Soccer Dad: Leap of illogic from the post

May 21, 2007

Leap of illogic from the post

Rocket from Gaza Friday May 18, 2007 Page A22

FROM DAMASCUS, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal yesterday hailed what he called "a historic opportunity." He was referring to the death of several members of his own Islamic movement in airstrikes by Israel. Even while engaged in bloody street fighting with the rival Palestinian Fatah movement in the Gaza Strip this week, Hamas has been firing scores of crude rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot, hoping to draw the Israeli military into a fight in Gaza that would mimic its costly invasion of Lebanon last summer and unite Palestinians behind Hamas's extremist agenda. By last night, Mr. Meshal was dangerously close to getting his wish.

I criticized the NY Times a few weeks ago for arguing that, while justified, it would be worse for Israel to strike back than to continue absorbing Qassem attacks. (There was an editorial that stated this explicitly.) This editorial is no different.

The growing willingness of Arab and European states to tolerate and even aid the Hamas movement has been based on the notion that Hamas could be coaxed toward more civilized behavior and tacit recognition of Israel; that is why many supported the creation of a "unity" government of Hamas with the secular and more moderate Fatah. But Mr. Meshal and his sponsors in Syria and Iran have a very different agenda: to use force to intimidate and eventually dominate Fatah, and to wage an unending war of attrition against Israel. That's the same course that Hezbollah, another proxy of Iran and Syria, has been pursuing in Lebanon.

I'm not going to get into an argument Fatah's moderation here, but the Post here should own up to the fact that it helped promote the notion of Hamas's moderation in both its news and editorial pages.

Israel's dilemma is that it cannot stop rocket attacks from Gaza without invading and reoccupying the territory -- and maybe not even then -- but it also cannot indefinitely tolerate daily attacks on its own citizens and their homes. The government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, which already is under heavy pressure to resign because of its failure to defeat Hezbollah, knows it is being invited into what Hamas regards as a trap, but the government hasn't found an alternative other than the limited airstrikes it launched yesterday. The government has resisted parts of a security plan offered by a U.S. envoy, Lt. Gen. Keith W. Dayton, that calls for Israel to help bolster a Fatah security force to check Hamas. It has also refused to extend a now-ruptured cease-fire from Gaza to the West Bank because it calculates that its operations against Palestinian militants in the West Bank are preventing suicide bombings in Israel.

This is just a factual mistake. And one the Post's editors wouldn't have made, if they'd read their own paper: Fatah Troops Enter Gaza With Israeli Assent (They didn't even have to read the article, the information necessary was in the headline. Somehow, though, the idea of allowing a few hundred freshly armed members of Fatah is not a trap, but striking back at those attempting to kill Israelis is a trap. The logic escapes me.

Western and Arab intervention offers the best hope of heading off a war in Gaza that could easily spread back to Lebanon, and beyond. Egypt, which has allowed Hamas to smuggle hundreds of tons of weapons and explosives, needs to act decisively to seal its border with Gaza. Saudi Arabia and other Arab states should step up pressure on Hamas and on Syria, which is helping Hezbollah rearm in Lebanon. The Bush administration, which has focused much of its energy on a far-fetched attempt to start talks about a final Israeli-Palestinian settlement, needs to urgently mobilize its allies in pursuit of a more basic goal: preventing another summer war.

Here too, a mea culpa would be in order. Back when Israel was objecting to opening up the border between Egypt and Gaza, the Post was anxious that Israel not put its safety first and allow the borders to be open with minimal security. Ms. Rice's Dealmaking

WITH A CRUCIAL push from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Israelis and Palestinians have at last taken a step toward converting Israel's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip into a sustained movement toward peace. An agreement reached early Tuesday morning promises Palestinians in Gaza the access to the outside world necessary to convert their tiny, crowded territory from a detention camp into a statelet. It also gives Israel means to cope with the increased risk to its own security that such access necessarily creates. Needed months ago, the accord was stalled by eruptions of violence, domestic political complications on both sides, and the mutual distrust of Israeli and Palestinian leaders: Each side suspects that the other is not willing or able to follow President Bush's "road map" for a negotiated two-state settlement. By clinching the deal, Ms. Rice preserved the possibility that Mr. Bush's plan could still go forward.

If Egypt is allowing the smuggling of weapons into Gaza, it is, at least in part, due to a policy that the Post itself recommended. Egypt previous behavior dictated that it ought not be trusted to police its border with Gaza, but the Post recommended that Israel abandon its own security to others.

The gist of the editorial is that Israel should not defend itself lest it "play into the hand of Hamas." The problem is that the Washington Post has bought into the idea that Israel take risks that no reasonable person would expect it to (and that few unreasonable people would demand!) When those risks have not paid off, the Post pretends that someone else is at fault, but never its assumptions. The only assumption that the Post clings to is that Israel not defend itself.

The Post terms Israel's war against Lebanon as "costly." The Post means that Israel hurt itself by invading Lebanon. But what if something else is true. That the failure to win the war in Lebanon decisively is part of what's inspired to Hamas to attack again. If Sheikh Nasrallah had not survived last summer's war, how quick would Ismail Haniyeh have been to listen to his masters in Damasucs and Tehran?

Washington Post, Israel,Hamas.