Are the leaders of Egypt, Israel, and Hamas, about to be hoisted by their own petards?

This site is unconnected to the award winning blog concerned with: "Reflections on human rights and peacemaking in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" for that site please click on:
http://guidetotheperplexed.blogspot.com/


MAIN POINTS

1 Egypt’s ability and willingness to end the smuggling into Gaza will decide the duration of the current campaign.

2 Hamas’s political and military posturing may have sealed the fate of its military wing.

3 Ehud Barak’s choice of military strategy in Gaza has left him politically both more popular and more exposed than ever.

4 Livni’s wholly inadequate grasp of military and political strategy has left her politically vulnerable as Kadima are squeezed from the political left and right.

5 Bibi Netanyahu’s political and military assessment has been vindicated and his political position appears insurmountable.

6 If Egypt cannot deliver Hamas eventually Israel may be forced into a three week operation of attrition-like fighting followed by several weeks of clearing out bunkers alongside manhunts of senior Hamas operatives and the dismantling of scores of various terror cells.

7 Despite this prospect at the moment Israel looks as though it will declare a unilateral ceasefire within days.

· ANALYSIS

· Egypt holds the key to the current conflict in Gaza. At the moment Egypt is both unwilling and unable to control the smuggling of arms and provisions into Gaza.

Egypt was never willing or able to control the smuggling for several reasons:

1. Allowing smuggling into Gaza has several benefits to Egypt –

a) It allows Egypt to have some control over Hamas. If Hamas displeases Egypt she can threaten to close or hamper the quantity and content of the smuggling. This allows Egypt a certain amount of leverage on Hamas, despite it being a crude and risky method of applying pressure.

b) It allows Egypt to maintain some leverage over Israel. If Israel displeases Egypt in some way, she can relax the control of smuggling into the Gaza Strip to increase the pressure on Israel to reverse any position Egypt feels runs counter to her interests. Egypt felt for a long period that the Qassam fire on Israel was a useful means to get Israel to make concessions in its talks over the West Bank but in particular in relation to Egypt’s demand that she be allowed to considerably increase her forces in the Sinai.

c) This year’s income from smuggling through the tunnels for Egyptian merchants, Hamas, local Gazan merchants, Egyptian border police, and the tunnel owners, is estimated by a Gazan research institute at $650 million. Before Hamas took power 18 months ago there were 20 tunnels currently there are between 500 to a 1,000. This income is particularly important to the Egyptian border police as they are poorly paid, work in harsh conditions, and face threats from Hamas and Bedouin gunmen who also bribe them to help ensure the smooth maintenance of the smuggling process.

The benefits to the Egyptian authorities of these bribes is that they do not need to find extra funding for their officers and men to ensure they remain in post, and they are a useful supplementary income for government officials. It also increases prosperity within the Sinai Peninsula thereby decreasing long-standing tensions between the regime and the local Bedouin population.

2. Egypt has always had difficulty patrolling and controlling smuggling into the Sinai Peninsula. There are over 320 miles of coastline to patrol and most of Hamas’s current missiles and funds have come from Sudan via traditional sea routes and are dropped off, sometimes quite openly, at various ports along the southern Sinai coast. They are mostly medium to long range Grad and Fajr missiles made in China and Iran respectively. The Bedouin have been increasingly pushed out of their traditional grazing lands as tourism has developed in the Peninsula and have resorted more and more to smuggling, which is in any case a traditional enterprise. Bribery of local officials has also been a useful source of income for the low paid non-Bedouin immigrant Egyptians as well and has meant there is little incentive to interfere in the process.

3. Egypt needs foreign help if it is to stop this trade but this in turn poses the regime difficult political problems. It raises difficult issues of sovereignty, competence, administration, and control. The reality is that, as in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Egyptian government is not in control of its borders, corruption is rampant, and administration both incompetent and extremely bureaucratic. To admit help is needed exposes this reality to the world and therefore finding a solution to the smuggling of arms into the Sinai and onto Gaza, that does not expose the Egyptian regime to unwanted scrutiny, will be both complex, expensive, and time consuming.

