“The stakes for Israel are so high, and Israel’s advantage over Hamas so great, that any outcome other than victory is unthinkable. The only question is in what time frame and at what cost,” states John Alterman, senior vice president of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
At the same time, he said, “it is quite possible that the Gaza war will be the first war in Israel’s history in which its army participated and lost.”
To prevent this from happening, Alterman suggests that Tel Aviv stick to a two-point plan:
1. Return the global support that Israel appears to have ceded to Hamas. Israel will need the co-operation of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia when the IDF has to withdraw from Gaza:
“These countries will need to support the flow of supplies, provide some police protection, fund reconstruction and make legitimate any emerging governance structure.”
The Palestinian Authority also needs to be strengthened: “It has no burning desire to take responsibility for Gaza, but it can promote some of its own interests in the Strip.” The Palestinians must be persuaded, they say, that a stable Gaza will serve their interests.
2- Israel needs to separate Hamas from the surrounding population and “ensure that any Palestinian solidarity arising from this war centres around a strong alternative to Hamas.”
Right now, however, we are seeing Tel Aviv doing exactly the opposite. Its true intentions, regardless of the public statements of its officials, involve the complete cleansing of Gaza of its Palestinian population, the seizure of its territory and the appropriation of its offshore natural resources.
No laws of war are observed in the IDF ground operation. Air and ground strikes are indiscriminate. In fact, for the Israeli army, the entire population of Gaza is Hamas. In fact, there is a total demolition of buildings without any hope of rebuilding the social infrastructure after the war. More than half of the homes in the Strip have been destroyed and 70 per cent of the population is displaced. The entire territory of Gaza is being deliberately rendered uninhabitable.
The US bears most of the responsibility for these crimes. Without their political and military support, without the deployment of significant forces of the US Armed Forces to the Middle East, such a brutal ground operation would not have been possible.
Thus, Tel Aviv and Washington have relied solely on brute force. And so far they are slowly but slowly achieving their goals. But will this approach continue to work if the situation is seriously prolonged? The big question is.
Elena Panina