Foreign Policy In Focus

Cross-posted from the Colorado Progressive Jewish News

Whatever It Is Called – Operation Pillar of Clouds, or Perhaps, More Accurately, 'Operation Killing Hope' … It Failed

The end of the latest U.S.-supported Israeli air and sea war against Gaza has triggered a global call for immediate comprehensive peace negotiations that would include an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories seized in 1967, the creation of a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with its capital in East Jerusalem, and security guarantees for Israel within its pre-June 1967 borders. Not exactly a new framework, but one that is viable, that will end – or certainly seriously reduce – the cycle of violence, and that will produce a peace with justice.

There might be a ceasefire, broadly welcomed, but little momentum to follow up on it with a serious peace process yet despite the appeals. In the end, either the Israelis and Palestinians will move towards peace or towards another round of war. There is no in-between. Nor will the window for peace-making be open forever.

A global consensus supporting the above framework is still broadly supported. But given U.S. virtually blind support for Israel since 1967 – but most especially in Israel's three recent wars (2006 Lebanon invasion, 2008 Gaza invasion, 2012 air and naval assault on Gaza),  it becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for the United States to claim its position as a unbiased broker in such a process. It will take some doing therefore, not only to get Israel to the negotiating table, but to get the United States to play a more constructive role in such a process. Still there is a ray of hope. Isn't it time to draw the logical conclusion: that military solutions have run their course and will, in the future,  fail and that the conflict between Israel and Palestine can only be resolved politically, through a negotiated settlement based on United Nations resolutions?

If not the cycle of violence will continue. Each time it gets more severe, more difficult from spinning out of control as nearly happened this time. That being the case, the logical thing would be for the parties involved to announce the re-establishing of a negotiating process on all the outstanding issues – final status negotiations – and to move consciously and persistently in that direction. Needless to say, this is not the thinking either in Israel, nor from all appearances in Washington D.C. In Israel, more than 70% of those surveyed would have wanted to see the Israeli Defense Force launch a ground invasion of Gaza. In Washington D.C., as in the past and perhaps even more so, there is no political will to press Israel to the negotiating table and keep it there until an agreement is reached. Instead, Israel is re-armed and drawn ever more closely into U.S.-NATO regional strategic war-making plans.

A War With No Winners, Now and in the Future

The NBC online headline reads "After Eight Days of Gaza Violence, Israel Declares 'Mission Accomplished,' Hamas Claims Victory." A bit odd, no? Both sides claim victory? That is not even a half truth. This was, if anything, a war with no winners; given the mismatch in firepower, the fact that the eight-day Israeli air and sea offensive ended in something of a stalemate, and that Israel could not secure a clear-cut military and political victory will be seen as a political victory for Hamas, which it was.

Despite its post-cease fire blustering, Israel got a dose of its own medicine this time, as Palestinian rockets were able to penetrate as far north from Gaza as Tel Aviv and near Jerusalem. The human and property damage Israel suffered, was, compared to the Palestinians, minor (five dead, some property damage), but the psychological shock of Gaza-based missiles landing in major population centers was considerable. It was most probably was a key factor (among many) in Netanyahu not launching a ground war against Gaza. True, Israel's missile defense system did neutralize about a third of incoming missiles, but two-thirds of them landed.

Israel's well-worn tactic of playing 'the victim card' to somehow cover its role as aggressor is losing its potency. Once again Israel's 'precision bombing' was not very precise. The photos of the victims bely Israeli and Obama Administration contentions that Israel was engaged in a 'defensive war'. Images of children being torn to pieces, of three generations of Palestinian families bombed to smithereens, of hospitals targeted as well as foreign media outlets (AP, Al Jazeera) do not correspond to a nation 'defending itself' from 'outside aggression. Just the opposite.

The pictures of the human suffering its residents endured, downplayed by the U.S. media but readily available all over the worldwide web, are heartbreaking. A day after it was agreed upon, the ceasefire appears to be holding. Gaza is smoldering but its residents unbowed. Hamas was not weakened by this Israeli attack; rather its prestige has soared, not only among Palestinians but globally. Still, for the second time in four years, Gazans paid a heavy, punishing price.