4. Egypt considers the answer to most of these problems is a substantial increase in its forces into Sinai. Previous Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agreed in principle to allow a substantial increase in their forces from 750 to several thousand along the Gazan border but this was vetoed by the cabinet he headed because it was seen as an invitation to further increases in the future, and, in any case, most security advice was that if only the Egyptian border police performed their duties properly no increase would be needed. This failed to take into account the internal difficulties Egypt had in finding either the funds or the right calibre of men necessary to carry out a dangerous and uninviting job in one of the poorest and least developed parts of their country.

· The Israeli Cabinet agreed today that the operation in Gaza should continue. Ehud Barak’s strategy of a war of attrition in order to maintain low casualties has led him into an untenable position. He now has to rely totally on the Egyptians to extricate himself from the logic of his own strategy, which requires the IDF fight for weeks or months in order to bring about an end to rocket fire from Gaza. Simultaneously, each day that passes brings greater economic, diplomatic, and political pressures. If Barak cannot get the Egyptians to convince Hamas to stop the rocket fire he is faced with two unhappy alternatives: either the war continues for weeks in which case casualties will rise and his whole strategy will be seen to have failed, or, he fails to achieve an end to the rocket fire, and his strategy will have been proven utterly pointless.

· Tzipi Livni faces similar difficulties. She has learnt nothing from the Second Lebanon War. Livni only achieved UN Resolution 1701 as a result of PM Olmert ordering a final push in south Lebanon. This forced Hizb’allah to accept a ceasefire on Israel’s terms and allowed a greatly increased international force, as well as the Lebanese Army to move to its southern border for the first time in 40 years. Livni improbably claimed she could have achieved the same results within the first week of the war. Again, she has shown that her political goals cannot be achieved by the means she has proposed: a limited but harsh aerial bombardment of Gaza to be followed by a continuous response to each rocket fired. But Hamas are no more impressed by such tactics as Hizb’allah were at first in Lebanon. Only when defeat on the battlefield has become all but complete have Hizb’allah and every other Arab armed force Israel has ever faced in its history, been prepared to negotiate a cessation of violence.

Livni has appeared as something of an irrelevance, unable as she is to get anything substantial or worthwhile out of Egypt, and watching impotently as one by one her allies in Europe desert her. During hostilities Israel has only one ally of any significance: the United States. It remains to be seen whether Livni can keep even President Bush onside for the duration of this operation. This was Livni’s concern during the Second Lebanon War, that she would fail to keep EU and US support. PM Olmert kept his nerve and ordered the troops in on two separate occasions against her wishes. It requires a cool and tough mind to cope with such pressures and Israeli centre-right voters, upon which Kadima depend, have seen Livni does not have the mental strength or the strategic military or political vision to protect Israel’s vital interests at times of acute stress.

· This leaves Bibi Netanyahu of Likud in an unassailable position. His analysis of the disengagement from Gaza as a strategic blunder of the first magnitude will be seen to have been vindicated by much of the political centre and right that he needs to convince in order to gain power. And, his argument that a major military operation should have been carried out against Hamas in Gaza years ago, before it could entrench itself, will be seen as equally valid. Valid to such an extent that Defence Minister Ehud Barak has had to invent an extraordinarily tortuous strategy to safeguard IDF personnel’s lives despite the fact Israel’s very security continues to be breached on a daily basis.

· The electoral success of both Kadima and Labour is now inextricably linked to the success or failure of Ehud Barak’s intricate battle plan, and Egypt’s willingness to deal honestly and efficiently with its own problems in Sinai. However, in the meantime, Israel’s economic and diplomatic interests will simply have to suffer, and the loss of life in Gaza will obviously continue unabated.

· Hamas, too, will have to change their battle plan if their military wing is to survive intact. Their unwillingness to compromise on any issue, including the release of Gilad Shalit, whom they now say they have no concern over (in other words he has almost certainly been murdered), and the continued firing of rockets, will give Israel no choice but to continue Barak’s slow salami slice procedure of dismembering it.

