
*"Shalom to Israel and supernatural protection, thank you Jesus for releasing your warring angels to supernaturally protect and defend Israel in Jesus' name ... " (Juliet M. Maeck)
*Indeed, He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. Psalm 121:4 (Danette Mallard)
*"The Muslims should also read about their future ... in Psalm 83." (Jimmie Vestal)
*"Anyone against Israel should just run the other way!" (Trace Remington)
Five IDF task forces begin driving into Gaza City. Israel draws up over-plan for control of the Gaza Strip - http://www.debka.com/article/24116/Five-IDF-task-forces-begin-driving-into-Gaza-City-Israel-draws-up-over-plan-for-control-of-the-Gaza-Strip
The IDF's Shejaiya operation in the Gaza Strip continues apace, carried forward by five task forces now heading for the center of Gaza City amid casualties on both sides. Sunday, July 20, Israel's crack Golani Brigades lost 18 fighters, without slowing down, compared with 170 Palestinian fatalities.
debkafile's military sources report that each task force, the size of half a division, is an integrated amalgam of air, armored, artillery and engineering forces, capable of operating almost autonomously in field combat. The buildup of the last 24 hours has expanded Israel's fighting strength in the Gaza Strip to a total of 75,000 men, the largest ever fielded in this territory. Because of its scale, Israeli leaders are referring to Defensive Edge as a war rather than an operation.
The battle for Shejaiya waged Sunday burst into public prominence because of the heavy losses suffered by the Golani Brigades, but it is not the largest engagement underway at present. The other ongoing IDF battles, their progress, the units involved and their locations, are kept secret. We can only point to their general locations as being around Beit Hanoun in the north; Zeitun, south of Gaza City and the Shati refugee camp to the north.
More arenas are scheduled to be added to the list of battle zones Monday.
Rather than causing despondency, the high IDF casualty toll Sunday - the highest in a single engagement since the 2006 Lebanon War - has invigorated the fighting forces in the field, making them more determined than ever to get the better of Hamas with all possible speed.
Whereas their orders on Sunday were to advance warily and slowly, meanwhile testing the strength of Hamas resistance and observing their tactics, the tempo went into high gear at dawn Monday, when the troops were told to speed their advance from the outer fringes of Gaza City into its center.
Their performance in Shejaiya and other engagements Sunday deeply impressed Israel's war leaders and made them confident enough to step up the rate of advance.
This upbeat mood was evident in the comments made Sunday night by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon and, from the field, by Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz. While condoling deeply with the bereaved families of the 18 soldiers who died in combat, they were full of praise for the troops' performance "in defense of our home" which outdid all expectations.
The following decisions were reached in consequence:
1. Gen. Gantz would stay in the field and lead the forces from there, rather than from staff headquarters in Tel Aviv.
2. The prime minister and defense minister would manage the war, without constant recourse to security cabinet sessions to obtain its approval of every stage of the plan of operation, the final goal of which debkafile has learned, is Israel's military takeover of the Gaza Strip.
3. As the military operation unfolded, the three war leaders were convinced more than ever that demolishing Hamas' terror tunnel complex was not optional, any more than wiping out the rocket menace hanging latterly over five million Israelis and, for nearly a decade over the million people living directly in the shadow of the Gaza border. Publicity guidelines were to be built around this conclusion.
International statesmen are flitting busily around regional capitals, including Jerusalem, in search of an opening to broker a ceasefire in Gaza hostilities. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been holding meetings and US Secretary John Kerry will try and reach the Middle East in the coming days, according to a White House directive - unless he again cancels at the last minute.
According to debkafile's sources, the requisite political and military conditions for a ceasefire are not yet in place because of a number of circumstances, not least of which is Hamas' refusal to contemplate a halt.
Israel, for its part, is fighting for the first time in its history with solid Arab backing from the Egyptian-Saudi-United Arab Emirates bloc. So determined are its members to obliterate the Muslim Brotherhood that they have virtually blacklisted Qatar for supporting the Brothers and for patronizing the Palestinian Hamas, regarded as the MB's paramilitary arm.
