Party must go on

Don’t expect response to Gaza attack ahead of upcoming holidays, Bush’s visit

Alex Fishman|Published: 04.10.08 , 18:17

Israel will “swallow” this terror attack too. This is not the right time for harsh responses. The holidays are approaching: Passover, Independence Day, the 60th anniversary celebrations – and there is no reason to ruin the party.

Most importantly: The American president is on his way here with some nice presents for our birthday. We are talking about valuable gifts that Israel has wanted for a while now and has been working hard for. The uncle from America expects that in exchange for the gifts Israel will present him with something that resembles a document of understandings with the Palestinians.

Therefore, we must not reach a state of rift with the Palestinians at this time. A large-scale military operation in Gaza will draw casualties and sever our ties with Mahmoud Abbas. This may ruin Bush’s visit and negatively impact his mood. We really don’t need that, so we will restrain ourselves yet again this time around.

This assessment is also shared by the militant bodies in the Gaza Strip. They realize that in the coming month Israel will have one hand tied behind its back, so their attempts to carry out “high quality” attacks will persist.

The Hamas organization that rules the Strip actually has no interest in ending the relative quiet that has been prevailing vis-à-vis Israel in the past few weeks. Hamas needs this calm in order to recuperate and gain more strength. Yet it turns out that Hamas’ central control is weakening. Its militant segment and other militant bodies in the Strip are becoming increasingly independent.

On Wednesday they took advantage of a border fence vulnerability and attempted to carry out a strategic terror attack: Abduction of a soldier or civilian, or alternately, an attack within Kibbutz Nahal Oz. The army’s rapid response, which prevented the incident from escalating into abduction, hostage-taking, or massacre, could not hide the fact that the terrorists managed to easily infiltrate the border fence during daytime.

Terrorists use population as hostage

As it turns out, the fuel terminal at Nahal Oz is a private border crossing managed by a private body. Even during hours of operation there is no army presence there or another type of effective security. Fuel trucks arrive there on regular days and at regular hours, more or less, unload huge quantities of fuel (one wonders if anyone knows exactly how much, but that’s a different problem) and return home.

This place is first and foremost a first-rate security failure. This is an explicit hole in the fence. The Defense Ministry and IDF cannot shirk their responsibility for this small abandoned corner of the fence.

We must not have a situation whereby a private body manages such a sensitive border crossing. Either the army assumes responsibility for this location, or the Defense Ministry, or another government body. There was such breach at the Sufa Crossing up until three months ago, yet it was sealed off.

Wednesday’s terror attack also shows us that Palestinian terrorism has entered yet another phase. If up until now it used to exploit the civilian population as a human shield for launching Qassams, now it has turned the population into a hostage. Hamas is using its suffering to show political achievements.

Palestinian terror in Gaza is willing to undermine the supply of fuel to the population and is willing to hit the crossings in order to end the flow of goods into Gaza, to make the photos of suffering in the Strip worse. After all, a genuine economic siege is not in place there.

Every day for the past three months, 90 trucked packed with food and other goods arrive in Gaza every day. During those months, the Sufa Crossing did not remain closed for even one day, despite the terror alerts. Yet someone inside the Strip doesn’t like the fact that Gazans have something to eat and is doing everything in order to undermine this bare minimum as well.