· However, all the signs are that Israel will declare a unilateral ceasefire within days. The difficult task of explaining to the Israeli people what goals the operation has achieved will then fall onto Livni and Barak. Their success or failure at defending their positions will be reflected in the number of seats they win for their respective parties come the election on the 10 February.

Links:
For the best English language news site on Israel:
http://www.jpost.com/

For a vigorous Liberal-Left position of the Israeli daily paper:http://www.haaretz.com/

For a Centre-Left view on Israel, in occasionally appalling English: http://www.ynetnews.com/home/0,7340,L-3083,00.html

For an insight into Arab and Muslim media coverage of the Israel-Palestinian issue, anti-Semitism, and other Middle East issues see:
http://www.memri.org/

For an overview of the media coverage of Israel see the BICOM (Britain Israel Research and Communications Centre) site. Below are the sites for -News headlines with links to each site:
http://www.bicom.org.uk/news/headlines

A written summary of the news:
news:http://www.bicom.org.uk/news

The main issues behind the news:
http://www.bicom.org.uk/briefings/behind_the_news/

Extracts from editorial and article Opinion:
http://www.bicom.org.uk/news/comment-and-opinion

A small selection of Quotes:
http://www.bicom.org.uk/news/quotes
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Israel Decides: Hamas is not Hizb’allah - its military wing will have to be neutralised.

This site is unconnected to the award winning blog concerned with: "Reflections on human rights and peacemaking in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" for that site please click on:
http://guidetotheperplexed.blogspot.com/

MAIN POINTS

1 Israeli leaders of all significant parties have decided that Hamas’s military wing will have to be neutralised.

2 There remain differences among the Israeli parties over tactics but none at all on the overall strategic goal.

3 These differences will express themselves very soon if the present government does not pursue the strategic goal sooner rather than later.

4 Labour and Kadima will lose the centre-right ground if they fail to achieve significant political and military advances.

5 Hamas also have a long term military strategy part of which involves not engaging IDF forces except when necessary or where a clear advantage can be gained.

6 Hamas probably have sufficient missiles and general supplies to last another eight to ten weeks. The missiles include: a limited supply of Iranian long-range Fajr missiles that can hit Tel Aviv, as well as a large supply of Grad missiles that can hit most if not all of southern Israel. The supply of short-range Qassam missiles is probably in the tens of thousands.

7 Hamas remain very confident of eventual “victory” by which they mean surviving the current IDF limited incursion with almost their entire military capability, and their total political control of the Gaza Strip, unaffected.

8 Israel is preparing for a war with Iran, Syria, and Lebanon should they force the issue. Sooner, or later, Hamas’s military capability in the Gaza Strip will be neutralised

· ANALYSIS

· It has become clear that an agreement has been reached between Kadima, Labour, and Likud that Hamas’s military wing will have to be neutralised. The main political parties have decided that Hamas cannot be treated like Hizb’allah for the following reasons:

1. The rise of Hizb’allah in Lebanon is an entirely domestic Lebanese political phenomenon. A small poor Shia minority has, as a result of demographic expansion exceeding all other groups in Lebanon, become the largest minority group. The traditional political links to the Shia in Iraq and Iran have been re-established and there is nothing Israel can, or should, do about it. As long as Hizb’allah remains committed to domestic concerns and does not attack Israel, Israel need not respond. Hizb’allah remains constrained, in the short term, by domestic political concerns and the large international and Lebanese Army force on Lebanon’s southern border with Israel. If Hizb’allah initiates a war with Israel it will drag the whole country into ruin and have to pay a high political, strategic and military price.

2. Hamas, by contrast, have no other political rivals in the Gaza Strip. They have no concern for civilian casualties, in fact they see each civilian death as a propaganda victory for their cause and a political blow to Israel, in other words Hamas have no political, military, or strategic constraints. As long as Iran can supply them with weapons and finance they can survive indefinitely.

3. Hamas can perpetually sabotage any peace agreements reached with the Palestinians. In effect this gives Hamas a veto over the two state solution. In reality this means that whether Israel tries to pursue either the right wing or liberal-left strategies of a new accommodation with, or withdrawal from, the West Bank, Hamas can sabotage or veto either strategy.

