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Unavoidable War,
Unfinished

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north into the line of fire; no respite even in
that part of Israel that wanted to believe itself
immune from Hamas. And as of this writing,
it's still firing.
Its leadership has survived intact, hidden
safely away in the underground bunkers it
constructed deep in the heart of
Gaza. Most of its thousands of
death-cult fighters have survived
too. Much of their weaponry is
intact. All ready, it hopes, for
another, nastier round of killing.
Its shared assertion with
Hezbollah, to the effect that
Israel would not send its ground
forces all the way into the urban
neighborhoods in which it had
entrenched itself, survived too
— a propaganda victory to be
used to project the sense of Israeli
weakness and vulnerability, and
thus build motivation for the
wars to come.
It has killed 64 Israeli soldiers at time of
writing — the heaviest toll the IDF has sus-
tained since the 2006 Lebanon War. It killed
11 of those soldiers by sending its gunmen
through the tunnels even as the army raced
against time to find and destroy them. It
killed nine more soldiers at gathering points
on the Israeli side of the border — exploiting
the army's unacceptable failure to keep those
soldiers further from harm. And it killed
numerous soldiers inside Gaza with anti-
tank weaponry, with gunmen popping out
of tunnel openings into areas the IDF had
thought secure.
It battered the Israeli economy, destroying
tourism in the short term.
It sent three-quarters of the foreign air-
lines that routinely use Ben-Gurion Airport
running for cover, albeit briefly.
It exposed divisions in the Israeli leader-
ship — a minor success, to be sure, given
that it was no great secret that Messrs.
Netanyahu and Liberman, for instance, don't
always agree on everything.
It has destroyed the belief in the possibility
of a two-state solution among an additional
(currently unquantifiable) swath of the Israeli
electorate, who became more wary about
relinquishing what Netanyahu describes
as "adjacent territory" given the enemy's
demonstrable inclination to fire rockets over
and tunnel under the border. This is good
news for Hamas since it opposes genuine
Palestinian accommodation with Israel and
thus fears any strengthening of the moderate
Israeli and Palestinians camps.
It has prompted a wave of anti-Semitism
in Europe, which undermined the sense of
security in many communities that were
hardly confident before the conflict began.

30 August 7 • 2014

It has profoundly blackened Israel's name
internationally. The fact that Hamas was
both doing its best to kill Israelis, and had
deliberately placed Gaza civilians in harm's
way by firing from and tunneling beneath
their houses, may have been recognized
widely. But the cold facts were overwhelmed
by the sight of Gaza's smashed
neighborhoods, the mounting
death toll, and the despair of
Gazans and of the international
organizations there.
Israel had right on its side;
llamas had devastation among
its citizens. The hearts of decent
people go out to helpless victims;
for all that Israel was battered and
bloodied, Gazans were battered
and bloodied far more — pre-
cisely as Hamas had planned.
Israeli commentators have
asserted over and again that
Hamas has lacked a "high-quality
achievement;' by which they presumably
mean a more dramatic single terror attack
or rocket strike, and/or success in lifting "the
siege" on Gaza to enable it to bring in still
more devastating weaponry. Yet as things
stand, Hamas can add to its list of gains the
"high-quality achievement" of surviving to
do all of this again, equipped with all the
improved weaponry, strategy and manpower
it can muster.

Israeli Successes
Set against those Hamas gains, however,
Israel can claim significant achievements of
its own.
Almost all of the 30-plus major attack
tunnels have been dealt with. Netanyahu's
former national security adviser, Yaakov
Amidror, argued repeatedly in recent days
that Israel did not underestimate the danger
posed by the tunnels, but could not afford to
initiate a conflict to tackle them.
Such preemption would have triggered
the same Hamas rocket attacks we've borne
all over the country, but many Israelis would
have protested that their government had
brought this upon them. And international
tolerance for the Israeli action would have
been even lower.
Now, though, a central part of the Hamas
strategy, which it spent years and many
millions developing — has been largely
defanged, for the time being. Hopefully
Israel is looking more carefully, too, at what
Hezbollah's tunnelers may be up to.
The Iron Dome rocket defense system has
performed miracles. Hundreds of rockets,
whose impact could have caused immense
loss of life and widespread devastation, were
blown out of the sky. Hamas wanted to see
Tel Aviv in ruins. Instead it saw massed