This rift has put a spoke in the diplomatic effort to set in motion effective mediation for a Gaza ceasefire predicated on co-opting Qatar.
A bid to make Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas the bridge between the Egyptian-Saudi-UAE grouping and Qatar has likewise foundered. And there isn't much Secretary Kerry can do if and when he comes over to try his hand.
US President Barack Obama's suggestion, when he called Netanyahu Sunday, to build a new Gaza ceasefire around the 2012 formula concocted by the US, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey - and accepted by Israel and Hamas - for ending Operation Pillar of Defense, shows him to be cut off from the fundamentally altered diplomatic and military realities of the current Gaza conflict.
He declines to recognize the emergence of a powerful new Arab bloc. It will be necessary to twist the arms of each of its members, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and UAE, to gain their consent for a bid to cut the Israeli offensive short to rescue Hamas from defeat. And even then, they will stall.
And although anti-Israel demonstrations are being staged in some parts of the world, the most violent in Paris, hardly any world governments have openly condemned the Israeli operation - as yet.
Israel faces perilous, protracted war as IDF expands its operation into Hamas' urban strongholds - http://www.debka.com/article/24114/Israel-faces-perilous-protracted-war-as-IDF-expands-its-operation-into-Hamas'-urban-strongholds
The IDF tried to mitigate the bad news from Hamas warfront by releasing it in sections over Saturday and Sunday, July 19-20. Four soldiers were killed and a score were wounded. Maj. Amotz Greenberg, 45, from Hod Hashorn and Sgt. Adar Bresani, 20, from Nahariya, were shot dead Saturday when their jeep was attacked by Hamas infiltrators bursting out of a tunnel.
On the Gaza battlefield, Paratrooper Staff Sgt. Bana Roval, 20, from Holon, was shot dead by a terrorist from another tunnel, and 2nd Lt, Bar Rahav, 21, from Ramat Yishai, was killed by a missile defense system in a nearby tank.
Hamas is not only bringing its deadly tunnels into play, but also planting small commando units heavily armed with anti-tank rockets across the paths of advancing Israeli armored forces.
Saturday, those commandos fired 10 anti-tank rockets. Without their Windbreaker armor, many tanks would have been destroyed and the casualty toll much higher.
However, most of all, Hamas is fighting to save its tunnel system from systematic destruction by IDF demolition teams. This system was designed to be the Palestinian Islamists' highest strategic asset, comparable in importance to the IDF's chain of fortifications along the Syrian border.
Around 16,000 men, around 15 percent of Hamas' fighting strength, were assigned to the tunnel project in the last five years and substantial funds. The IDF will not be permitted to demolish this flagship project without a savage fight.
The most important conclusion for Israel's war planners, from the first days of the ground phase of Israel's Operation Defensive Edge, is that Hamas is standing firm and not cracking, even under the relentless pounding of their military infrastructure by Israeli artillery and air might, and appears determined to fight on.
Its commanders believe they can keep going for another 4 to 6 weeks, while also maintaining a steady hail of rockets against the Israeli population.
This estimate has spurred a major buildup of Israeli military strength for the Gaza operation. Another 50,000 reservists were called up Saturday night and a large number of infantry brigades started moving into the Gaza Strip overnight and will continue to arrive Sunday. The extra forces have made it possible to embark on the second, urban stage of the IDF operation, the breaching of the densely-populated towns.
A different type of combat lies ahead from the project for destroying tunnels. It is tougher and more perilous. But there is no other way to reach Hamas' command centers and its longest-range rockets.
With this mission still unaccomplished, talk of a ceasefire sounds as though it comes from another planet. Hamas feels strong and confident enough to spurn the Egyptian-Israeli ceasefire proposal, which is firmly backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Every attempt to sway its political leader Khaled Meshaal, when he was buttonholed in Kuwait, ran into a blank wall. He summarily rejected invitations from Egypt and the Arab League to travel to Cairo and discuss the cessation of hostilities.
The various international mediation efforts have therefore nowhere to go.
As far as Hamas is concerned, no incentive has been offered tempting enough to persuade its leaders to give up their predestined war on Israel.