4. Because of the lack of any strategic political or military constraints on Hamas their influence will always pose a threat to Israel in relation to the West Bank. Hamas can bide its time and takeover the West Bank either through the ballot box or a coup as soon as an opportunity presents itself. This also means that Iran has a permanent veto over whether there can be any peace agreements or withdrawals from the West Bank. Also, Hamas can survive indefinitely as a substantive military force with Iran’s financial and military support with both sharing the strategic goal of eliminating Israel.

· The current military incursion into Gaza is extremely limited in scope, manpower, strength, and depth. It has barely touched Hamas’s political or military resources or standing. The result is that the main Israeli political parties cannot maintain unanimity over the operation there for long. Likud want the issue resolved as quickly as possible, Labour, headed by Minister of Defence Ehud Barak is far more cautious on every level.

· Because of the cautious strategic approach by both the Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and Ehud Barak the operation has followed the reverse pattern to conventional military, political, and strategic wisdom. Their focus has been overwhelmingly on maintaining low IDF casualties therefore their strategy has been adapted to fulfil this goal, and has been based upon accretion and attrition. Normally a blistering and overwhelming operation using far superior forces would have taken over the entire Gaza Strip within hours and a determined mop up operation using overwhelming force would have followed lasting a couple of weeks. This would have led to high IDF casualties (several hundred deaths at the very least) but it would have resulted in political, strategic, and military control.

· Ashkenazi and Barak have chosen an opposite approach in order to minimise IDF casualties. The aim is to slowly gain control over the Gaza Strip focussing on the north, where most of the missiles are fired from, and the south where all Hamas’s supplies arrive using the 300-1,000 tunnels that have been dug from the Gaza Strip into Egypt. The constant warfare allowing little respite or sleep for the fighters and population, it is hoped, will slowly wear both down. Water also will become a problem as dehydration saps concentration and strength. As each week passes it becomes harder and harder for either the population, upon which Hamas depends totally, or the fighters, to function in the way Hamas had planned.

Hamas’s dependence on the population is crucial. If the population is removed or cannot render support or cover, Hamas fighters are exposed and have to either come out and fight or be starved out of, or be hunted down within, their hiding places.

· The disadvantages of this approach are obvious. It could take many weeks or even months. It leaves Israel exposed to international obloquy and isolation. It severely damages any ties or relationships Israeli politicians and diplomats have carefully nurtured over the last few years with Europe and the Arab and Muslim world. It puts pressure on all the moderate Arab regimes. It radicalises the Arab and Muslim world. And, it makes it almost impossible for any Arab states to propose talks with, and recognition of, Israel.

· Ehud Barak has also taken an extraordinary risk in relation to President-elect Barack Obama. It is true that Israel can count on US Congress and Senate support in its campaign against Hamas terror, but Barak has forgotten that Obama controls the US delegation to the United Nations. Obama could, and may even be sorely tempted to, allow a sanctions motion against Israel to pass through the UN Security Council, or at least threaten to allow its passage. In the unlikely case that such a resolution is passed it will be binding upon Israel and will leave it absolutely no room to manoeuvre. Israel will then try and get Senate and Congress support to pressure Obama to change his position but the damage will have been done. All future operations against Hamas will be constrained by this potential threat to Israel’s very economic survival and prosperity. Should Obama even consider such a strategy to pressure Israel in this way it will almost inevitably ensure US African-American-Jewish relations will be characterised by extreme, occasionally vitriolic and even violent, tension. It will also increase US Jewish emigration to Israel, the vast majority of whom will be right of centre.

· Nevertheless, many other options will remain open to Israel even in this worst-case scenario. Israel will no longer be, or feel bound by, any ceasefire agreements should Hamas continue to send rockets into Israel, and a long campaign of bombing will begin onto the Gaza Strip accompanied by ever more daring small raids. Hamas will feel, rightly, that it was “victorious” but in a protracted war of attrition there can be only one victor. Egypt, Lebanon, and the Arab world, did not win their wars of attrition against Israel; nor can Hamas.