An incomplete damage report, collected from various sources, just before the ceasefire went into effect, reveals the following:

• At least 145 Palestinians have been killed in IOF attacks on the Gaza Strip. Of those, 29 were children and 12 women. More than 1100 people were wounded, including 326 children and 162 women. At least 865 houses have also been damaged or destroyed, including 92 completely. Of those 92 houses, 44 were directly attacked; including 33 deliberately targeted by direct Israeli attacks using the roof-knocking tactic. Expect all of these statistics to spike somewhat upwards.

• Another 179 houses sustained serious damages. Threats to cut off electrical and water sources did not materialize, but the infrastructure of both suffered once again.

• At this writing, Israeli attacks caused damages to 6 health centers, 30 schools, 2 universities, 15 NGO offices, 27 mosques, 14 media offices, 11 industrial plants, 81 commercial stores, 1 UNRWA food distribution Center, 7 ministry offices, 14 police/security stations, 5 banks, 30 vehicles, and 2 youth clubs. Because of the bombing, some 10,000 Gazans were forced to find shelter from the bombing at U.N.- run schools.

Despite the damage Israel inflicted, militarily, the clash, was something akin to a draw. Politically, regardless of the spin, Israel lost. Now, with U.S. aid, it hopes to recoup politically (through pressure on Egypt) what it failed to accomplish through the F-16-delivered (not very) precision missiles. The Israeli military, by many estimates the world's fourth largest, was held at bay by what is little more than a rag-tag militia of Hamas defenders with a few short range and (perhaps) anti-tank missiles.

Netanyahu Miscalculated

Netanyahu, itching to launch a major ground assault to punish the Gazans yet again, was forced to put the brakes on such an operation, which entailed too many risks for Israel, the United States, and, strange as it might appear, even a Muslim-brotherhood led Egypt. The ostensible goal of the Israeli assault was to knock out Hamas' missile capacity, but other factors were at play. Yes, as has been well publicized, on some level Netanyahu hoped to isolate and marginalize his opponents vying for political power in the upcoming Israeli elections.

He also calculated that regardless of how the military operations played out, that it would complicate life for Barack Obama whose re-election Netanyahu shamelessly lobbied against. At the same time, the Israeli prime minister hoped to embarrass and humiliate the Egyptian government, by forcing it to choose between its strategic alliance with the U.S. and the will of the Egyptian people to stand up to Israel.

But the central political goal of this campaign was to kill hope, Palestinian hope that in this, Obama's second term, there might be a possibility of diplomatic progress towards achieving a political settlement that would lead to a viable West Bank-Gaza Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem. Through a full scale assault – air, sea and with a follow-up ground offensive, Israel intended to strike a crushing blow to the Palestinians once again, to complicate any effort at Palestinian unity, to continue building settlements in West Bank and ultimately to 'send a message' that Israel is in control and that there will be no Palestinian state. The occupation would continue as it has since 1967.

A combination of world public opinion fast turning against both Israel and the United States, U.S. pressure on Netanyahu (with its promises of lucrative consolation prize payoffs to Netanyahu), Hamas' dogged resistance, and Israeli worries that Hamas possibly had anti-tank missiles all merged to end the Israel air and sea offensive and Hamas' missile response. The Israeli ground offensive never happened.

The Shadow of the 2006 Israeli Military Incursion Into Lebanon Hangs Over Gaza

In many ways how this conflict was fought – and ended – was in large measure dictated by the 2006 Israeli venture into the Lebanon which was, by any objective standard, not just a political but also a military failure in what has been referred to as 'asymmetrical' warfare. The limits of Israeli military might were exposed. It might be able to fight a conventional war against another regional power, but is far less prepared to fight the kind of guerilla warfare of the kind that Hezbollah and now Hamas practice. Israel suffered one of its greatest military losses then, its ground offensive stalled as Hezbollah anti-tank missiles disabled several score of Israeli tanks leading the charge into southern Lebanon.

