Table of Contents
Seeking Calm But Wary of The Street, Hamas Stuck in an Uneasy Tango With Israel: Avi Issacharoff, Times of Israel, Dec. 1, 2019
Cracks in the Palestinian Resistance Camp?: Yohanan Tzoreff and Yoram Schweitzer, INSS Insight No. 1234, Nov. 27, 2019
Israel’s New Way of War: Seth J. Frantzman, National Review, Nov. 18, 2019
Did Palestinians Push ICC Prosecutor into Complimenting IDF?: Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 4, 2019
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Seeking Calm But Wary of The Street, Hamas Stuck in an Uneasy Tango With Israel
Avi Issacharoff
Times of Israel, Dec. 1, 2019
The weapons fired at Israel on Friday and the attacks on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip in response illustrate for the umpteenth time in recent years Israel’s lack of a clear policy toward Hamas and the Palestinian enclave it rules. But it takes two to tango, and in the last few weeks, Hamas has also shown that it has no clear strategy in dealing with Israel.
Over the weekend, one of the organization’s senior officials, Khalil al-Hayya, announced that the demonstrations on the border fence with Israel will resume next Friday, after three weeks in which the protests were shelved by the group in order to avoid unnecessary clashes with the IDF.
Despite Hamas putting the kibosh on the protests, one formed anyway. It was spontaneous, without Hamas’s organization and transportation, and the event ended with a 16-year-old Palestinian boy, Fahd al-Estelle Mahan Yunis, killed by IDF gunfire, according to reports from Gaza.
In announcing the resumption of border demonstrations, the terror group, which is the de facto power in the Gaza Strip, appears to be attempting to deal with mounting public criticism of its accommodating approach toward Israel. This does not necessarily mean that tensions will rise, and that Hamas will switch to a more aggressive tack, though, Instead the terror group could be seeking to take control of the protests in order to ensure they don’t get out of hand.
The targeted killing on November 12 of Islamic Jihad terror leader Baha Abu al-Ata, a powerful commander in the group’s military wing, and the flareup that followed, marked a significant crossroads in Israel-Hamas relations. In the aftermath of the assassination, Israel refrained from firing at Hamas targets while the ruling organization in the Gaza Strip did not participate in the Islamic Jihad’s attacks on Israel. Hamas was also drawn into confrontations with Islamic Jihad members amid its decision not to take part in the attacks. A mob of people tried to attack senior Hamas official Mahmoud a-Zahar outside the mourning tent at Abu al-Ata’s home. Since the killing, there have been growing indications that both Israel and Hamas seek calm and are exploring the possibility of a broader agreement.
There are a few reasons why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Naftali Bennett prefer to sue for peace rather than trying to topple or weaken the regime, including the desire have a free hand to deal with threats from Iran and its allied proxies on the northern border. The result is that Bennett, once the loudest voice in favor of hitting Hamas as hard as possible, is charting the same path as his defense minister predecessors. On Friday night, after unspecified “non-rocket” fire at Israel, he made do with pro-forma retaliatory strikes on “Hamas targets,” causing no casualties and keeping the flames to a bare minimum. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK– Ed.]
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Cracks in the Palestinian Resistance Camp?
Yohanan Tzoreff and Yoram Schweitzer
INSS Insight No. 1234, Nov. 27, 2019
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) distinguished itself from Hamas and the other resistance organizations in the Gaza Strip, and in contrast to the relative restraint shown by Hamas in recent years, demonstrated that it will not ignore an attack on its people and Gaza civilians. In an interview with al-Meeidin on November 13, 2019, PIJ Secretary General Ziad al-Nahala boasted of the independence his organization showed and its ability to withstand Israeli pressure. He thereby proved to his patrons in Iran and his Hezbollah supporters that he can engage Israel and shut down many parts of the country for some time.
At the same time, the organization was forced to accept a ceasefire without having any semblance of victory to show for it. The damage caused to Israel was essentially to its morale, since there were no casualties or serious property damage, while the PIJ paid a heavy price in human casualties and in the destruction of infrastructure. The criticism voiced in the Strip, both regarding the early cessation of fire and regarding the organization’s separatist behavior, required its leaders to explain why the ceasefire agreement does not mean an end of the resistance, and to argue that it should be seen as a tactical step dictated by circumstances of time and place.