· It is also clear that the Israeli leadership have assumed war with Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Hamas, may be inevitable. Should Iran force the issue Israel will ensure that no military threat can continue on its southern front.


Links:
For the best English language news site on Israel:
http://www.jpost.com/

For a vigorous Liberal-Left position of the Israeli daily paper:
http://www.haaretz.com/

For a Centre-Left view on Israel, in occasionally appalling English:
http://www.ynetnews.com/home/0,7340,L-3083,00.html

¨For an insight into Arab and Muslim media coverage of the Israel-Palestinian issue, anti-Semitism, and other Middle East issues see:
http://www.memri.org/

For an overview of the media coverage of Israel see the BICOM (Britain Israel Research and Communications Centre) site. Below are the sites for -News headlines with links to each site:
http://www.bicom.org.uk/news/headlines

A written summary of the news:
news:http://www.bicom.org.uk/news

The main issues behind the news:
http://www.bicom.org.uk/briefings/behind_the_news/

Extracts from editorial and article Opinion:
http://www.bicom.org.uk/news/comment-and-opinion

A small selection of Quotes:
http://www.bicom.org.uk/news/quotes
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As Israel flounders - Hamas and Hizb’allah prepare to pounce - Can any of them succeed?

This site is unconnected to the award winning blog concerned with: "Reflections on human rights and peacemaking in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" for that site please click on: http://guidetotheperplexed.blogspot.com/


· MAIN POINTS

The following analysis is based on Israel continuing its current attrition-based containment strategy:

1 Israel’s incursion into Gaza is likely to be over before President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration.

2 Hamas are preparing to celebrate their survival “victory” by launching their longest-range missiles at Tel Aviv.

3 Hizb’allah, at Iran’s behest and with Syria’s approval, have paid Palestinian proxies to fire Katyushas at Israel.

4 Hizb’allah are prepared to risk starting a limited conflict on Israel’s Northern border.

5 The Israeli public's remarkable intolerance to suffering losses amongst its citizen-army soldiers is another crucial factor determining the length of the incursion.


· ANALYSIS

· It is clear that even if Israel increases its presence in Gaza that the current military operation has limited aims and will be over probably within one to two weeks, ideally ending just before President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration.

· Recent poll evidence confirms polls from the Second Lebanon War, which show the Israeli public has a remarkably low tolerance for losses suffered by members of its citizen army, the IDF. This is highly unusual as most countries expect its armed forces to be prepared to take the brunt of losses in any conflict. However, Israel's army is almost wholly conscripted and the IDF is affectionately perceived as the most important and successful assimilatory institution in Israel with vast educational and technological facilities. It is not seen as a professional fighting elite but as sons, daughters, husbands and fathers in uniform. The death rate on Israel's roads at 400-600 per year is the highest per capita in the western world, and premature deaths from smoking are exceptionally high, but the loss of a soldier is seen as a national tragedy, witness the extraordinarily high price Israel was prepared to pay for the bodies of its two kidnapped servicemen from the Second Lebanon War.

· The result of this public attitude has resulted, at least in part, in Barak's choice of an attrition-type of operation. He believes that this form of warfare has the best chance of achieving low casualty rates amongst the IDF. However, this flies against all known and accepted military strategy and thinking. Traditionally, speed, momentum, and surprise, which keep the enemy permanently off-balance and unable to regroup, combined with overwhelming force and numbers, are the prerequisites for assured military success. Barak has thrown the most basic rules for success on the battlefield out the window in order to keep potential Labour Party voters happy and in an attempt to win over the public's favour just before an election. Not only does this have no military merit, it is also diplomatically disastrous as every day wasted brings international pressure to end the operation closer. Barak is using the elite elements of roughly four infantry Brigades, no more than 4-6,000 men at any one time in the field. Contrast that to Ariel Sharon's 'Operation Defensive Shield' in the West Bank in 2002. He used 5 Divisions: 25-30,000 men.