Forced to withdraw its ground troops, Israel responded with a punishing – but largely ineffective – massive air offensive. Hezbollah's answer was a massive missile attack on northern Israel which forced more than 100,000 Israelis to abandon their homes and seek temporary shelter elsewhere. As will be the case with Hamas today, in 2006 Hezbollah emerged from that war a much stronger force than it had been, not just in Lebanon, but throughout the region.

While in 2008, Israel was able to launch a punishing military offensive against Gaza, this time one might say that it 'won' militarily but actually lost politically. That military offensive was little more than an air, sea and ground-based massacre. To call it a war is to mis-characterize what was little more than unprovoked aggression. It did not achieve its goal of eliminating Hamas, which was able to rebuild its structures, cadres and military potential rather quickly. Although Israelis and their U.S. supporters howled against the charges of 'war crimes', the moral stain remained. Israel's prestige in the world – and among American Jewry somewhat – plummeted.

With this current attack on Gaza, Israel's international standing, despite U.S. support, will continue to tank.

This is the third time in a mere six years that Israel has come out on the short end politically from wars that it has launched. All three times, Israeli military operations have been launched with full support from Washington – be it the Bush or Obama Administrations – and with an ample supply of U.S. made sophisticated weaponry. All three times the thin pretext of 'Israel's right to self-defense' was invoked for what were rather wars of aggression launched on the thinnest of pretexts.

While here in the United States, with the public bombarded with pro-Israeli, anti-Palestinian media spin, the Israeli offensive enjoyed popular support. This was not so in the rest of the world where images of the wanton destruction and killing of Palestinians began to inflame anti-Israeli sentiment everywhere. Outside of the U.S. the argument that 'Israel has the right to defend itself' – while somehow the Palestinians don't have that right – rings surprisingly hollow.

The Forgotten Occupation

For all practical purposes, given the unbalance of power and the oft forgotten fact that Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem are territories illegally occupied by Israel, seized by force in 1967, what took place in Gaza and Israel was not a war. It was rather an attempt by a colonial occupying power, Israel, to yet again strengthen its hold on a colonized – and brutalized – people. While much of the world yearns to see the cycle of violence on both sides end, once one leaves the borders of the continental United States, there are very few voices who would deny the Palestinians the right to defend themselves, as they did this last week in Gaza.

After the 2006 and 2008 Israeli military adventures, the U.S. Congress, speedily and amply provided replacement weaponry throwing in hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Tel Aviv to boot, this above and beyond the annual $3 billion gift. The just-ending Israel attack on Gaza will follow suit. All indications are that Hillary Clinton, with perhaps her 2016 presidential on the line, did not so much 'negotiate' a cease fire as she did pay for it, doling out tens if not hundreds of billions to both Israel and Egypt.

Reports have already surfaced that American financial largess – once again – coaxed Israel to accept a ceasefire and Egypt to press Hamas to do likewise. This is the modern American form of diplomacy – buying its way to unstable peace – otherwise known as bribery – whether it is paying Poland $8 billion to join NATO, or 'brokering' a cease fire over Gaza. Months before the fighting broke out the United States gave Israel two gifts, one of $270 million and another of $70 million to upgrade its early warning missile defense system. Promises of additional financial aid to Israel – just the opposite message needed to bring Israel to the negotiating table – are already in the offing. Likewise tremendous pressure combined with financial incentives were put upon Egypt to use its influence on Hamas to accept the cease fire.

How to Change Course.

On a radio program where I participated a few days ago (Hemispheres – KGNU-Boulder), one of the participants spoke about how the Middle East has been marred with religious conflict for the past 5,000 years. This is utter nonsense, a way simply to avoid putting forth concrete suggestions for ending the crisis by taking the fatalistic and entirely inaccurate position that the conflict is essentially unsolvable.  The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a modern political conflict with its roots in the late 19th century; it is primarily not even a religious but a national and colonial conflict.

