Has the Third Gaza War Between Israel and Hamas Ended?

A Middle East Round Table Discussion with Dan Diker, Mike Bates, Eric Tokajer and Jerry Gordon (September 2014)

On Tuesday, August 26, 2014, the thirteenth cease fire in Operation Protective Edge between Israel and Hamas and its terrorist partners in Gaza was declared at 7:00PM local time. The cease fire had been brokered by Egypt was unconditional and without a set time limit. Despite the onset of this latest cease fire, some rockets continued to be launched from Gaza towards Israel past the time set for cessation of attacks. Subsequently, this latest cease fire has held. It is only temporary and there is no definitive peace agreement in the works. The suspicion is that Israel may have exacted significant punishment on both Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad forces who agreed to a tadiah, a time out, with no hudna, or truce in the offing.

Some quarters in the world media have expressed the opinion that this might be the end of the third war between Israel and Hamas in nearly six years. It has been the longest in the series, 50 days. But it is only a temporary halt and the conflict may be renewed. This conflict was perpetrated by Hamas in June with the kidnapping and murder of three Jewish youths near the West Bank community of Hebron. It was reportedly organized by a senior Hamas military wing operative based in Turkey, Saleh Muhammad Suleiman al-Arouri. He took credit for that on August 20, 2014 at the fourth conference of the World Union of Islamic Sages held in Turkey. Al-Arouri allegedly was speaking on behalf of Hamas leader Khalid Mashal ensconced in luxury in Qatar. Al-Arouri may also have planned what some have called a Mega-9/11 event  that would  have attacked Israel from the West Bank coordinated with suicide Hamas commandos infiltrating Israel’s southern frontier through a network of terror tunnels from Gaza. The IDF and General Security Service, Shin Bet, uncovered arms caches and millions of dollars in the West Bank that could have been used for this attack planned for Rosh Hashanah in late September. That planned attack was evidence of a power play by Hamas seeking to topple Fatah and the PA Leadership in the West Bank, akin to the terror group’s bloody ousting of Fatah in the 2007 takeover in Gaza. PA leader Abbas, sidelined in the current Gaza War, allegedly had heated discussions with Mashal when they met in Qatar in mid-August over the alleged power plot.

This third war between Israel and Hamas firing rocket and mortar barrages on July 6^th and retaliatory Israeli air attacks on a command center in southern Gaza. A ground incursion phase by the IDF began following a surprise tunnel attack by Hamas commandos inside Israel  on July 16^th. More than 4,500 rockets and missiles have been fired at Israel to date during this third war. Israel’s Iron Dome System has been effective in taking down several hundred rockets headed for populated areas. Those rockets and missiles have covered virtually 80 percent of the Jewish nation including Israel’s populous central and northern areas. Israel’s South has been the most exposed since Hamas and  the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) began rocket launches nearly a decade ago. The rain of terror from the skies has targeted communities and cities like Sderot and Beersheba in the Western Negev and Ashdod and Ashkelon on Israel’s southern border. Many residents of those most exposed communities have left temporarily for safety elsewhere. Upwards of 16,000 rockets and missiles and untold thousands of mortars have been fired over the past decade at Israel from Gaza. The vast preponderance of those has been supplied from Iran supplemented by locally manufactured short and medium range Qassem and M-75 rockets.

Israel scored several hits via air strikes on four senior military wing commanders of Hamas, the CFO for the terror group and may have taken out the elusive overall military wing commander, Mohammed Deir. Hamas reacted by publicly executing 18 Gazans who they contended were Israeli collaborators. Those attacks and Hamas’ public executions of civilians may have demonstrated Israeli intelligence prowess in the conflict and its network of local assets in Gaza. Those assets have also assisted in targeting command centers that have been flattened by precision air attacks. 

During the ground incursion in a section of northern Gaza City, the IDF uncovered a Hamas combat manual that revealed a conscious policy of using women, children and civilians as human shields by launching rockets and mortars from homes, hospitals, apartment complexes and schools used as refuge centers. The mortar attack that took the life of young Dan Tragerman came from a position near a school in Gaza, one of the refuge centers for displaced Gazans. 