US Secretary of State John Kerry changed his mind about visiting the region for the second time this month, when the Obama administration decided to stay out of it and let Egypt handle the crisis. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who scheduled a visit for Saturday, postponed it indefinitely.
Israel has accordingly won a rare opportunity to deal with Hamas without being stopped short and the enemy saved by international intervention. But although it has wide popular support, this opportunity confronts Israelis with one of the cruelest, costly and drawn-out conflicts in their embattled history.
Nothing Makes Hamas Happier Than Dead Palestinians - Jerold Auerbach - http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/16/nothing-makes-hamas-happier-than-dead-palestinians/
Nothing plays better in the mainstream media these days than wailing Gazans, mourning their dead from Israeli missile strikes responding to the unprovoked deluge of Hamas rockets on the Jewish state. As Ben Wedeman (CNN) recently reported from Jabalia, "There is no Iron Dome in Gaza to protect civilians." But Gaza civilians most need protection from Hamas. Its leaders intentionally jeopardize their lives by embedding rocket-launching and ammunition storage sites in schools, mosques and hospitals located in civilian neighborhoods.
In Gaza, recruits for martyrdom in the holy war against Israel are urged to gather on rooftops. They are instructed by their demented leaders to serve as a human shield against Israeli retribution for thousands of rockets that have been fired into the Jewish state during the past week. The designated locations for martyrdom are not random. Beneath the rooftops are Hamas command centers and tunnels, where leaders take refuge and weapons are stored.
According to Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri: "This attests to the character of our noble, Jihad-fighting people who defend their rights and their homes with their bare chests and their blood." He proudly cited the exemplary "martyr" Nizar Riyan, the senior Hamas leader during the 2009 Gaza war. Receiving a warning phone call from the IDF to evacuate his house, he chose to remain in place, thereby consigning his four wives, ten children and himself to martyrdom from the Israeli air strike that he knew was imminent.
Last Sunday, following rocket attacks on the Tel Aviv area, the IDF dropped leaflets in northern Gaza urging residents to evacuate their homes in advance of a retaliatory military strike to destroy embedded rocket launchers. After 4000 residents heeded the Israeli warning the Hamas Interior Ministry urged them to disregard "random messages to instill panic" and return "immediately" to their homes, the better to become human shields and gain world attention.
As Jeffrey Goldberg observed (Bloomberg, July 11), "Hamas is trying to get Israel to kill as many Palestinians as possible." Why not? Dead Palestinians "represent a crucial propaganda victory" for an inhumane regime that has abjectly failed to provide its own people with even the most minimal amenities of civilized life: safety, food, employment, education, medical care. (It is an irony seldom noted that Gazans are still admitted for treatment in Israeli hospitals.) But Hamas leaders do not hesitate to protect themselves. They take refuge in a vast web of underground tunnels and shelters reserved for their exclusive use. Gaza civilians are expendable. Urged to become targets, their dead bodies are garishly paraded in public to stoke the Hamas cause.
As rockets fall on Israel the world grants Hamas immunity for its war crimes. Blaming the Jewish targets of Palestinian terrorism has long been a popular international trope. As the commissioner general of UNRWA, which invents Palestinian "refugees" by the millions to stay in business, recently declared: "I urgently call on the Israeli Security Forces to put an end to attacks against, or endangering, civilians . . . which are contrary to international humanitarian law." About Hamas rockets targeting Israeli civilians he had nothing to say.
Palestinian suffering inflicted by cruel Israelis is the preferred worldwide narrative. Where better than Frankfurt, as a recent protest demonstrated, for Israel to be equated with Nazi Germany? With the cease-fire proposed by Egypt evidently crumbling, and Israeli retaliation for Hamas attacks resuming, the number of Palestinian martyrs is likely to increase. Nothing could make Hamas happier. Indeed, today's death of four soccer-playing Palestinian boys in Gaza, struck by an Israeli missile, is certain to ratchet up rampage against Israeli retaliation for the unrelenting Hamas rocket attack.
Nobody summed up the situation more succinctly, and accurately, than Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who told Fox News: "We're using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they're using civilians to protect their missiles."
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