In his column today, University of Michigan prof Juan Cole offers what he calls '10 Steps that are necessary to lasting Israeli-Gaza Peace'. They include a call for lifting the Israeli blockade of Gaza which continues to choke the Palestinians there, the granting of Palestinians citizenship and statehood, encouraging Egypt to help with Palestinian rapproachment between Hamas and Fateh, encouraging Egypt to press Hamas to renounce terror as a tool for national struggle, renewed Palestinian elections to create a government of national unity, a moratorium on Israeli West Bank settlement building (the main stumbling block to any successful negotiation), the end of Israeli expropriation of property in East Jerusalem and Israel recognizing the right of Palestinians to have their capital in East Jerusalem, Israel not insisting on recognition by its negotiating partners as a pre-condition for starting talks, an Israeli-Palestinian return to the bargaining table for final status talks, and finally that the United States must stop blocking UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israel.

Taken together if implemented, would mark a shift in gears, from war-making to peace-making. It would be a shame, that after this hard won cease fire, if the situation again deteriorated into another war, which could – as this one nearly did – draw in the whole region, if not the world. With such high stakes, peace really is the only option.

It is impossible for American Jews to participate in their own communities without endorsing the atrocities perpetrated by Israel against Arabs.

Cross-posted from Progressive Avenues.
 
In the 1940’s and 50’s, I was raised on the North Shore of Chicago, in a suburb named Glencoe. The town was at least 95% Jewish, and everyone knew who the 3 black families were, knew the handful of Christians and “others” who resided near us. We understood that we comprised one of the wealthiest, fanciest Jewish ghettos in the United States, and perhaps the world. The great majority of us went to temple at the North Shore Congregation Israel, and donated $5.00 a shot for stickers to purchase “trees” to plant in the new State of Israel. We were going to transform the desert into a promised land and help the oppressed Jews of Europe to create a homeland where pogroms, ghettos and the Holocaust were a thing of the past. For literally decades, Zionists had perpetuated the myth that the territory that would become the State of Israel was “a land without a people, for a people without a land.” How noble and just it all seemed.
 
If anyone would have asked us why we were planting trees in Israel, when the Holy Land was already covered with Olive trees planted by Arab families for more than 5 centuries, we would have accused them of rank anti-semitism. If someone had suggested that we were purchasing guns, and missiles, instead of agricultural tools, we would have fought them on the spot. Yet history judges us harshly and we now have a reckoning to deal with.
 
I represented men and women on death row in California for over 25 years. All of the defendants on death row, without exception, were brutalized as young children, either by their parents, or their community. The great majority of prisoners were victims of brutality, and they responded to the society that brutalized them by killing in return.
 
One would have expected that those who were brutalized as children would have recognized how horrible the experience was and rejected such behavior when it was their turn to have authority over others. But that is simply not so. Humans, unfortunately, by and large, grow up to perpetrate the same atrocities that were perpetrated upon them against those they are close to. While this phenomenon is not universal, it is so common as to be the expectation for law enforcement and the society at large. Children of convicts are expected to become criminals when they grow up, and the society does everything in its power to ensure that that expectation is met. Young black children in this country have to be saints to stay out of reformatories and prisons. One out of three black people in the United States are in prison or on parole.
 
So, too, do we watch this phenomenon being tragically repeated in the State of Israel. One would expect that a people who had been subjected to the atrocities of World War II, to the Holocaust, to the discrimination and slaughter perpetrated against the Jews, would be the first nation on earth to oppose a similar oppression against others. Yet, the sad reality is that the racism and violence perpetrated against Palestinians in the State of Israel is outlandish and inexcusable.
 
Gaza is nothing short of a concentration camp. Children are starving there and Israel will kill any individual or group that attempts to bring food or water into that land. Israel is the last country on the face of the earth that has dared to impose a formal state of apartheid against an indigenous population. Israeli checkpoints are the precise duplicates of what the Nazi checkpoints at the borders of the ghettos looked like in 1938 Germany. The excuses and rationalizations used by Israel to perpetuate this oppression against the Palestinian people are precisely those used by the Nazis: Palestinians pose a threat to the security of the nation; they will steal jobs and security from the rightful people of the nation; they are untrustworthy, and owe no allegiance to the nation. The parallels are terrifying.
 
