Israel Bracing For Gaza Incursion

Maya Iber inspects the damage to her Sderot home after a rocket attack Sunday. Some 60 rockets have hit the southern Israeli town since Hamas ended a six-month cease-fire Friday. getty images

Maya Iber inspects the damage to her Sderot home after a rocket attack Sunday. Some 60 rockets have hit the southern Israeli town since Hamas ended a six-month cease-fire Friday. getty images

by Staff Report

Despite a self-proclaimed 24-hour halt to rocket fire into Israel by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza Monday, shells continued to fly and some Israeli analysts believe Israel is just days away from launching a major attack.

“They called a 24-hour truce because the Egyptians were sending a big convoy of food and medicine and they wanted quiet for the convoy,” said Raphael Israeli, a professor of Islamic, Middle Eastern and Chinese history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“But I would expect the shelling to renew and Israel would no longer dare to hold back as it has done patiently for many years,” he added. “Therefore, I expect a real explosion. ... This would be in a matter of days. They cannot wait 50 days

until the election [Feb. 10]. Therefore, if there is an explosion it should happen now.”

Writing in Israel’s Ynet online newspaper, columnist Moshe Eldad Tuesday said Hamas may extend the six-month-old lull in rocket fire but the “all-out clash will come sooner or later.”

“This creature needs to be fought in every way possible and eliminated,” he wrote.

In the hope of heading-off an escalation of violence, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak invited Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to meet with him in Cairo late this week. But before going, Livni warned that Israel’s patience was wearing thin.

“We will not allow the prolonged existence of a Hamastan state in Gaza,” she was quoted as saying. “We need to retrieve the power of deterrence. Every decision made about Gaza needs to come from an empowered stance. The objective is Hamas. Hamas is responsible for everything that happens in Gaza, politically and economically. Israel has no interest in harming innocent civilians, but it must respond.”

Livni, who is running for prime minister on the Kadima Party ticket, said her party’s policy “for the long run is to destroy Hamas” and to reestablish Israel’s power of deterrence in order to protect its citizens.
Israeli media said Livni was prepared to tell Mubarak that despite the lull in rocket fire, more than 300 Palestinian rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel since November — more than 60 since last weekend alone. Livni was reportedly prepared to say that Israel could no longer tolerate such attacks on its citizens.

The six-month truce ended Dec. 19. After initially saying it did not want to renew it, a Hamas spokesman was quoted Tuesday as saying Hamas would like it renewed.

Livni was reportedly going to tell Mubarak that Israel was prepared to renew it based on the same conditions that led to the first lull in the rocket attacks.

Israeli media reported that Israel was preparing a global public relations effort to win international support for its anticipated large-scale operation in the Gaza Strip should an extension of the truce not be possible. Ynet said Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met last week and agreed to a military strike in Gaza that would begin gradually and intensify as warranted.

But Gerald Steinberg, a political science professor at Bar-Ilan University, said he does not believe an Israeli invasion of Gaza is likely. He said Hamas “wants to show it’s tough, but it does not want an all-out confrontation.”

He said also that the harsh rhetoric Livni used last week in speaking of her determination to destroy Hamas may have hurt her even though her main opponent in February’s election, Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, delivered a similar warning.

“Such talk serves Netanyahu’s constituency, but Livni came across as having spoken too quickly and of not thinking through what she was saying,” Steinberg said. “She was expected to be a more cautious leader than Netanyahu.”

Mordechai Kedar, a lecturer at the Begin-Sadat Center, said he believed the upcoming Israeli election will delay a major Israeli military response.

“I don’t see it in the near future because nobody wants to see Israeli troops going in because of the [high number of expected] casualties,” he said. “This is why the only way to deal with [the terrorists] is from the air. But this might cause a large number of civilian casualties and that is why Israel hesitates to do it. We could do it, but the world would see Israel as a killer.”

Kedar stressed that Hamas cannot allow itself to “sit quietly for a long time” because its whole existence is based on seeking to destroy Israel as a state.

“The fight brings them donations and support and the world media because the media wants to see blood,” Kedar said. “If the cease-fire is for too long, the world would forget about them. They have to feel they are in the focus of the news and that means war.”

In calling for a 24-hour truce Monday, Hamas demonstrated that it is the “master of Gaza.”

Meanwhile, Olmert met with Turkish officials this week and spoke of renewing peace talks with Syria. Turkey has been serving as an intermediary in Israeli-Syrian talks since March.

But Syrian President Bashar Assad said this week that talks would not resume until there were new administrations in Washington and Jerusalem. And he held out the possibility of direct talks with Israel.

But Kedar, who is an expert on Syria, warned that Assad is laying a trap for Israel. He cautioned that once Israel signs a treaty with Assad in which Israel gives back the Golan Heights, Assad will demand that Israel accept 400,000 Palestinian refugees in Syria and 350,000 in Lebanon before it implements a full peace agreement.

“Syria will refuse to implement it and Israel will be left with the paper,” he warned.

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