Into the Fray: Have we all gone completely mad???!!!!

Posted by: Martin Sherman 16/08/2014 1 Comment

When all you seek is calm, while your adversary is committed to your total annihilation, what is a reasonable compromise? That he only annihilate half of you?

Two people wearing Israeli flags are told to leave by a protest organizer during a pro-Palestinian demonstration against Israel’s military action in the Gaza Strip Photo: REUTERS

Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.  
– Ancient proverb, misattributed to Euripides

Q: What is the difference between the State of Israel and a lunatic asylum?
A: In a lunatic asylum, the management is supposed to be sane.
– Popular joke

Any alien visitor from outer space, dispassionately observing events in the country, could well be excused for concluding – completely erroneously, of course – that successive governments, and particularly the current one, are not really concerned with the long-term survival of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

Indeed, it would be entirely understandable if our extraterrestrial traveler reached a seemingly far more plausible – but, of course, equally erroneous – conclusion that instead, they are far more focused on delaying its collapse long enough so that they do not have to bear the blame for that collapse.

‘Like a rudderless ship…’

As mistaken as our naive alien might be as to the true motivations of our esteemed elected leadership, it is becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile their actions, decisions and particularly their proposals for policy with prudent, provident regard for the future of the nation.

In past columns, I issued two severe indictments of this government’s policy.

In “The ruinous results of restraint” (July 10), I warned: “By adhering to a policy of avoiding confrontations which Israel can win, the government risks leading it into one in which it might lose”; and urged: “It is time for a bold new offensive – before we are overtaken by events.”

In “Like a rudderless ship in a stormy sea” (July 17), I remarked reproachfully that just as Hamas willfully exposes its citizens to deadly dangers in order to defend it against Israeli military attacks, so the Israeli government knowingly exposes its citizens to severe danger in order to prevent diplomatic attacks from the international community.”

Both these grim prognoses are being fulfilled with alarming accuracy and alacrity.

Indeed, during the first days of Operation Protective Edge, I was not aware of how depressingly apt the title “Like a rudderless ship in a stormy sea” would turn out to be.

For not only does Israel increasingly appear like a rudderless vessel adrift in ominously high seas, but the captain and crew are looking increasingly clueless – not only about what to do, but where to go.

A slow boat to nowhere?

The conduct of the war by Israel has been a dismal failure. Unless this is remedied, and remedied rapidly, failure will degenerate into a disastrous, disruptive debacle that will shake the foundations of the nation. The final ramifications of recent events have not yet been fully fathomed.

On the one hand, because of the operational restraint it opted for, Israel achieved no objective of any significance, nothing with any measure of assured durability. It clearly failed to impose a end to the rocket fire. It failed to disrupt the senior echelons of Hamas’s chain of command. It failed to cripple Hamas as a fighting force. Grave doubts remain as to how effectively the threat of tunnels has been eliminated…

On the other hand, Israel has reaped all the international condemnation it hoped to avoid by exercise of that operational restraint.

As restraint allowed the conflict to drag on for week after bloody week, the scenes of destruction in Gaza began to galvanize world opinion against Israel – or more precisely, gave anti-Israel activists time to galvanize it against Israel – reaching a vicious, rarely seen crescendo of hate not only against the Jewish state, but by association, against the Jews.

Summing up the gloomy balance of gains and losses for Israel, including the loss of dozens of IDF soldiers, Yediot Aharonot’s Ronen Bergman made this somewhat charitable assessment in a New York Times opinion piece this week: “For Israel, this round of fighting will probably end politically more or less at the point where it began but with significant damage to Israel’s deterrence.”

Deceptive optics of asymmetrical wars

The assessment is charitable because, while it is probable that Israel will emerge with “significant damage to its deterrence,” it is more than likely that the political status quo ante will not be preserved. Israel will suffer considerable political losses, which, of course, will be Hamas’s political gains.

It is of course easy to get misled by the deceptive optics of asymmetrical warfare.

In his op-ed, soberingly titled,

“How Hamas Beat Israel in Gaza” (August 10),

Bergman observes:

“If body counts and destroyed weaponry are the main criteria for victory, Israel is the clear winner… But counting bodies is not the most important criterion in deciding who should be declared victorious. Much more important is comparing each side’s goals before the fighting and what they have achieved. Seen in this light, Hamas won.”

He explains:

“Hamas started the war because it was in dire straits…. But soon enough Hamas was dictating the duration of the conflict…. Furthermore, it preserved its capability of firing rockets and missiles at most of Israel’s territory, despite the immense effort by the Israeli Air Force….”