That this should be the situation in 2012 is so pathetic as to be comical in an historical context. The anti-semitism of the prevailing nations of World War II, the United States and Great Britain was so profound as to obviate the possibility that Jews would be permitted to immigrate or seek sanctuary in either of those victorious countries. The Christian majorities of those countries so hated the Jews that allowing them to seek sanctuary in either country was out of the question.
 
Instead, anti-semitic nations decided to give the Jews who survived the Holocaust land that belonged to the Palestinians. Kill two birds with one stone. Keep Jews out of the U.S. and Great Britain, and give them the land of a bunch of Muslims that, according to the U.S. and Great Britain, were little more than savages. Certainly, the Western powers could control any opposition the local population might put up to prevent the Jews from entering the new state of Israel. It would be a walk in the park for these countries to disenfranchise the Palestinian people, who had lived on the land for centuries. The fact that Jews had lived in Palestine for centuries without undergoing the sort of atrocities perpetrated by European Christians upon them was quickly overlooked. Give us our land, said the Zionists, and we will take care of the rest.
 
So now, we are confronted with the situation where there is not a Muslim on the face of the earth that does not see Israel’s occupation of the Holy Land as an unjustified invasion of their land. The only difference between this and the initial colonization of the United States of America, is that, unlike what happened to the American Indians, Caucasians, whether Christian or Jewish, have not been able to eradicate sufficient numbers of indigenous people to take over the land without opposition. The Muslims have not acceded to the colonial expansion of the “settlers” in Israel, to the U.S. demand for expansion of the militarist Israeli state, or to the eradication of those who inhabited the land before the Jews arrived.
 
In virtually every temple and Jewish Community Center in the United States, Israel is seen as “the good guy” in the Middle East, and the Arabs are seen as devils. The impact this has had on Jews in the United States is to divide the community into two totally distinct communities: those who are Zionists and those who identify with being Jewish, but reject the racism and violence perpetrated by Israel against the entire Muslim world. It is impossible for Jews who take pride in their heritage, to participate in their own communities without endorsing the atrocities perpetrated by Israel against Arabs throughout the world. Jews who reject Zionism are outcasts in the established Jewish communities. They have no base and no community. We are either anti-Muslim or invisible. We are left with no alternatives within the broader community.
 
The U.S. is perfectly content to let Israel serve as the buffer between hostile Arab nations and U.S. imperialism. After all, it is the Jews who are fighting Muslims on a daily basis, not Americans. But once the State of Israel is defeated because of its bellicose intransigence and intolerance to those with whom they should be sharing the land, Jews everywhere will suffer the consequences and be at risk. One could not write a more ironical conclusion. Non-Zionist Jews are like the non-existent Left in the United States – we are simply not included in the debates of our nation or among our people; and, because Zionists permit no rational debates or discussions, they are without a clue as to the international implications of their cruelty toward the Palestinian peoples. The world will not put up with this indefinitely. It is just a matter of time.

Luke Hiken is an attorney who has engaged in the practice of criminal, military, immigration, and appellate law.

The Obama administration gave Israel the go-ahead to escalate in Gaza.

Cross-posted from Mondoweiss.

The Wall Street Journal reports the result of a press conference held on Air Force One by Obama's Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, who works as one of Obama's main (foreign policy) speechwriters who helped the President draft his spring 2012 AIPAC address. Rhodes expressed hope that mediation efforts by the Egyptians -- who had been brokering a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel the day before Operation Pillar of Cloud began -- will succeed, but the meat of his remarks comes in the form of a very clear public declaration the US will have Israel's back no matter what the government decides.

Pressed as to whether a ground invasion would escalate tensions, Mr. Rhodes said, “We believe Israel has a right to defend itself, and they’ll make their own decisions about the tactics that they use in that regard.”

