Israel Update for November 2012

After several days of nearly incessant Palestinian rocket strikes upon one-sixth of their country's civilian population, Israeli government leaders launched an extensive air and sea bombing campaign-dubbed Operation Pillar of Defense. Officials said it was designed to halt the Islamic attacks and weaken the Hamas hold over the Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also made abundantly clear he was ready and able to launch another major ground incursion into the Gaza Strip if necessary to halt the escalating attacks. To show he meant business, tens of thousands of IDF reserve soldiers received urgent call up notices, with many heading to the Gaza border to join a large regular army force already gathering there.

In the end, a ground incursion was narrowly averted when the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Egyptian government successfully brokered a series of "understandings" between Israeli and Hamas officials, who met separately with Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi and other negotiators (Morsi later assumed emergency powers over his people that were declared dictatorial by many protesting Egyptians). The agreement included a Hamas pledge to halt all rocket firings, at least for now. Israelis leaders agreed to hold discussions with Egyptian officials over the Palestinian demand that they further ease the IDF military blockade of the Gaza Strip. Fishing restrictions were removed off the Gaza coast. The blockade was imposed in 2007 after Hamas seized control over the Mediterranean coastal zone from the Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak later made clear the agreement was not technically a ceasefire accord, but merely several commitments made by both sides to their Egyptian interlocutors in the presence of American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who rushed to the region to help negotiate a ceasefire deal. Barak stressed that Israeli officials had not dealt directly with Hamas, which is considered a terrorist group in Israel since its founding charter calls for continual Muslim attacks upon the Jewish State until it is totally destroyed.

Subsequent opinion surveys showed that around two-thirds of the Israeli public did not support the unofficial ceasefire accord. Instead, they wanted to see IDF ground forces enter the Gaza Strip in order to finish the job they started, despite the fact that all realized this would have undoubtedly resulted in significant military casualties, along with a much larger Palestinian civilian death toll. Hamas officials earlier stated that 161 Palestinians had been killed during the Pillar of Defense operation, claiming half were civilians. Israeli leaders admitted some civilians had perished in the fighting despite their best attempts to prevent non-combatant casualties. However they also noted that Western journalists stationed in Gaza City had confirmed IDF reports that Muslim militants were firing rockets from Palestinian civilian neighborhoods close to homes, schools, hospitals, etc, obviously using their own people as human shields. Six Israelis were killed in the short conflict, four of them civilians slain by exploding rockets, including a young mother whose son lost several fingers when a rocket destroyed their home. Scores more were wounded on both sides of the Gaza border.

Israeli political analysts said PM Netanyahu had decided against a ground incursion for several reasons. With national elections just two months away, he did not want to risk that such an operation would go awry or lead to excessive Israeli army and civilian casualties. He also understood that a blood-soaked ground operation would probably lead to a change of tone from many international leaders who at least expressed some understanding for Israel's right and need to halt recurring Palestinian rocket assaults. Still, the Premier made clear at the end of the operation that he was ready to launch a ground campaign if the rocket firings resumed-whatever political cost this might incur both domestically and internationally.

The army reported that around 1,500 air and sea strikes had been launched against Palestinian targets during the eight-day Pillar of Defense campaign. That was roughly equivalent to the number of Palestinian rocket attacks aimed at Israel during the short but intense conflict. Among the targets hit by IDF fire were Hamas government offices, along with a site the IDF said was being used to construct Palestinian pilot-less drone aircraft. A major communications building in Gaza City used by the local and foreign press was also struck, along with the Hamas-linked Islamic National Bank, the Hamas national security headquarters building located in the Saraya government compound, several police stations, arms depots, rocket launching sites and vehicles, and dozens of weapons smuggling tunnels dug under the southern Gaza border with Egypt.

Who Won The Battle?

