Soccer Dad

Post-ceasefire post-mortem

Barry Rubin in Liar, Liar, pants on ceasefire on reasons why it was a mistake for Hamas to end the ceasefire:

The first is that they ending the ceasefire while George W. Bush is president. Certainly Israel feels freer to hit back at Hamas now than after Barrack Obama is inaugurated simply because the new administration would want to avoid a crisis before it consolidates its plans and team. Also, the United States is likely to prefer quiet as it begins withdrawing from Iraq.

Second, the ceasefire is being suspended on the eve of a major Palestinian crisis as Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas announces a self-extension of his term in office. One might think Hamas would prefer to keep the Israel front Israel quiet for a while to focus on battling Fatah and the PA.

Finally, there's the Israeli election campaign. While this doesn't make large-scale Israeli retaliation inevitable, such a move would make the current government more popular with the electorate.

Of course mitigating against those is:

[Hamas] knows suffering can be blamed on Israel. Western pragmatists reason: obviously the Palestinians must prefer peace, prosperity, and statehood. Rejectionism must then be due to desperation and the lack of a good offer or faith in the West. In fact, though, the situation is not due to our mistakes but to their deliberate choices.

Thus, Hamas can well conclude that the best way to put pressure on Israel and--in its own mind at least--gain Western help--is to be more radical, not more moderate.

To cite one example, what is considered America's leading newspaper recently reported that both sides violate the ceasefire: Hamas fires rockets at Israel; Israel retaliates by closing the border. By this definition, the fact that Hamas and its allies fire rockets at Israeli civilians doesn't allow any Israeli response, military or otherwise. This is the kind of thinking Hamas seeks to promote.

In addition, macho militancy in the Middle East does bring popularity, both domestic and international. The last quarter-century has also shown that Western sympathy can be manipulated by increasing violence and blocking solutions to the conflict in a way that will be blamed on Israel.

May I suggest another reason why Hamas ceased the pretense of a ceasefire? Because it achieved what it set out to. Judeopundit noticed in a Al-Jazeera report:

Palestinian group Hamas has declared that the six-month ceasefire between Israel and the Gaza Strip is over.

The ceasefire officially ended at daybreak in Gaza on Friday and came after armed Palestinian groups admitted that they had been using the truce to train and better arm themselves.

And indeed, This Ongoing War linked to an earlier post of mine that cited a report after one month of the "ceasefire."

The cessation of the IDF's operational activity in the Gaza Strip, as stipulated in the lull arrangement, is being used by Hamas and other terrorist organizations to advance their military buildup and increase their readiness for a likely scenario of a future confrontation with the IDF. Since the beginning of the lull, weapons and ammunition have been smuggled into the Gaza Strip on a similar scale to the pre-lull times, despite an improvement in the Egyptian activity against the smugglers. Furthermore, Hamas has significantly accelerated its training activity and its military buildup, publicly announcing it on Palestinian and Arab media.

This is why it's frustrating when a newspaper, like the New York Times - and much of the MSM - characterize the ceasefire strictly in terms of whether either side is firing. If Hamas is building a tunnel to attack Israel and Israel attacks, well Israel broke the ceasefire. More generally, Barry Rubin describes it like this:

To cite one example, what is considered America's leading newspaper recently reported that both sides violate the ceasefire: Hamas fires rockets at Israel; Israel retaliates by closing the border. By this definition, the fact that Hamas and its allies fire rockets at Israeli civilians doesn't allow any Israeli response, military or otherwise. This is the kind of thinking Hamas seeks to promote.

Israel is hamstrung if it plays by these rules and the media portrays this as being even-handed. Does it make a difference how Hamas utilized the ceasefire? It certainly makes a good talking point, but the truth doesn't seem to have sunk in.

Crossposted on Yourish.