The picture from the Gaza Strip at the end of the recent round of violence may explain what stood behind Hamas’s reluctance to enter the fighting. Had it gotten involved, the dimensions of the destruction would have been much broader than what they are today. Hamas, which is bending under the burden it bears as a governing power due to the collapse of infrastructure in the Strip and its inability to provide for the needs of its residents since Operation Protective Edge (summer 2014) and even beforehand, is well aware of the risks involved in a broad military conflict.
Since then, it has wanted to prevent resistance forces from providing Israel with a pretext for attacking the Strip again. For that reason, it established a joint operations room together with the other organizations, where the scope and timing of fire against Israel is decided. This process has won widespread public praise. The PIJ, which had reservations about the idea and strove to maintain its image as an elitist, quality, and highly motivated organization, viewed the process as part of a collusion that aimed to undermine all of the resistance organizations. It was joined in its view by Qatar, Egypt, and to a certain extent even Hamas and the other organizations, who were prepared to receive the money reaching the Strip from Qatar “through Ben-Gurion airport,” in the words of Secretary General al-Nahala, provided that they kept the situation quiet, as a stage in the process intended to bring the resistance toward arrangements that come to terms with Israel’s existence. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Israel’s New Way of War
Seth J. Frantzman
National Review, Nov. 18, 2019
Commuters on Route 4, driving toward the Israeli coastal city of Ashdod on November 12, were shocked by an explosion, a rocket impact next to a major intersection. Had it fallen on a car or one of the many trucks plying the route, there would have been deaths, and the road would have been closed. Instead, police and Israeli Home Front Command units came and cordoned off the sidewalk, and drivers went about their day. Twenty-five miles south of where the rocket landed, other rocket teams from Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), an Iranian-backed terrorist group, were preparing to fire more than 400 rockets at Israel during a brief flare-up in fighting. Most of them would be intercepted by Israel’s high-tech air defense.
The ability of millions of Israelis to mostly go about their day while Israel’s air force carries out precision air strikes nearby is due to Israel’s latest achievements in fighting war. It also comes with questions about whether Israel is being effective and what this latest revolution in military affairs means in the long term.
A week after the November 12 clashes, they had faded into the background, one day of battle among dozens since March 2018, when Hamas launched a series of protests called the Great Return March. More than 2,000 rockets have been fired, many of them in short spurts. Several times, Israel almost launched a major ground operation. But it has held back. Its Iron Dome air-defense system, which looks like a giant green pack of cigarettes mounted on a truck, intercepted 90 percent of the rockets in the battle with Islamic Jihad. The sophisticated system, developed with U.S. support, not only targets incoming projectiles by firing a missile at them; it even calculates precisely where the threat might hit and works accordingly with a separate system of sirens that warn Israelis to seek shelter.
As in almost every attack since Israel pulled its forces from Gaza in 2005, I went down to the border. The area has changed dramatically over the years. In 2008, before Operation Cast Lead, areas of Sderot, a border town, were dilapidated and depressing. Under fire, without any protection, the people were traumatized. Now there are new parks and shopping centers. Israel didn’t go to war on November 12 because it didn’t need to, and it sees diminishing returns in entering Gaza and getting bogged down in fighting. It also knows that civilian casualties would result. In Cast Lead, around 1,400 Palestinians were killed; in the Gaza war in 2014, more than 2,400, according to estimates. Gaza is densely populated; imagine trying to fight a war in Manhattan. Civilians will suffer.
However, the volume of rocket fire from Gaza in the past year and the extent of Israeli airstrikes are as large as in previous wars. In July 2018, Israel struck 40 targets in what it said were the largest strikes since the 2014 war. In November 2018, around 500 rockets were fired. In response, Israel struck 160 targets that month. In May 2019, more than 600 rockets were fired at Israel. In the recent battle with Islamic Jihad, Israel hit around 20 PIJ targets. A mistaken airstrike also killed eight civilians from one Palestinian family.