· Hamas will not be defeated nor will its vast missile store be sufficiently eroded to prevent it from firing its most long-range rockets onto Tel Aviv or its southern outskirts as the IDF withdraw. This will be seen and celebrated as both a military and political as well as psychological “victory” for Hamas despite its severe losses.

· Hizb’allah are likely to increase the pressure on Israel in the coming days or weeks, particularly if it sees that Hamas is really on the verge of any type of defeat, by getting proxies such as Palestinian Islamist (Fatah Islami) or Leftist groups (PFLP or
PFLP-GC for example) to fire rockets into Northern Israel. Iranian representative Saeed Jalili the head of Iran’s nuclear team, who is also the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, visited Syria and Lebanon 2-4 January to agree broad strategy concerning rocket fire onto Israel.

· Iran’s preference is probably to delay the firings as late as possible so that they coincide with both Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and Obama’s inauguration. This will send an unequivocal message to Obama that the true force in the Middle East is Iran and that the US will have to talk to and compromise not only with it but with its allies such as Hamas.

· This effort will be accompanied, or followed, by an attempted worldwide terrorist campaign against Jewish and Israeli targets.

· It is unlikely Israel will achieve its strategic aim of stopping rocket fire from Gaza. Therefore Israel’s counter attacks on Gaza may have to continue indefinitely. But Iran will have made the most impressive political point ensuring that it has the last word. Should Israel respond then all the focus will shift onto Israel’s aggression against Lebanon and Gaza, and once again Iran’s nuclear weapons programme will become a secondary issue, thus achieving both its strategic and tactical goal of completing its nuclear weapons programme on the one hand, whilst placing all the international community’s ire and emphasis on Israel, on the other.

· Barak may claim during the election campaign that he wished to finish the job in Gaza but that Livni and Olmert tied his hands and failed to deliver the international community. This is a high-risk strategy for both Kadima and Labour and it is possible that the centre left will be severely weakened as a result of their differences and by the impression that the operation in Gaza was fruitless.

· Likud’s leader Bibi Netanyahu will simply argue that the centre left has failed to deliver security to Israel either in the North or the South and that only a strong national unity government under his leadership will deliver the peace and quiet all Israel craves.

· The election of a Likud-led coalition government will bring the peace process, such as it was, to a grinding halt. Labour, even if they do manage to salvage the same number of seats as at present, or even increase it a little, are unlikely to join the coalition unless they can see a clear path to a Palestinian State as well as protection for all state-funded social, welfare, and health services. If Bibi feels he needs Labour within the coalition he may offer them a significant social services-related ministry.

· In the meantime Bibi has successfully divided and splintered the nationalist right wing who were always his biggest threat both from within the Likud, and electorally, as they threatened to distract traditional Likud voters from returning to the fold. Most right wing parties are now divided or in various stages of disarray.

· Kadima are likely to be squeezed both if Barak succeeds in laying the blame for any apparent failure in Gaza on Livni and Olmert, and by the loss of current centre-right Kadima-voters to Likud, which will be perceived as the only non-extremist party that can guarantee Israel’s security.


Links:
For the best English language news site on Israel:
http://www.jpost.com/

¨For a vigorous Liberal-Left position of the Israeli daily paper:
http://www.haaretz.com/

¨For a Centre-Left view on Israel, in occasionally appalling English:http://www.ynetnews.com/home/0,7340,L-3083,00.html

¨For an insight into Arab and Muslim media coverage of the Israel-Palestinian issue, anti-Semitism, and other Middle East issues see:
http://www.memri.org/

¨For an overview of the media coverage of Israel see the BICOM (Britain Israel Research and Communications Centre) site. Below are the sites for -

News headlines with links to each site:
http://www.bicom.org.uk/news/headlines

¨A written summary of the news:
news:http://www.bicom.org.uk/news

The main issues behind the news:
http://www.bicom.org.uk/briefings/behind_the_news/

¨Extracts from editorial and article Opinion:
http://www.bicom.org.uk/news/comment-and-opinion

A small selection of Quotes:
http://www.bicom.org.uk/news/quotes

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