I think Israel will regret ending the war so abruptly and pulling out. Israel should have sifted the strip to complete the destruction a little more thoroughly.
Still, deterrence and fear have been restored a good deal among Israel's enemies after the weakening it endured after the poorly fought 2006 Hezbollah War.
Hamas is still firing at Israel and the Israelis are promising a painful response:
The Israeli military says Palestinians have launched over 110 rockets and mortar shells at Israel since the Gaza offensive ended Jan. 18. On Saturday, seven rockets flew from Gaza into Israel, including one that crashed into an empty high school in the coastal city of Ashkelon. There were no injuries.
When Israel halted the offensive, Olmert said, "we took into account the possibility that shooting by the terrorist organizations might resume."
The rockets, he said, "will be answered with a painful, harsh, strong and uncompromising response from the security forces." Olmert spoke at the weekly Cabinet meeting. The military will decide on a response, government officials said afterward.
Many Israelis believe the Gaza operation ended too soon, leaving Hamas in power in Gaza and seemingly undaunted.
Look, the whole Gaza Winter War was apparently not painful enough. What will Israel do that is more painful?
The tragic fact of life for Israel is that Hamas has yet to face a situation where they feel the pain the Palestinian civilians feel from their misrule and Israeli economic pressure and military action outweighs the simple joy of killing Jews. And Israel faces the reality that the world (including, shamefully, America) will rebuild what Israel has smashed, removing much of the pain's effects.
Instead of trying to find that magical threshold of pain that will convince Hamas leaders to stop shooting at Israeli civilians--and that pain can never include just killing civilians, the Israelis need to defeat Hamas and kill or imprison their leaders--both top ones and tactical unit leaders, as well as ripping up the infrastructure of terror in Gaza.
If weakened, Fatah may be able to take control. Fatah is no prize, but they are better than Hamas.
When Israel pulled out of Gaza, I figured that Israel had to do it. The Israeli people weren't willing to pay the price to keep several thousand Israeli settlers inside Gaza. And the Palestinians managed to fire into Israel despite the Israeli presence before the withdrawal. I thought punitive missions could deter a reasonable Palestinian government that would not want to lose their assets in a futile assault on Israel. I even had some faint hope that Israel would have more international backing to retaliate.
But the barely reasonable Fatah was overthrown by the fanatical and Iranian-backed Hamas. The calculus of inter-state relations was smashed. And while Israel does have more backing, including from Sunni Arab governments appalled by the Iranian hand in supporting Hamas, it has not dented the European anti-Semitism that colors all news of the region and leads them to rebuild what Hamas folly has wrecked.
So now we find that Israel doesn't want to reoccupy Gaza for good--they aren't willing to pay the price and they wouldn't be able to stop all the rockets anyway. And punitive missions that smash up Gaza don't deter Hamas from shooting at Israel. The world rebuilds Gaza anyway, saving Hamas from some of the consequences of their murderous urges. Iran must laugh at this foolishness that saves them money.
Israel needs a new strategy. In the short run, Israel needs to go into Gaza long enough to smash up Hamas by destroying their leadership cadres, smuggling tunnels, weapons stockpiles, and weapons workshops.
In the long run, Israel needs somebody else to run Gaza. Either Fatah or Egypt must be enabled to take control. This might not work, either, but looking for a response painful enough persuade Hamas leaders to halt their attacks is just not working.