Israel dubbed its recent operation “Black Belt” and aimed it at deterring PIJ, which poses a challenge for Israel if there is also conflict with Hezbollah in the north. Delivering a blow to the organization by killing a senior commander to “stabilize the situation” is what Jerusalem hoped to achieve. “Our assessment shows we dealt a significant blow to PIJ’s capabilities,” an IDF spokesman said in a press briefing. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Did Palestinians Push ICC Prosecutor Into Complimenting IDF?
Yonah Jeremy Bob
Jerusalem Post, Dec. 4, 2019
Something bizarre happened early Tuesday morning when the International Criminal Court Prosecution closed the 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla case for a third time. The ICC Prosecution made some of the most complimentary statements regarding the IDF and Israeli positions on some war crimes issues to date. It may be that the ICC Prosecution will make a bigger headline against Israel later this week, but in the meantime, it seems that the Palestinians and their allies may have overplayed their hand.
From a technical perspective, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s third consecutive decision to close her preliminary probe of alleged war crimes by IDF soldiers who killed 10 people who attacked them on the Mavi Marmara during a clash to seize the ship was nothing new. She and the ICC Pretrial Chamber have been at legal loggerheads over this case for multiple rounds now since 2014.
The ICC has pushed her to move to a full criminal investigation three times, and each time she has said that there was no basis to move forward.
But this time was different. Because the latest ICC ruling directed Bensouda to accept certain factual conclusions, she needed to more deeply analyze the IDF’s behavior.
In her past two decisions to close the case, she merely said that 10 dead activists who clashed with the IDF was not a high enough volume of casualties to warrant her office’s attention, which deals mostly with genocide or mass killings. However, the Island of Comoros – which was essentially acting on behalf of the Palestinians – kept pushing Bensouda to analyze the case more seriously.
In hindsight, they probably wish they had not pushed so hard.
The compliments to the IDF were all indirect, but they were unmistakable for someone who closely follows this arena, especially since international human rights forums usually only condemn Israel. Bensouda said that one reason that she would not open a criminal probe was that the case had been probed by the IDF legal division.
Even if this was not a full sign-off on all investigations by the IDF legal division, and was only said in the context of an issue called “command responsibility,” Bensouda could have come to the same result without mentioning the IDF legal division.
Furthermore, Bensouda’s explanation noted that if a country’s legal division’s probe were viewed as a sham, that they would not have provided any protection from the ICC. Turning that statement around, and since Bensouda wants to close the case, it means she is saying that the IDF probe here was not a sham.
Along the same lines, Bensouda pointed out that Spain, England, Sweden and Germany had all dismissed any war crimes allegations against the IDF for the incident. Some of these countries dismissed their allegations on the basis of recognizing Israel’s justice system as legitimate and as having properly probed the issue. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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For Further Reference:
Fatah Furious After Hamas Officials Express Support for Direct Talks with US: Baruch Yedid, Jewish Press, Dec. 4, 2019 — A tweet published by Ibrahim Madhun, a journalist and a close associate of the Hamas leadership in the Strip Gaza, calling for direct talks between Hamas and the US has set off a storm in the Palestinian Authority (PA) in light of what appears to be more evidence of an American-Israeli plan to support the independent Hamas government in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas Set to Renew Gaza Border Protests Despite Talks with Israel: Elior Levy, Ynet, Dec. 4, 2019 — Hamas has called on the Gaza Strip residents to come out in droves for a demonstration against Israel on Friday as March of Return protests expected to be renewed after a three-week hiatus.
IDF Hails New Siren System as Success After Gaza Flareup, Plans Further Upgrades: Judah Ari Gross, Times of Israel, Dec. 1, 2019 — The Israel Defense Forces hailed its new pinpoint siren system a success after its first major real-world test: the two-day battle with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad last month, in which hundreds of rockets and mortar shells were fired at southern and central Israel.
‘Operation Failed’: Details Emerge On Israeli Covert Op Gone Awry: AlJazeera, Dec. 4, 2019 — New details have emerged about a botched Israeli intelligence operation in the Gaza Strip in November 2018 that sparked deadly Israeli air strikes and Palestinian rocket fire.
Activists at Pro-Gaza Rally in New York Call for an ‘Intifada in Every Classroom’: JNS, Dec. 2, 2019 — At a pro-Gaza rally in Times Square in New York on Nov. 15, speakers called for “an intifada in every classroom” and denied Israel’s right to exist.
