A Game Changer in Gaza
By Daniel Greenfield
SultanKnish.Blogspot.com
Terrorism is a game. The rules are simple. You
have three choices. 1. Destroy the terrorists. 2.
Live with terrorism. 3. Give in to the terrorists.
There are no other choices.
The first choice comes from the right. The third
choice comes from the left. The second choice is
what politicians choose when they don’t want to make
a decision that will change the status quo.
Despite all the explosions in Gaza, Israel is still
stuck on the second choice. The air strikes aren’t
meant to destroy Hamas. They are being carried out
to degrade its military capabilities which will buy
a year or two of relative peace. And that will be
followed by more of the same in the summer of 2016
when Hamas will have deadlier Iranian and Syrian
weapons that will terrorize more of the country.
That doesn’t sound like much of a deal, but these
kinds of wars have bought more peace than the peace
process ever did. The peace process led to wars. The
wars lead to a temporary peace.
This status quo became the mainstream choice ever
since Israelis figured out that the peace process
wasn’t going to work and that their leaders weren’t
about to defy the UN, the US, the UK and all the
other U’s by actually destroying the terrorists.
When Netanyahu first ran against Peres, the
difference between the center-right and the
center-left was that he campaigned on security first
and appeasement second, while Peres campaigned on
appeasement first and security second. The
center-right has dominated Israeli politics because
most Israelis accepted Likud’s security first as a
more reasonable position than Labor’s appeasement
first.
Living with terrorism was a viable choice in the
80s. It stopped being a viable choice after Israel
allowed terrorist states to be set up under the
peace process. It’s one thing to manage terrorism in
territories that you control. It’s another thing to
deal with entire terrorist states inside your
borders. Even physical separation isn’t enough. Not
when terrorist groups can shell all your major
cities.
Israel responds to that that threat with light air
strikes which damage Hamas’ military capabilities.
Hamas loses a few commanders, fighters and rockets,
but scores a PR victory. Israel buys two years of
peace while encouraging its enemies to attack it as
a bunch of racist baby killers. Then Hamas replaces
the rockets and fighters and launches a new
operation and the whole thing begins again.
The left’s argument, framed by Washington Post
pundits, Israeli leftists, Obama, assorted
diplomats, retired security chiefs, activist
busybodies funded by radical billionaires and the
entire gang of foreign and domestic enemies, is that
Israel has no choice except to default back to
choice three; appeasement.
Israel has to gamble on appeasement because its
situation is constantly worsening, they argue. What
they neglect to mention is that the situation is
worsening as part of their pressure on Israel to
appease terrorists even though the current problems
exist because of earlier appeasement.
“Drink this poison,” the doctors of diplomacy say.
“It’ll cure you of all the aches and pains you’re
suffering from the last time we told you to drink
poison.”
“If you don’t drink more poison, you’ll get sicker
and die,” they say. And if you do get sicker after
drinking more poison, they’ll say it’s your own
fault for not drinking enough poison. If only you
had given away all of Jerusalem and the Golan
Heights, the terrorists wouldn’t be attacking you
again.
Israel has been caught between choices two and
three, either live with terrorism or make
concessions to terrorists, and it has been bouncing
between these choices.
People and politicians choose the option that
causes the least pain at any given time. Israel
chooses appeasement in response to international
pressure. And when appeasement leads to terrorism,
it does enough damage to Hamas to serve as a
temporary deterrent, without leading to too much
international outrage, again choosing the least
painful option.
This is the true cycle that Israel is caught in.
It’s not a cycle of violence. It’s a cycle of
expediency.
The first choice, destroying the terrorists, is the
most painful option in the short term, but the least
painful option in the long term. The third choice,
appeasing the terrorists, causes the least pain in
the short term, but the most pain in the long term
and the medium term. The second choice, living with
terrorism, is slightly more painful in the short
term, less painful in the medium term, but still
quite painful in the long term.
Israelis have accepted short term and long term pain
in exchange for a certain amount of relief in the
immediate future. The occasional terrorist attack
and the more ominous escalating conflict, an example
of which we are seeing now, is accepted in exchange
for a year or two of relative quiet.
It’s easy to criticize Israel for not finishing off
Hamas, but let’s look at what is really standing in
its way. Israeli Prime Minister Rabin deported 400
Hamas terrorists, including many Hamas leaders. In a
Knesset speech he warned that, “We call on all
nations and all people to devote their attention to
the great danger inherent in Islamic fundamentalism.
That is the real and serious danger which threatens
the peace of the world in the forthcoming years.”
Instead the international community decided that the
peace of the world was threatened by deporting Hamas
terrorists. The media spent months covering the
“suffering” of the deported Hamas terrorists. The
United States voted for a UN resolution condemning
Israel and ordering it to “insure the safe and
immediate return of all those deported.”
The United States Ambassador to the United Nations
said that deporting Hamas terrorists does "not
contribute to current efforts for peace."
In 1988, Israel had deported a handful of Hamas
and PLO terrorists. One of them, Jibril Mahmoud
Rajub, vowed that if Israel didn’t let them back in
that they would “infiltrate in as human bombs with
explosives belted around our waists.”
Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead warned
Israel that if it didn't reconsider the deportations
"damage to our bilateral relations will occur."
If that was the reaction by the Reagan and Bush
administrations to deporting a few terrorists,
imagine the reaction by Obama and the EU to a
comprehensive effort to force Hamas and the PLO out
of Israel. And yet the inevitable can’t be postponed
forever.
If Israel had not folded in the peace process, it
might have been able to maintain the status quo of
the intifada. But the second choice is no longer a
viable long term option. The attacks have long since
passed the point of mere terrorism and are taking
place on a military scale.
Tolerating terrorism has ceased to be a long term
strategy. That is something that both the left and
the right agree on. The attacks are pushing Israel
into choosing either large scale conflict or large
scale appeasement. Appeasing terrorists has failed
every time. Only destroying them can work.
Israel has a left that is eager to embrace the
destructive policies of appeasement without regard
to the consequences. It needs a right that is
equally heedless of consequences when it comes to
war to overcome that pain threshold which prevents
it from doing the right thing and reclaiming the
future.