He said that the precipitating factor for the conflict was the rocket fire coming out of Gaza, dismissing those who blame an Israeli airstrike that killed a top Hamas military commander.

“Just to be clear on the precipitating factor: These rockets had been fired into Israeli civilian areas and territory for some time now. So Israelis have endured far too much of a threat from these rocket for far too long, and that is what led the Israelis to take the action that they did in Gaza.”

He declined to comment on Israel’s targeting of government buildings, including the prime minister’s headquarters. “We wouldn’t comment on specific targeting choices by the Israelis other than to say that we of course always underscore the importance of avoiding civilian casualties. But the Israelis again will make judgments about their military operations.”

Rhodes's words offered a much stronger declaration of support for the Israeli effort than those delivered by White House spokesman Jay Carney on Friday:

We strongly condemn the barrage of rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, and we regret the death and injury of innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians caused by the ensuing violence. There is no justification for the violence that Hamas and other terrorist organizations are employing against the people of Israel. We call on those responsible to stop these cowardly acts immediately in order to allow the situation to de-escalate.

In … conversations [with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi], the president reiterated the United States’ support for Israel’s right to self-defense. President Obama also urged Prime Minister Netanyahu to make every effort to avoid civilian casualties.

Newsweek and USA Today report that Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have been speaking directing to the President -- currently in transit to Asia along with most of his top foreign policy staffers (including Rhodes) -- to communicate that "[t]he Israeli leadership at this point is leaning against a ground invasion." Though Haaretz reports that there was a concerted Israeli effort to "lull" Hamas into a false sense of security before restarting assassinations of its leadership, it is very likely that this whole effort was not intended to "escalate." Though it was of course expected, planned for and deemed acceptable to risk more civilian casualties in Israel and Gaza when the IAF began the operation -- the toll as it stands now is at least 90 Palestinians and 3 Israelis killed, with more wounded on both sides, especially in Gaza where casualties have already reached 700 -- it is not likely that a protracted operation was or is desired by any of those who have rallied round Netanyahu’s flag.

But, now that Hamas has hit the suburbs of both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the stakes for Israel backing down have risen tremendously -- the kitchen cabinet of PM Netanyahu has reportedly met several times Saturday day alone, unable to reach a consensus on accepting a ceasefire or going all in into Gaza as a result of the longer-range fire. The call up of 75,000 reservists -- a number greater than those summoned for the 2006 and 2008 wars -- and multiple reports of massed Israeli armor on the northern borders of Gaza loom large in people's calculations. Israeli officials, keeping everyone guessing, may be bluffing on the incursion: the divisions are meant only as a message to Hamas, or Hezbollah, or even Egypt, or to Syria and Iran. Or perhaps cover for Iran in the near future.

As Phil Weiss and David Sheen report from on the ground, the mood is very much one of "finishing the fight." Many Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza are, according to the Huffington Post, also expressing strong support for the rulers’ actions – though the rhetorical denunciations of Hamas officials (and by the Israeli government) belie the actual mediated efforts to end this operation before it turns into a political liability for either side due to rising civilian casualties.

Indeed, only the most zealous nationalists in Israel today are for re-establishing direct Israeli control over Gaza. And a ground incursion is being blasted as unworkable in the news, from The Atlantic and The New York Times to Haaretz and even the Jerusalem Post. More common is the view that this operation, with or without an incursion, has been a long-time coming, a necessary action to ensure "deterrence" is maintained in the hopes -- to paraphrase the words of a tsarist general -- that the harder Israel hits them, the longer they will stay quiet afterwards. The Interior Minister said that all of Gaza's infrastructure should be "destroyed" by the IDF "in order to realize calm for a long period." Israeli officers hinted at conducting a Gazan "incursion" in the summer of 2011 when terrorists from the Sinai killed several Israelis that incorporated most of the language used today to argue for Operation Pillar of Cloud, including a report issued by a right-wing Jerusalem think tank that argued for a crippling assault on Hamas and the Gaza Strip's infrastructure under the title "The Opportunity in Gaza," views which Truthout notes have entrenched counterparts in the Beltway think tank-verse.