He points out that, despite Israel’s efforts

“to marginalize Hamas and empower the weakened Mr. Abbas, Hamas is, for the first time in its history, on the verge of being internationally recognized as an equal party in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.”

This raises chilling questions.

For if your adversary, and his demands, are on an equal footing with you – if all you seek is calm, while your adversary is committed to your total annihilation, what is a reasonable compromise? That he only annihilate half of you?

Something rotten in the State of Israel

But worse, much worse is likely to come unless the rudderless ship ceases to be a slow boat to nowhere (or even worse), and sets a new, resolute course toward a defined destination: Victory over the enemy and imposition of unconditional surrender.

Lamentably, the prospect of such corrective action seems increasingly remote in light of the deluge of depressing drivel, emanating from what is, increasingly inappropriately, designated Israel’s “leadership.”

Minister after minister appear before the press to present his/her personal prescription for the future, with each proposal more preposterous, puerile and perilous than the next.

Apparently oblivious of Albert Einstein’s designation of incessant repetition of failed efforts as indicative of insanity, each member in this disheartening procession offers up his/her own rehashed melange of measures that were tried in the past and seen to fail, resoundingly and repeatedly.

Reluctant to recognize that what happened in recent weeks has definitively demonstrated that the two-state principle is not viable if a semblance of security for Israel is to be preserved, they desperately try to breathe life into the grotesque, zombie-like remains of that nefarious notion.

Typically, these harebrained and hazardous suggestions comprise little more than a vague, ill-defined wishlist of measures, with no stipulation of any process that would demonstrate how or why what was once hopelessly ineffective will, miraculously, become effective.

The substantive quality of these purported political blueprints is so shockingly poor that it is deeply disconcerting to think that the individuals who authored them, apparently in all seriousness, are at the nation’s helm, charged with guiding it through the menacing crises it will soon be called on to face.

Leaders living in a parallel universe?

Unsurprisingly, two of the loopiest “plans” (for want of a better word) came from Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Finance Minister Yair Lapid, both of whom have demonstrated conclusively that they have no grasp of political realties in the region. Indeed they have both proved so out of touch they might well be inhabiting some parallel universe.

Livni, for example, extols her role in authoring UN Security Council Resolution 1701 at the end of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, a measure which transformed south Lebanon from a formidable Hezbollah arsenal with thousands of missiles aimed at sites in Israel into an immensely more formidable Hezbollah arsenal with tens of thousands of immensely more formidable missiles aimed at sites in Israel. Way to go, Tzipi! Given the massive rearmament of Hezbollah since the passage of 1701, it is difficult to know whether to laugh or cry when reading the portion which calls for “… the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that… there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state.”

We all know how splendidly that worked out.

‘Disengagement, our last chance for normal life’

Lapid has openly admitted that he mendaciously manipulated his widely read Friday Yediot Aharonot column (see “Bennett’s buddy” – February 21, 2013) to advance unilateral disengagement from Gaza.

That article became the launching pad for his political career. In it, he vigorously assailed opponents of evacuation, warning them that their opposition was likely to have deeply divisive repercussions on society.

In light of events, it is staggering to read what he wrote then and realize that someone with such flawed judgment carries such heavy responsibility for the future of the nation today.

In a piece titled, “To: The Opponents of disengagement,” on June 24, 2005, he blustered with typically misplaced bravado: “Have you thought what will happen if you succeed [in preventing disengagement]. Don’t you understand that if… [disengagement does not happen] we will disengage from you. We will say, “Your God is not our God, your land is not our land.” Do you suppose we will simply give up what we see as our only chance for a normal life? Have you any idea how you will live in a country in which most of its inhabitants feel they have to sacrifice their lives – day after day, terror attack after terror attack – for you?” Disengagement, “our only chance for a normal life.” Really. It would be intriguing to see you try to sell that today to the residents of Nahal Oz, Nirim and other communities along the Gaza border, who have been forced to evacuate their homes because of the ravages wrought by disengagement.

Tired, worn-out formulae

Desperate to avoid acknowledging that the only viable alternative consistent with Israel’s security and the ability to sustain a Jewish population in the Negev is for the IDF to overrun Gaza, capture it, kill senior leaders and begin relocating the non-belligerent population, within the framework of a generously funded international humanitarian initiative, Livni, Lapid, and other members of the Israeli government persist in regurgitating failed formulas of the past.