One of the unpleasant surprises for Israel was the more than 35 tunnels crossing the frontier from Gaza into adjacent communities inside Israel. Those tunnels had been built using funds diverted from the hundreds of millions of dollars supplied by Qatar for reconstruction following the eight days Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012. Qatar may also have supplied sophisticated cyber warfare technology for remote launching of rockets and booby traps in these terror tunnels. In 2006, Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit was kidnapped and held captive by terrorists who abducted him through one of the tunnels. For whatever reason, the military bureaucracy in Tzahal had stymied development of a system to detect tunnel excavation, an effort begun as early as 2004. A successfully tested system may be deployed by the IDF in 2015, too late for this current conflict. Those dozens of tunnels destroyed by the IDF in Operation Protective Edge are only one aspect of the struggle. The other is the several hundred tunnels between Gaza and the Egyptian Sinai through which weapons and cash could be transferred to Hamas and the PIJ.  Egypt under President al-Sisi has successfully destroyed over 1,300 tunnels on the Rafah frontier with Gaza. Those Gaza tunnels have been excavated at great human cost. Reports surfaced during this campaign of over 160 children and dozens of adults killed in the terror tunnel projects. Projects allegedly designed with assistance from Hezbolleh based on North Korean tunnel excavation expertise.

An ominous new terrorist group has emerged in Gaza, the Islamic State, formerly ISIS that has conquered vast swaths of both Syria and Iraq. The black flags of Islam flown by the Islamic State have been seen at funerals and on other occasions in both Gaza and the West Bank.  

Against this background, another in the periodic 1330amWEBY Middle East Round Table discussions was convened.

Mike Bates:  Good afternoon and welcome to Your Turn. This is Mike Bates. We are having our periodic Middle East round table discussion and I have with me in the studio Jerry Gordon, Senior Editor of the New English Review and its blog the Iconoclast. Welcome Jerry.

 

 

 

 

Jerry Gordon:   Glad to be back.

 

 

Bates:  Also we have Rabbi Eric Tokajer. He is the Rabbi at Brit Ahm Messianic Synagogue in Pensacola.  Joining us by telephone from Jerusalem is Dan Diker, former Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress. He is currently a research fellow with the International Institute for Counter-terrorism and Foreign Policy and he is a Foreign Policy Fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Dan Diker, welcome to Your Turn.

Daniel Diker:  Good to be with you

Bates:  Thank you for joining us. We will begin with what is hopefully good news,  a cease fire was announced at roughly 7:00 p.m. Jerusalem time or noon Central time. Dan Diker, what is the cause of that and has it held so far?

Bates:  How did this cease fire come about? Who brokered it?

Gordon:  Dan, there is a strange story out of Israel that the demand for this cease fire came from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. How did that occur and contrast that with the demands typically that Hamas has been making.

Diker:  Two things. First of all Islamic Jihad is an extension of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps which  is under the direct command of Khamenei. Hamas is not under the direct command of Khamenei and the Iranians at this point. There was a falling out between the Hamas leadership and their Iranian benefactors and sponsors two and a half years ago when Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood fell on the wrong side of the conflict in Syria. The Iranian backed Syrian government expelled Hamas and the Hamas leaders looked for a different home. They are now housed by the Qataris. Yet there is a new courting relationship going on between Hamas and Iran. This is sort of an important test for the Hamas leadership in order to re-engage their former benefactors. Having said that, the Islamic Jihad and Hamas have cooperated, however they have also killed each other. This is not unsurprising in the Middle East. Many people believe that the Sunni Jihadist organizations cooperate with, but usually hate their Shiite adversaries which are not necessarily true all of the time. They cooperate and they kill one another when it is convenient for them to do that. However, these two groups have mostly cooperated in their coordinated assaults against Israel. I would not  be surprised if Iran also played a strong role in asking their proxies to agree to a temporary halt in the fighting. This is a temporary halt in the fighting. This is not a long term arrangement.

Bates:  You brought up the Goldstone Report, not all of our listeners are going to be familiar with that. If you could  review what it is and why Goldstone himself ultimately renounced it?

Bates:  The accusations are always on page one and the retractions and corrections are always on page 26 if they appear at all.

Diker:  Well said.

