Foreign Policy In Focus

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.

The vapidity that often characterizes social media makes it the perfect vehicle to advertise the IDF's senseless attacks on Gaza.

Can you imagine anything more surreal than following a war on Twitter? Imagine, fiddling with your phone on your lunch break, perusing actual hashtagged death threats from representatives of Hamas and the IDF—in between all-caps proclamations from Kanye West and “Shit My Dad Says.”

If you don’t care for Twitter, the IDF is also liveblogging its latest war on Gaza on Tumblr, Pinterest, and Facebook.

Maybe that’s just how people declare war these days. But something about the latest violence in Gaza—which is, by all accounts, utterly senseless—seems uniquely suited to the vapid virality that is the stock-in-trade of these social media platforms.

I have no idea why Palestinian militants continue to fire rockets into southern Israel, except perhaps that they lack the capacity to fire rockets at anything else. These rockets can only hit civilians, clearing away in the rubble a virtual red carpet for the IDF into Gaza. (“Who started it” is always a thorny question when all roads lead back to the Israeli occupation, but my colleague Phyllis Bennis notes that the exchanges of fire began when militants fired on Israeli military vehicles “inside the supposedly not-occupied Gaza Strip.” She adds, “Unlike the illegal Palestinian rockets fired against civilian targets inside Israel, using force to resist an illegal military force in the context of a belligerent military occupation is lawful under international law.”)

Whatever the case, with hundreds of rockets flying into civilian-populated regions of southern Israel, no one would begrudge the Israelis their right of self defense. While these rocket attacks are often little more than hapless gunplay, they do exact a human toll—three Israeli civilians were killed Thursday morning.

But that is where the clarity ends. Israel inaugurated its latest assault on Gaza by assassinating the very Hamas military leader with whom they had been negotiating a ceasefire, virtually guaranteeing that more violence would follow. When you’ve just killed your negotiating partner, after all, who’s going to take his place at the table?

The Israelis took great pains to show how targeted and carefully monitored their attack on Ahmed Jaabari was—the whole operation was essentially liveblogged and tweeted, and a video of the so-called “pinpoint strike” on Jaabari’s moving car was distributed to media only hours after it happened. Of course, if the IDF can exercise the appropriate care to liveblog a strike on a moving vehicle, then how to explain the fact that they are also firing on random houses and killing infants? At least 15 Palestinians—more than half of them civilians—have been killed as of this writing.

Next came reports of the pamphlets dropped over Gaza, warning residents to “take responsibility for yourselves and avoid being present in the vicinity of Hamas operatives and facilities.” The IDF Twitter account lauded this ostensible attempt “to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza.” Right. Don’t be near the wrong guy. In one of the most densely populated enclaves in the world.

Then came the reports that the Israeli Defense Minister was calling up 30,000 reservists for a potential ground invasion. And the reports that Israel could shut down all telecommunications in Gaza.

It would be a real shame to shut down the Internet in Gaza. Because this kind of meaningless flame war belongs on Twitter—not in the real world.

Cross-posted from Mondoweiss.

Part of me very much wishes to believe this is all a viral marketing effort leading to a forthcoming episode of Portlandia where they go to Israel. It is almost that surreal, but in a somewhat entertaining manner.

Shurat HaDin -- an Israeli "lawfare" group that set up legal roadblock after roadblock against "Gaza Freedom Flotilla II" last year -- has for several years offered tours of Israel that take in the sort of sights a military fanboy would love, from Hezbollah watching on the Lebanese border to visiting the IAF units that carry out targeted killings and viewing military trials of alleged Hamas operatives (that was part of the 2011 trip). Also, there is a BBQ. The one-week trip costs around US$3,000 and is billed as "Taking it to a Whole New Level," "The Ultimate Mission to Israel".

No argument here.

As a sometimes-national security blogger, I'd be lying if I didn't say I was curious about this sort of combat voyeurism and how it might speak volumes about the further militarization of Israeli society, though a friend's perhaps uncharitable assessment is that most of the people who do go on these trips are not Israelis, but IDF fanboys from the U.S. (the works of Tom Clancy were mentioned in passing in the discussion). In that case, these trips say more about the way the IDF is perceived in both countries than anything else.

Here's this year's agenda. As you can see from the screenshot, I mentioned the Gaza flotilla to start with not just because it's Shurat HaDin's claim to fame in the U.S. media (its charity work in Israel and lawsuits against terrorist financiers not being well-known outside of the country) but because, apparently, one of this year's highlights is a trip to the undisclosed naval base where the Israeli navy is holding flotilla ships it's impounded. It's not clear which ships they're referring to, but since only a single ship from the 2011 effort reached Gazan waters, I imagine they are also referring to ships from the 2010 effort. 

I guess it's really only fair that the lawfare group be allowed to tour these prizes -- the navy might have actually boarded and impounded the ships in both cases, but Shurat HaDin made their job so much easier the second time through its pressure campaign against the organizers and the Greek government. With one exception, a French boat, none of the second flotilla's ships made it further than Greek territorial waters.

I imagine anyone who might be linked to the IAEA is not allowed to go any further than the gift shop when the group makes a stop at the Research Center for Atomic Energy (do you think one can buy plausible-deniability Jericho missile keychains there?). I'd have to say that this year's most questionable whistlestop for Shurat HaDin is the opportunity for ticket holders to visit a Druze village that has apparently become home to a number of refugees fleeing Syria's nascent civil war. With several Syria events planned for the trip, apparently, I guess there is not much concern over that conflict escalating in the Golan Heights area.

You all probably think I'm appalled with many aspects of this itinerary -- no, not the BBQ, obviously, the gawking at refugees, yes -- yet I must look for the silver lining, and to me that silver lining is the timing of the summer's venue, July 9-16.

Why is this cause for cautious optimism? Because some informed comment has determined that if Israel is going to attack Iran this year, it will almost certainly be before the end of this summer. Surely this indicates that war with Iran is unlikely in the tour organizers' minds who, based on where they're getting to go, must have their fingers on the pulse of the security forces (who are generally not as sanguine about the prospect of war with Iran as Ehud Barak appears to be). 

And while Netanyahu might be an overly rude guest -- just ask Obama -- he does not seem to be an overly rude host (he hasn't expelled Gideon Levy or the Arab minority yet). Surely, he would not risk waging war with Iran and inconveniencing Israel's most gung-ho tourists?