At the end of the eight day operation, IDF officers said they had succeeded in their goal of greatly weakening the Hamas movement on the ground, even if the military strikes seemed to raise the radical group's popularity among many Palestinians and other Arabs all over the turbulent Middle East. Many Israeli commentators doubted that Hamas had been seriously harmed by the IDF strikes, noting that most Hamas agents operate out of the thousands of mosques that dot the Gaza Strip. The Israeli government apparently decided not to attack such Islamic sites out of concern this would further ignite millions of anti-Israel Muslims around the world. One thing seemed clear-the IDF operation against Hamas has gone a long way towards reuniting the divided Palestinian people, with most Palestinian Authority supporters in the West Bank saying they were standing with their Hamas brethren in the "liberation struggle" against Israel. Large rallies in support of their Gaza Strip compatriots were held in many PA-ruled cities and towns. Analysts said growing public support for the anti-peace Hamas terrorist group has left the PA weaker than ever, meaning any future international attempts to unthaw the frozen "land for peace process" is undoubtedly doomed to failure.

Many Palestinians cried foul when they heard that the second floor of the Al Shorouk media tower in the heart of Gaza City had been badly damaged by Israeli airborne missiles on November 20. They characterized this dramatic action as a deliberate and unprovoked attack upon the Palestinian press. Many noted the landmark building houses the broadcasting facilities of one of the main Hamas-controlled television stations that transmits news and other programmes to the small coastal zone. Only later did it emerge that the IDF was accurately targeting a senior Islamic Jihad activist who had apparently sought protection from attack in the media centre. Arab and foreign journalists working in the tower later confirmed his presence on the second floor of the struck media tower. The attack came after Islamic Jihad-considered by most Middle East experts to be Iran's main surrogate Palestinian force in the Gaza Strip-took a more active role in launching rockets at Israeli cities and towns. Some speculated the extremist terrorist group did so on orders from militant Iranian clerical leaders who have repeatedly vowed to wipe the Jewish State off of the world map. Soon after the IDF campaign ended, Iranian officials boasted they had supplied many of the longer range rockets fired in the conflict after earlier training Palestinian militiamen how to fire them. This came soon after the head of the UN's Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, said while visiting Paris that Western economic sanctions against Iran are not slowing down the regime's nuclear uranium enrichment programme, admitting "We do not see any effect."

The pinpoint accuracy of most of the IDF air strikes fanned charges that a number of local Palestinians were Israeli-recruited traitors who were secretly paid to feed real-time targeting information to Israel. The following day, six males were forced at gunpoint to lie down in a major Gaza City street as hundreds of bystanders looked on. They were then shot dead in the head at close range. Following this barbaric scene, their lifeless bodies were hideously dragged by motorcycles through the streets. Cheering Palestinian mobs on the sidewalks chanted that the dead men had been slaughtered because they allegedly collaborated with Israeli security agents. The ugly scene caused some of the most hardened Western journalists reporting from the city to declare that Hamas-style "swift justice" is clearly both primitive and severe.

After the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire took effect on November 22 (followed by one more day of occasional Palestinian rocketing of regional cities and towns), Hamas leaders claimed the operation had been a roaring success, prompting many Palestinians to take to the streets in "celebration" of the self proclaimed, if hardly apparent, 'victory'. Earlier many of them had gathered to toast the fact that uninvolved Jewish civilians were being killed or wounded in the vicinity of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. News of the bus bombing in Tel Aviv, which left over 25 people injured, also prompted thousands of jubilant Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank to take to the streets. An Arab citizen of Israel was later arrested and charged with carrying out the terrorist assault. The young man later confessed he had planted a bomb connected to a cell phone detonator on the city bus. Police said he was sent to carry out the crime by a West Bank terrorist cell affiliated with both Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group.

With the quaking Middle East once again at the top of world headlines, it is a good time to remind ourselves that Israel's Sovereign Lord will have the final say over what transpires in this troubled, teetering world: "For He is the living God, enduring forever. His kingdom shall not be destroyed, and His dominion shall be without end (Daniel 6:27).