Gaza Special Hot Docs: Israel, Hamas Girding for a Long Fight, Have Conflicting Strategies
Today's selection of timely reports
Gaza Fight May Be Long : The current conflict in Gaza may mark the beginning of a long fight between Israel and Hamas, a new analysis suggests. Jeffrey White, a defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, outlines the military options available to both sides. Israel, he notes, has launched a "significant challenge to Hamas," the biggest since 2006. He concludes that both Hamas and Israel seem to be preparing for a long fight: "The current conflict does not appear likely to end quickly, with plenty of dangerous potential for widening and escalating in intensity." Meanwhile, an opinion piece suggests that the Gaza violence is not likely to resolve conflict in that region in the short term, but it could provide an opening for diplomatic means that ultimately could remove Hamas from power. Robert Satloff, executive director of the institute, is not surprised by the new round of fighting, calling Hamas "an existential adversary of Israel" and saying that the conflict "was born the day Hamas took control of the Strip." Satloff calls upon the United States to take the lead in international diplomacy by working to enforce conditions and sanctions against Hamas and to strengthen the Palestinian Authority as a legitimate alternative.
Hamas and Israel: "Conflicting Strategies": A paper released just prior to last week's events in Gaza looks at the recent history underlying tensions between the Palestinians and Israelis, which have increased in recent years—particularly since Hamas's success in the 2006 election. In a paper made available by the Federation of American Scientists, analyst Sharifa Zuhur of the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute writes that Israel's attitude towards Hamas has been "a major obstacle to substantive peacemaking" and that Israel's subsequent actions reveal that Hamas is indeed "at the nexus of Israel's domestic, Palestinian, and regional objectives." Despite the facts that Israel and Hamas may each seem "recalcitrant" and that their goals "appear mutually exclusive," Zuhur hopes that each will be "capable of revising its desired endstate and of necessary concessions to establish and preserve a long-term truce, or even a longer-term peace." She warns, though, that continued feelings of insecurity "may lead Israel to reconquer the Gaza Strip or the West Bank and continue engaging in 'pre-emptive deterrence' or attacks on other states in the region in the longer term."
Reader Comments
To Comments labeled 'Some Analyst'
Apparently you didn't read the report which you call "tripe" since it clearly states that the analyst has spent decades in the region, and includes and reflects on data from interviews with hundreds of people there (you state the analysts did not "LISTEN to the people on the ground there," and is not an "Ivy League intellectual," nor ensconsed in an Ivy League institution.
If you read the report, or you yourself had ever researched Palestinian (or Israeli) society, you would know that HAMAS' demands during the truce were 1. a ceasefire meaning an end to attacks, detentions w/o charge, assassinations, [none of which ceased] and that its demands for a longer truce are 1. a ceasefire 2. political and human rights - meaning an end to the blockade and normal rights of movement, communication, representation 3. a significant prisoner release 4. withdrawal from the territories, or significant movement/negotiation to such from the West Bank, prior to this latest, yes "holocaust"
and resumption of negotiations over the unresolved issues (Jerusalem, refugees).
Such a peace is needed by Israel as well for moral as well as political reasons.
If you had read the study, you would know that many HAMAS members do not argue for an end to Israel, only an end to the occupation of Palestinian land, namely the West Bank and Gaza.
Hey Mike of CA
Why don't you go to USNEWS' article Why the War in Gaza Broke Out Now and look up the comments of Ms. Rotem from Israel? She offers the Israeli side of the story and she even talks about comparing this campaign to the Holocaust. You'll find that the Palestinians are not the only ones hurting right now. Also, try doing some of your own research about this issue.
realty
Holocaust is the genocidal crime against people based on their ethnicity. This genocide could be perpetrated through different means such as poison gas, guns, tanks, air raids, biological warfare, economical siege, starvation, destruction of vital natural resources, eviction into desert, and deprivation of basic vital materials among others, to produce the same result; mass deaths. For the last sixty years Palestinians have been suffering from all these methods in a deliberate programmed holocaust. The perpetrators are not Nazis, but those who claim to be survivors, and their descendents, of Nazi-caused holocaust; Zionist Jewish Israelis.
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