Neither side gains after Israel and Hamas exchange

It started off with a rocket attack by a Palestinian militant group in Gaza, firing at a jeep carrying Israeli soldiers. Israel responded with its own rockets and soon afterwards both sides were firing rockets back and forth.

Israel upped the ante by assassinating Hamas’s military commander, Ahmed Jabari, along with airstrikes against scores of rocket arsenals and missiles sites. Hamas responded with more rocket attacks. For a while, the two sides were on the brink of a ground war. 

Enter US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, who arrived in Israel on Tuesday night to try to convince both sides that an escalation of violence is not a good idea. Working with Egypt, a ceasefire deal was struck and announced shortly afterwards. 

The ceasefire took effect on Wednesday evening, but not until 162 Palestinians and five Israelis, one of whom was a civilian, had died. Almost half of the Palestinian dead were civilians.

In spite of the fact that Hamas and the Israeli government are beating their war drums louder by the day, it was the diplomatic effort from Egypt and the US that saved the day – this time round, at least.

War with Hamas would come at diplomatic price because of the likely high number of civilian casualties. Moreover, war with Hamas does not in any way solve the underlying problem between Israel and the Palestinians. Even if Israel succeeded in wiping Hamas militants off the face of the earth, there will always be more militant groups – groups with stronger links to Iran and Syria – to take up the Palestinian cause. 

Instability is all around Israel, from the Sinai Peninsula in the south to the Golan Heights in the north. One would think the last thing Israel needs is to fan the flames of war. 

But the killing of Jabari is nothing less than a declaration of war on Hamas. It also sends a message from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to US President Barack Obama that he is not going to be pushed around when it comes to the Palestinian issue. It’s not exactly a secret that Netanyahu was betting on a Republican victory in the US presidential election.

Praise should go to Egypt’s Islamist government for staying the course in spite of the fact that Cairo was humiliated by the assassination of Jabari. 

Jabari’s assassination came a few days after Egypt had negotiated an informal truce between the two sides. His death only disrupted the negotiation effort and placed Egypt in a bad light as a broker. 

Perhaps Netanyahu cares more about the upcoming election in Israel in January than Israel’s ties with Egypt, which has been walking a fine line between preserving the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, maintaining ties with its main donor Washington, and its own sympathies for Hamas. 

If current events had not been interrupted, one could be certain that Hamas would drift further into the Iranian-Syrian orbit.

Netanyahu is not the only one playing this poker game. Hamas leaders may have thought that Israel would be detered by the Egyptian Islamist government. Not only has this calculation proved wrong, the international community has also come out with criticism against Hamas. In fact, both the US and UK governments are blaming Hamas for starting this round of violence.

The 2008 invasion of Gaza ended with the deaths of more than 1,000 Palestinians, as well as hundreds of Hamas fighters. Hamas can’t afford another disaster if it cares about the lives of the people in Gaza. Israel has shown that it has no qualms about inflicting high-collateral damage, as the 2008 invasion has shown.

There is such a gross disproportion in the capacity of the two sides, it doesn’t make sense for either to get involved in a full-scale battle. 

At a press conference to announce “victory”, a gloomy looking Netanyahu talked about how Israel’s deterrent power has been enhanced from the eight-days of bombardment. 

From Cairo, Hamas leader Khalid Meshal was telling the world that Hamas is still standing tall regardless of the disparity in firepower.