Remember Cast Lead

This time two years ago, Israel was on the verge of launching the 22-day Operation Cast Lead. The fighting began at 11:30 a.m. on December 27 with a wave of F-16 air strikes on Hamas strongholds in Gaza, aimed at putting a stop to the relentless cross-border fire that was terrorizing Israelis living in towns and cities in the South. Now, after two years of relative quiet, Gaza seems to be heating up again.

Late Monday, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi ordered the air force to strike eight targets in the Gaza Strip, including a Hamas training camp and a tunnel used for smuggling, in retaliation for a string of offensives against Israeli troops and civilians over the last two weeks. Upping the ante, terrorists in Gaza on Tuesday morning fired a Kassam rocket that struck near a kindergarten in Ashkelon, lightly wounding a girl on her way to school and causing shock to two other people. Later on Tuesday, the IAF struck back again.

SOME ANALYSTS believe that Hamas is losing popularity among the Palestinians, who may be internalizing the destruction their Gaza government brought down upon the Strip by goading Israel into military action two years ago. Some argue, too, that Gazans are beginning to look across to the West Bank, where stability and economic coordination with Israel are producing a much-improved day-to-day climate. Finally, it is suggested that Hamas’s gradual efforts to impose a fundamental Islamic framework in Gaza are producing growing disaffection.

Whatever the accuracy of these assessments, however, there are no significant signs that Hamas’s grip on Gaza is loosening. Having capitalized on ballot-box support to engineer its violent takeover, Hamas will not willingly relinquish control.

The prospects of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations producing a peace breakthrough are faint enough; Hamas’s rule in Gaza represents a huge obstacle to the implementation of any substantive accord.

More immediately, the current minor-escalation of fire from Gaza underlines Hamas’s potential to wreak havoc in southern Israel with the mortars, rockets and missiles it has been steadily acquiring since Operation Cast Lead.

For two years, the force of that operation evidently served as a deterrent to this kind of cross-border fire. However firm it considers its hold on Gaza to be, Hamas would be foolish to risk forcing Israel into a repeat resort to such use of force.

JPost