Lamentably, Pillar of Cloud was only a matter of time after Cast Lead concluded in 2009. The dynamics in Israel and Gaza that led to it, dissected here by Juan Cole, have not changed since then: no hudna or Arab Spring or Obama second term will alter this in the near term. And the next one, whatever name is applied to it, won't be many years off either.

And in all such instances, past, present and future, I think we can expect the US to offer the same sort of green lighting the White House has delivered this day. Obama was still in transition in 2008 when Cast Lead took place, and "only" received intelligence briefings and Israeli missives on Cast Lead. This week, he has made his views clearer still.

Israeli last to know that his negotiations with Ahmed Jabari were as doomed as the man.  

In an oped in the New York Times, Gershon Baskin, who negotiated with Hamas for the release of Gilad Shalit, publicly revealed how the Netanyahu administration scuttled Israel's most recent negotiations with Hamas.

On the morning that he was killed, Mr. Jabari received a draft proposal for an extended cease-fire with Israel, including mechanisms that would verify intentions and ensure compliance. This draft was agreed upon by me and Hamas’s deputy foreign minister, Mr. Hamad, when we met last week in Egypt.

Thus does Baskin

… believe that Israel made a grave and irresponsible strategic error by deciding to kill Mr. Jabari. No, Mr. Jabari was not a man of peace; he didn’t believe in peace with Israel and refused to have any direct contact with Israeli leaders and even nonofficials like me.

But

… Passing messages between the two sides, I was able to learn firsthand that Mr. Jabari wasn’t just interested in a long-term cease-fire; he was also the person responsible for enforcing previous cease-fire understandings brokered by the Egyptian intelligence agency. Mr. Jabari enforced those cease-fires only after confirming that Israel was prepared to stop its attacks on Gaza. The goal was to move beyond the patterns of the past.

Though Gershon Baskin doesn't personally reproach the Netanyahu administration for attacking during negotiations, it certainly seems like he had the rug pulled out from under him.

To Israel, Gaza stands in for Iran as an attack surrogate.

Cross-posted from the Colorado Progressive Jewish News.

Unable – or restrained from – attacking Iran (or getting the United States to do so), Israel had to get its military rocks off somewhere else, so it has turned its fire power on Gaza?

As in 2008, Netanyahu and Lieberman waited until after the U.S. presidential elections were over, but before the new administration had been put into place and a clear U.S. policy towards Israel-Palestine in Obama’s second term had been fleshed out. Did Netanyahu cut a deal with Washington? That is not clear at the moment, although it is implausible that there wasn’t some kind of 'consultation’ and green light from Obama.

To think otherwise is to live in la-la land.

It is likely that if Obama did approve Israeli military action it was on a somewhat limited basis with strict 'red lines' that should not be crossed, among them, avoiding any sustained ground attack on Gaza involving a large Israeli Defense Force (IDF) contingent. It is more likely that Obama Administration – enthusiastically or grudgingly – agreed to  a drone-like attack that would limit Israeli casualties and deflect world public opinion.  The idea is to inflict maximum damage on the Palestinians in the shortest amount of time with minimum political and human negative impacts on Israel (and the U.S.A.). Still it is possible that Netanyahu, with his visceral antipathy for Obama, is taking matters into his own hands, or letting the situation deteriorate so that the logic of war gives the Israeli Prime Minister and his bonkers foreign minister, Lieberman, the excuse to change the rules of the game…and invade.

To invade with ground troops or not to invade, that is the question.

One thing seems certain.

This massive (to date) air assault on Gaza was not a spontaneous act. Every step of this offensive was carefully planned, stupid, as are most wars, but carefully planned. The Israeli military is trying to compensate for its two last military incursions: the 2006 Lebanon offensive in which Hezbollah gave an unsuspecting Israeli ground offensive a very bloody nose and the 2008 ground offensive into Gaza, the result of which Israel lost a great deal of public support. Their argument that the war was somehow defensive and that the Israeli army avoided civilian casualties flew in the face of the facts. Israel has yet to recover.

