Gaza Tag

UPDATE 8-1-2014: The ceasefire lasted just a few hours as Hamas used the lull to launch an attack in which Israeli soldiers were killed and one is believed kidnapped. More to follow in separate post. --------------- John Kerry and Ban Ki Moon just announced that all sides have agreed to a 72-hour "humanitarian truce" starting 8 a.m. tomorrow (Israel time, about 7 hours from the time this post goes live). CNN reports that Hamas and other terrorist groups have accepted. The negotiations apparently were held in Egypt, which had proposed a ceasefire two weeks ago that Israel accepted and Hamas rejected. It appears that all forces stay in place. It's unclear whether and to what extend Israel can continue to search out new tunnels or blow up ones already located. Here is the statement:

.@CNN reports US understanding that Israel can continue to destroy tunnels in areas currently holds

— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) July 31, 2014

Details to follow below.

Just think what could have been. Israel left Gaza in 2005. The vast international aid that flowed to Gaza could have been used to build the foundation of a nation. Instead it was put to building tunnels and rocket infrastructure. Rather than forging economic ties with the world, it forged military ties with Iran and Hezbollah to achieve the goal of the Hamas charter -- the destruction of Israel. Meanwhile, Israel continued to build a nation, becoming one of the high tech capitals of the world. That could have been Gaza, where the people obviously have tremendous skills and ingenuity. But it was a choice that was not made. The NY Times has a good story about the nature of the vast Hamas tunnel network into Israel, designed specifically for kidnapping and attacks, Tunnels Lead Right to the Heart of Israeli Fear:

An Israeli military spokesman said that in the tunnels uncovered so far, soldiers have found more than 70 side shafts. Inside the Ein Hashlosha tunnel, they picked up potato-chip bags dated as late as February. Elsewhere, there were dates, water and crackers; rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles; small rooms for sleeping or hiding; a kidnapping kit of tranquilizers and plastic handcuffs; Israeli Army uniforms; and a Bosch drill used for digging the tunnels that Colonel Azulai described as “a very good one.” “It’s like a subway under Gaza,” he said. Israeli experts said each tunnel would take up to a year and cost up to $2 million to build, involving dozens of diggers working by hand and with small electric tools. The military has known about the tunnels since at least 2003 and had a task force studying them for a year, but was nonetheless stunned at the sophisticated network they found.

How do you fight an enemy that is willing---nay, eager---to force you to kill its children even if you don't want to? That's the situation Israel faces against Hamas. It's the situation we face against Islamist terrorists, too, because they use such techniques as one of their primary tools, and the liberal west and the MSM all too often play into their hands by demonizing Israel and the US rather than the perpetrators. This is not new. It began when the west decided that all-out war was something it could no longer in good conscience wage. Civilian casualties in the first half of the 20th Century had reached such huge numbers that we turned in revulsion against them, and the increasing accuracy of weaponry enabled us to entertain the idea---for a short while, anyway---that wars could be fought with "surgical precision." That would be true, if the enemy cooperated. But it doesn't. The Islamist terrorists didn't invent the technique. In order for it to come to full fruition, the enemy needed a west with a guilty conscience about itself and a desire to excuse that enemy's barbarism, and an MSM fully on board with the program. This was already beginning to be the case during the War in Vietnam:

Given the cancellation of flights into and out of Ben-Gurion Int'l Airport at the urging of the FAA backed up by the White House, many are predicting it's likely that the next day or two will be decisive -- either militarily or diplomatically. Anshel Pfeffer at Haaretz writes that the airport shutdown may lead to a heavier Israeli military strike:

This may prove to be a game-changer in a conflict which is now entering its third week. It could provide further impetus for the government in seeking a speedy ceasefire with Hamas, but that seems doubtful. Even a partial suspension of operations at Ben-Gurion is a major coup for Hamas, which has been so starved of any real achievements that they are pretending to have captured an IDF soldier who was almost certainly killed on Saturday night, though his remains have yet to be identified. Accepting Hamas' terms for a ceasefire now is unthinkable. It is much more likely that, faced with the prospect of more rockets cutting Israel off from the international air routes, the government will be inclined to order a much more devastating blow, a wider ground operation to occupy the rocket-launching sites or even directed at Hamas' underground headquarters, with dreadful implications for the people of Gaza living above.

Times of Israel analyst Avi Issacharoff argues, in Worse may yet lie ahead, that Hamas, while talking tough, is in trouble: