Hamas is in trouble, we may be too

For Hamas, the kidnapping of the three Jewish teens was a massive failure -- no Palestinian prisoners were freed, Israel devastated Hamas' infrastructure in the West Bank, and it put the unity government in jeopardy and deepened Hamas' isolation.

Yoav Limor

An Israeli Air Force strike in Gaza this week | Photo credit: AFP

This week, Israel was on the verge of exploding: In Gaza, there were growing indications of escalation; in Judea and Samaria, tensions became increasingly more palpable; in east Jerusalem riots raged after the murder of a boy from Shuafat; inside Israel, rage abounded when the bodies of the three kidnapped teens were discovered, to the point of potential vigilante justice by groups and individuals.

Amid this chaos, the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet tried to reach conclusions, convening three emergency meetings between Monday and Wednesday, in efforts to arrive at the appropriate, proportional response. There was no contingency plan ready to be executed. Now, after two and a half weeks of pounding the Hamas infrastructure in the West Bank, the Israel Defense Forces are running out of targets, and certainly the kind that can be presented to the Israeli public as a triumph.

The Diplomatic-Security Cabinet has made decisions, but they are the kind of decisions that require time and persistence: continuing arrests; confiscating funds; shutting down welfare organizations ("dawah") that spread Hamas' teachings.

The demand for wider-scale offensives, like the calls to "erase Hamas from Hebron," are nothing but empty words: Of the 170,000 residents in Hebron, 25,000 are declared Hamas supporters who voted Hamas in the elections, but are not involved in terror. There is no legal justification to arrest them or deport them, and certainly no way to remove Hamas from their hearts.

However, Israel does have several viable options at its disposal, and it is these options that have split the cabinet over the last week. Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, as one would expect, were in favor of launching a wider offensive that would include Gaza. Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Finance Minister Yair Lapid wanted to focus on the West Bank and avoid escalation in the south. Livni and Lapid were (surprisingly) joined by Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch. Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ultimately made the deciding call, joining the Livni-Lapid-Aharonovitch camp.

Midweek, however, the balance shifted as rockets fired from Gaza began raining down on the south. Officially, Hamas continued to insist that it was adhering to the cease-fire struck after the 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense. They even communicated clear messages to Israel (via Egyptian mediation) indicating that they were not interested in any escalation. But the facts on the ground, and the information pouring in from other sources, indicated otherwise. In one instance, on Tuesday morning, Hamas was directly responsible for rocket fire into Israel, apparently in response to the assassination of one of its men in a prior Israeli airstrike. Since then, Hamas has demonstratively refrained from preventing other terror organization from firing projectiles into Israel.

Reconciliation and rockets

Several Israeli experts believe that an escalation in Gaza would actually benefit Hamas, which is currently at an all-time low. By Hamas standards, the kidnapping of three Israeli teens was a tactical failure -- the bodies of the boys were found, and their abduction failed to advance the release of Palestinian prisoners. The only thing it did was decimate Hamas infrastructure in the West Bank and jeopardize Hamas strategy. The Palestinian unity government is shaky and the global isolation of Hamas, which was supposed to ease up thanks to the pact with Fatah, only deepened.

Hamas' reality in Gaza is also grim: The much-anticipated reconciliation with Iran has not materialized yet, the Rafah border crossing into Egypt has not been opened, the salaries of 47,000 public servants have not been paid. People who visited the Gaza Strip this week have said that they had never before seen such a gloomy Ramadan there.

Ostensibly, Hamas' despair is Israel's opportunity to strike at the organization. Some even believe that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party are encouraging such a development, in efforts to weaken their enemy-partner.

There are plenty of viable targets in Gaza, ranging from leaders and commanders (the highest ranking officials have gone underground, ever since the discovery of the three bodies on Monday) to military targets, namely the rocket firing mechanism. However, the Israeli defense establishment has warned that the escalation could come at a dangerous price: Beyond the direct results of combat -- casualties and loss on both sides and a possible widening of the rocket range to include Tel Aviv and possibly even further north -- Israel could draw the ire of the global community, whose attention is currently focused on Iraq, and risk another uprising in the West Bank.

The ministers opposed to launching an offensive, led by Ya'alon, wondered how effective it could be when, in the absence of any Israeli desire to re-conquer the strip, the only possible outcome could be a cease-fire agreement, or, in other words, back to where we are now.

It appears that ultimately it was Hamas that decided Israel's dilemma (or intensified the dilemma, depending on how you look at it). On the one hand, Hamas sent out conciliatory messages, but on the other hand, the rockets and mortars were constantly fired. The retaliatory Israeli Air Force strikes on dozens of Gaza targets did achieve some operative objectives -- they somewhat reduced the manufacturing and launching capability of the rocket squads -- but they failed to achieve the key objective, which is deterrence.

Ever since Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel has made sure to respond to every rocket launch, attacking the sovereign group, Hamas. After all, it is Hamas that is responsible to impose its will even on the smaller insurgent groups. In most instances it was enough, but this past week, it had the opposite effect: The strikes only exacerbated the rocket attacks.

Hamas has refrained from expanding the range of its rockets, true, and in a substantial number of instances rockets were intentionally aimed into open spaces rather than populated areas, but the rocket fire continues, and with steady force. It seems that these days, under the current circumstances, the question in Israel is no longer whether to attack Gaza but to what extent. Especially in efforts to prevent an unwanted deterioration.

The options on the table

Sliding into a Gaza offensive would be possible, among other reasons, due to the lack of targets in the West Bank. The kidnappers who killed the three Israeli boys are still at large, and when they are apprehended, they probably will not go down without a fight. Other options have hit various walls: Terrorists' houses will be demolished, eventually, but only after the High Court finishes debating the appeals; deporting Hamas officials to Gaza -- an option that enjoyed a lot of support -- has been bogged down by the legal advisers who claim that it would violate international law; speeding up construction, which has already been approved (including a new neighborhood slated to be built on state lands in the Hebron hills, close to where the three boys were kidnapped), takes planning and time.

Fear of a triple front

As things stand now, considering the public's frustration with the tragic (yet predictable) end of the abduction ordeal, Israel is headed toward dangerous territory. It does not take more than a cursory glance at the country's social networks to see the radicalization, including the explicit use of words like "revenge" and "murder."

For the Shin Bet security agency it was enough to prompt them to tighten surveillance of the usual suspects, the extreme rightists. But that is not enough. The fact that thousands of soldiers rushed to join the revenge bandwagon indicates that, at its moderate end, the soldiers' state of mind is showing signs of anarchy, and at its extreme end, the rage could potentially be translated into action during a military operation.

The IDF Spokesperson's Unit promptly condemned this behavior and warned that any soldier caught inciting would be severely punished, but this likely will not help. It takes wider action, mainly political, with the help of religious and spiritual figures who hold sway, to stop the current, which could end up with incidents like the murder of the Arab teenager in east Jerusalem. As of Thursday, the motive behind that murder was not yet clear, but the potential damage it could cause is clear: riots staged by Jerusalem's Arab population, and possibly in the West Bank as well, which could escalate during Friday prayers, and acts of revenge that could speed up the deterioration we have seen over the last three weeks. From there, Israel would be fighting on three fronts -- the West Bank, Gaza and at home.