Playing with fire

Israel, Hamas uninterested in all-out war, but situation could quickly get out of control

Alex Fishman|Published: 12.20.07 , 01:23

One doesn’t need to be a cabinet member to realize that if the State of Israel wishes to see President Bush here early next month, it is not a good idea for this visit to be accompanied by hundreds of Palestinian casualties as a result of an Israeli ground incursion in Gaza.

Just like the army eased up the pressure ahead of the Annapolis Conference, it will apparently do the same ahead of Bush’s visit. Therefore, a wide-scale operation initiated by Israel is not expected at least until the Bush visit. Yet meanwhile, between the conference and the visit, Israel’s leadership needs to show action in the face of ongoing rocket attacks on southern communities. So the military has pushed up, to a small extent, the level of friction vis-à-vis terrorists in Gaza.

For the time being, we are not resolving any problems, but rather, dealing with the height of the flames. We’re playing with fire, and trying to but some time.

Indeed, within three hours Monday night we saw seven Islamic Jihad men eliminated in two separate operations. This was neither coincidence nor luck. This is professionalism. Members of the Hamas and Jihad military wings in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, to the point of low-level commanders, are feeling they are “transparent” these days. As if someone follows their movements and knows exactly – despite all measures of secrecy and compartmentalization – when to target them.

After Monday night, they are starting to realize that they are not as familiar as they thought with the Shin Bet’s and IDF’s moves. Even before the cries of revenge, Islamic Jihad’s leadership went underground. Now they are looking into what happened there: Who snitched on them, and how they were exposed.

Monday night, Defense Minister Ehud Barak made a point of calling both Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin and Army Chief Gabi Ashkenazi to praise them. After all, we are not talking about spontaneous clashes that took place on short notice. The process of identifying the targets took months, the planning took weeks, and the approval was granted a week ago: The execution came at the first possible opportunity.

It’s true that we do not kill both the Jihad’s Gaza commander and its rocket chief in every strike, but the capabilities keep improving.

Russian roulette

When such capabilities exist, we can assume that any wide-scale Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip will start with, and be accompanied by, targeted eliminations of the Jihad’s and Hamas’ military leaderships – and not only them; senior political leaders will also be targeted. The list of targets is known and keeps on being updated. If we are talking about moving to the next phase, even before a ground incursion, the elimination of senior political leaders could be the next step. After all, we were there before, with Rantissi and Sheikh Yassin.

The Islamic Jihad vowed revenge. Several months ago, following a previous wave of targeted eliminations, it also vowed revenge – dozens of Qassam rockets that would be launched at Israel. Yet it didn’t happen, and not because Jihad members had second thoughts. The Jihad fired, and is still firing, as much as it can and hits what it can, all the time, with declarations of revenge or without.

Both Hamas’ and Islamic Jihad’s wet dream is to see a raid by commandos emerging out of a tunnel and striking an Israeli community – an abduction, murder, hostage-taking, or a massacre. The moment they can do it – they will do it, even though the IDF could respond by going into the Strip and even though Hamas doesn’t want an all-out confrontation with the IDF in Gaza at this time.

At this time, the IDF is also uninterested in an all-out clash. One needs not graduate the National Security College in order to realize that the army prefers to operate in better weather conditions. Therefore, the surgical strikes are not a sign of things to come. They are meant to buy time. For that reason, these operations are measured and level-headed.

Nobody is targeting Hamas’ political leadership at this time or even Islamic Jihad’s political leaders.

Nobody is targeting Hamas government institutions in Gaza yet or major military installations that could lead to a large number of casualties. We fire at Hamas posts to signal that it should stop firing mortar

shells at Israeli communities. In short, we are not doing anything that could lead to escalation in Gaza at a time that is inconvenient for Israel.

However, this “measured game” of fire is in fact a sort of a Russian roulette. It can get out of control at any point in time. Either because someone would lose it, or because an attack on one of the sides would deviate from the rules of the game.