Gordon:  You mentioned cutting off the snakehead of leadership in Hamas. We had the spectacular series of air assaults by the IAF resulting in the killing of significant military commanders and potentially the head of the military wing itself, Mohammed Deif. Can you connect the dots between those events and what occurred prior to the cease fire, public executions of Palestinians or Gazans as so-called collaborators?

Bates:  Dan you speak of the Israeli intelligence network in Gaza that has been phenomenal and yet Israel seemed genuinely surprised at the extent of the tunnels coming out of Gaza leading into Israel. Was that genuine surprise?

Even though Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped in 2006 and held captive for five years in Gaza, was kidnapped and dragged through one of those new types of attack tunnels. Hamas created a major network of these attack tunnels. So yes there was surprise to the extent  these tunnels were actually death tunnels, attack tunnels. Some were million dollar tunnels that you could move cars through. These tunnels also provided, much to the surprise of some in the Israeli Security and Defense Establishment, the whole underground city to protect Hamas operatives, senior members and their families. So yes, there is a real serious question as to why Israel did not know the full extent of this massive network. Hamas leadership intended to send hundreds of Hamas operatives through these tunnels simultaneously next month in order to launch a  mega-9/11 attack against Israeli cities.

Tokajer:  Could you comment upon the drop in support that Bibi Netanyahu is receiving now? I saw polls that said he went from over 80% favorable to down to about 33% favorable currently as a result of these constant cease fires. The Israeli public actually wanted him to send the military in force into Gaza to stop these attacks.

Gordon:  There was a heated discussion in Qatar last week between PA President Abbas and Hamas leader Khalid Mashal who lives there  in luxury. What was that all about and what is the connection to this current war?

Bates:  Has the funding of Hamas continued out of Turkey and Qatar? Why hasn’t Washington been doing more to put pressure on those two nations to reduce or preferably cease funding of the Hamas terrorists?

Tokajer:  How do the Israelis view the United States and the rest of the world the situation from their perspective? They seem to only identify the conflict going on in Israel. For instances, we have the Egyptians, the United Arab Emirates that are involved in Libya now. We have ISIS all over Syria and Iraq. We have these Islamic battles going on with hundreds of thousands being killed. Contrast that with hundreds and low thousands being killed in the Israel conflict with Hamas in Gaza. 

Tokajer:  How do the Israeli people view the world accusing them of disproportional use of weaponry against Hamas? Yet the United States may have used much more weaponry in just a short time against ISIS than Israel has used in Gaza during this whole fifty day period.

Bates:  Of course they are blaming it on the death toll but what is ridiculous about that as I have argued many times on this program with callers who somehow think Israel is the bad player here. Even though I think anywhere on the world stage in the modern era if there is a clear good player and a clear bad player it is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and Israel is clearly the good guy. The example that I always cited is if you are in a military firefight and your enemy is poorly armed and poorly trained  they’re just firing at you indiscriminately. If  your forces are all expert marksmen are you not allowed to take out one of them until they luck out and take out one of you? I mean that’s absurd and Israel is using precision munitions. Gazans are just firing indiscriminately hoping to kill civilians in Israel. Rabbi Eric before we began this program you were telling me that Hamas is actually saying that they want precision munitions. What’s that about?

Tokajer:  Creativity?

Gordon:  There is also a blood libel going on. We see it on posters in the US and elsewhere saying that Israel murders Palestinian children. Rabbi Tokajer, you had something on that that we were just discussing?

Bates:  I thank Ha Shem that Israel has the Golan Heights because without holding the high ground there it would pose a much greater threat coming out of Syria into Tiberias and along the sea of Galilee.

Diker:  Very true.

Bates:  The Iron Dome has been very successful intercepting the rockets that have been fired out of Gaza. Now Hamas is firing mortars and Iron Dome is not designed to intercept mortars. How big of a threat are these mortar attacks?

Listen to this August 26, 2014 1330amWEBY International Middle East Round Table Discussion:

Segment 1, Segment 2, Segment 3 and Segment 4.

 

 

_____________________________________

 

Also see Jerry Gordon’s collection of interviews, The West Speaks.

 

To comment on this interview, please click here.

To help New English Review continue to publish timely and interesting interviews like this one, please click here.

If you have enjoyed this article and want to read more by Jerry Gordon, please click here.

Jerry Gordon is a also regular contributor to our community blog. To read his entries, please click here.