What is missing from all this – the Israeli have yet to learn it – is that military solutions will not solve their crisis with the Palestinians and that try as they might there is no way, none, to put makeup on the ugly face of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Whatever happens here, Israel will almost certain gain the upper hand militarily but lose this war politically – as happened in Lebanon in 2006 (where they didn’t even win the fighting) and in Gaza in 2008. There is just no way to bomb their way to peace.

The plan – it is now public knowledge – was a quick but decisive air strike that would pulverize Hamas, and by so weakening it, make any serious peace initiative, once again, impossible. It is a model of warfare similar to what the U.S. is pursuing in Yemen, Pakistan, etc – an air war combined with targeted assassinations.  The U.S. does it with drones, the Israelis with F-16 and naval fire power both pounding Gaza to smithereens, once again. For the Gaza war to be a success it is essential it be short and dirty for a number of reasons, among them

• It prevents a sustained mobilization of world public opinion against Israel’s actions.

• It cuts Israeli casualties.

• It is meant to humiliate the regimes that have come to power through the Arab Spring by exposing their impotence to this crisis, thus creating more tensions in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, between the unstable governments and the people, etc.

• It permits the Middle East regimes – Egypt in the first place, but really all of those in the U.S. camp – to posture support of the Palestinians to their hearts' delight without threatening their strategic commitments to U.S. policy. The longer the war continues, the more likely the Arab public will exert pressure on their regimes for more concerted action. In such situations, these unstable regimes could be in deep shit as they say.

• The longer the war, the more complicated things get for the Obama Administration’s plans for the region. When Israel bombs, the whole region knows that most of the sophisticated weapons it is raining down on Gaza have 'made in USA’ on them – as they have for decades. U.S. made cluster bombs, phosphorus bombs and high powered missiles undermine any suggestion that Washington is somehow 'an honest broker’  to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But now the Israeli cabinet is debating whether to widen the war.

An all-out offensive on Gaza is a horse of a different color for everyone concerned.  A long draw- out full-scale Gaza ground offensive not only compromises Israel’s position, deepening its pariah status in much of the world, but it also considerably complicates the situation for the new Obama Administration, now facing yet another Middle East mess to deal with on top of domestic budget crisis.

So Netanyahu and Lieberman were banking on a quickie – so were those Arab regimes who feign support for the Palestinians but now 'the landscape’ has shifted as a result of the medium range missile attacks. A  ground campaign, should Netanyahu decide to take that route,  will be inevitably ugly and the modicum of good will that Israel has by spinning the war, will evaporate. At the time of this writing (Saturday, November 17, 2012) the cabinet cannot decide whether to launch a ground offensive. If the Palestinians have sophisticated medium range missiles, they must also have anti-tank rockets which can knock out Israeli tanks. Then things get very, very messy. Israeli casualties will soar and if 2006 Lebanon and the 2008 Gaza offensives are any indications, Israeli war crimes against the Palestinians, once again, are almost inevitable.

The Israeli cabinet has met 3-4 times over the past 24 hours. They cannot seem to make up their minds about a ground attack. Palestinian mastery of medium range missiles – even a few of them – that can hit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem have changed the equation of the offensive. It was supposed to be the massive bombing campaign it has been up until now, and then some kind of end to it. Netanyahu wanted to finish the job before world public opinion could get mobilized – the demonstrations are starting everywhere.

The Israeli cabinet doesn’t seem to know how to proceed. Stop the air war or expand the war with a full scale ground assault. We’ll see and rather soon.  The usually conservative Jerusalem Post seems to be arguing against a ground incursion. As for me, I’m taking the sign I’ve had for the past 45 years out of the garage, dusting it off and heading, with my entire family downtown to join Friends of Sabeel, Jewish Voice for Peace and Occupy Denver. The old sign reads simply 'End The Occupation’. I’d like to thrown it away but unfortunately, it still seems to strike a chord.