Weapons fo ,

in a Hamatogn
tunnel undertfee•-'- •
Israel-Gaza

Tel Avivians singing "The people of Israel
live" at a trade fair in the port late last week
organized to boost southern Israel's small
businesses.
Israel thwarted an attempted Hamas infil-
tration by sea, and presumably foiled other
terror plots of which the public is not aware.
Israeli troops killed hundreds of llamas
gunmen, proving capable of overcoming
the enemy on its home territory, despite the
years of planning and preparation, bomb-
planting, tunneling and booby-trapping
Hamas had put in. The IDF fought coura-
geously in near-impossible conditions on the
ground, against gunmen who melted away
into the underground.
For all the overseas criticism of a resort
to force seen by almost all Israelis as essen-
tial, some in the international community
are today more aware of the danger posed
by Hamas and other groups that follow its
cynical methods. Even the U.N. secretary-
general professed shock that Hamas failed
to honor the truce he had played a part in
brokering on Friday. And parts of the Arab
world have been strikingly unsupportive of
Hamas.
Israel's population showed impressive
resilience under rocket fire, and unity
behind the IDF and the political leadership.
The families of the bereaved were, with-
out exception, noble in their indescribable
pain. Heroic. "I loved him utterly," said one
bereaved father of his dead son, speaking to
a TV reporter not long after he had received
the worst news a parent can ever hear. "But
I will not break:' he said tearfully, defiantly.
"Our family will not be broken. Israel will
not be broken:'

What's Next?
So much for the respective achievements
that seem clear. Ultimately, though, the ver-
dict on the past four weeks of conflict will
depend on how the next phase plays out.
Centrally, we wait to see if Israel has
indeed deterred llamas and its offshoots
and rivals in Gaza from targeting us.
"When this is over; Deputy Foreign
Minister Tzachi Hanegbi said Aug. 2,
"Hamas won't dare fire on us for years:'
We shall see.
Crucially, too, we don't yet know where
the negotiations in Egypt will lead. Israel
is not there, but is doubtless indirectly
involved, anxious to ensure that security

precautions it takes are bolstered, not under-
mined, by Egypt's Gaza policies.
Netanyahu has spoken of the need for
llamas to be disarmed, of linking Gaza's
rehabilitation to its demilitarization. Fine
words indeed. But, for now, words only.
If access to Gaza is eased, and llamas is
capable of exploiting this, it will do so. It
will continue to divert all resources allowed
into the Strip that can serve its murderous
purposes, thus requiring greater oversight
on what goes into Gaza, not less. Hamas, if
it can, will build more tunnels, and deeper.
It will manufacture and bring in more weap-
onry, and more dangerous weaponry. It will
dream up new ways to outflank Israel.
We wait to see if Gazans will turn on
llamas for exploiting them in the way that
it has — for ruining their lives, for getting
them killed, while its leaders took shelter.
The people of Gaza have been devastated
by this war. At the same time, many of the
people of Gaza firmly support Hamas. Will
most Gazans prove willing accomplices in a
renewed galvanizing of effort against Israel?
One IDF general, describing a neighbor-
hood in Gaza in which his soldiers were
operating, said 19 of 28 homes had been
utilized in one way or another by llamas —
booby-trapped, or used to store weapons or
to conceal a tunnel opening. Did those 19
families choose to partner with Hamas, were
they paid off, left no choice or a mixture of
all that and more?
Time will tell, too, how widely Arabs in
the West Bank and inside Israel have been
embittered, how affected by the efforts of
llamas and its allies inside Israel and the
territories to foment protest and violence.
And finally, only time will tell if any kind
of political process can be salvaged — if
Israel has any viable routes to try to build a
future in which calm can be sustained both
by the military deterrence of enemies and
the constructive partnership of friends.
Israel was battered in a conflict it did not
initiate by a terrorist government that told
anybody who was listening of its goal to
wipe us out. And yet Israel has received pre-
cious little empathy or support. Netanyahu
spoke Saturday of "new opportunities" post-
conflict with other powers in the region.
It's not entirely clear which powers he was
referring to. From today's vantage point,
prospects for diplomatic optimism seem
more remote than ever.

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