Typically these formulae entail elements such as more financial aid to Gaza, strengthening Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), convening yet another international conference, strengthening Abu Mazen, demilitarizing Gaza, strengthening Abu Mazen, handing over the border crossings to the PA, strengthening Abu Mazen, fostering regional cooperation… and, oh yes, strengthening Abu Mazen.

None of these, of course, will be anything but ineffectual – as they were in the past.

Gaza has received huge amounts of foreign aid and the elected government channeled it into tunnels and rockets. Gaza is already supposed to be demilitarized, as stipulated in the Oslo Accords (just as Hezbollah was supposed to disarm as per Resolution 1701); the PA was deployed in Gaza and was summarily ejected by Hamas; regional cooperation was proposed – before the Arab Spring shattered the region – under Shimon Peres’s “New Middle East” vision and laughed out of town at Casablanca…

As for Abu Mazen, everybody’s new “security blanket,” he was, of course, in control of Gaza until he was unceremoniously booted out by Hamas. Indeed, he has only maintained his current (unelected) hold over the “West Bank” because of the presence of the IDF, without which he would, in all likelihood, be unceremoniously booted out (or worse) there as well…

Which part of ‘They want to kill us’ don’t they get?

How long can Israeli leaders continue to advocate fatally failed formulas before we begin to question their soundness of mind and good intentions?

One can only wonder which part of the simple truth “They want to kill us – not because of what we do but because of what we are” – is difficult for them to grasp and why they have so much difficulty formulating policy that reflects the truth.

Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.org) is the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.(www.strategic-israel.org)

First published at The Jerusalem Post.

Gaza – Hamas Humiliates and Manipulates World Media

Posted by: David Singer 15/08/2014 6 Comments

A family of 11 previously reported dead in an Israeli air strike in Gaza has turned out to be false – further fuelling the unprecedented furore caused by the Tel Aviv based Foreign Press Association (FPA) issuing the following statement on 11 August slamming Hamas for its treatment of journalists during the current conflict:

“The FPA protests in the strongest terms the blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza over the past month.

The international media are not advocacy organisations and cannot be prevented from reporting by means of threats or pressure, thereby denying their readers and viewers an objective picture from the ground.

In several cases, foreign reporters working in Gaza have been harassed, threatened or questioned over stories or information they have reported through their news media or by means of social media.

We are also aware that Hamas is trying to put in place a “vetting” procedure that would, in effect, allow for the blacklisting of specific journalists. Such a procedure is vehemently opposed by the FPA.

The FPA has also been mildly critical of Israel as this release on 23 July indicated:

“The FPA strongly condemns deliberate official and unofficial incitement against journalists working to cover the current warfare under very difficult circumstances as well as forcible attempts to prevent journalists and TV crews from carrying out their news assignments. While we do not condone the use of invective by any side, outright attacks on journalists are absolutely unacceptable.

On Tuesday, IDF forces aimed live fire at the Al Jazeera offices in Gaza City. The offices are on the 11^th floor of a known commercial  centre. The IDF apologised claiming it was in error and said they would investigate the incident.

Also Tuesday, FPA member Firas Khatib of BBC Arabic was physically attacked and abused in the midst of a live feed on the Israeli side of the border. “

The FPA numbers some 480 members representing TV, radio, photojournalists and print media from 32 countries including Australia, Qatar, Brazil, Norway, China , USA. Austria, Dubai, Russia, Japan, Finland, South Africa, Denmark and Germany, Turkey, the UAE and the United Kingdom.

It represents amongst others Le Monde, The New York Times, Reuters, the Guangming Daily, CBS Television, the Associated Press, Der Spiegel, the BBC, Danish Broadcasting Corp. and Bloomberg News. On its website, the FPA lists Australian journalists Matt Brown (ABC) and John Lyons (The Australian) as members.

Paul T. Jørgensen of Norway’s TV2 states that:

“several foreign journalists have been kicked out of Gaza because Hamas does not like what they wrote or said. We have received strict orders that if we record that Hamas fires rockets or that they shoot, we will face serious problems and be expelled from Gaza,”

Alan Johnson reported in the Telegraph:

• The Wall Street Journal’s Nick Casey posted a photo of a Hamas spokesman being interviewed from a room in the hospital along with this tweet: “You have to wonder (with) the shelling how patients at Shifa hospital feel as Hamas uses it as a safe place to see media.” After “a flood of online threats”, the tweet was deleted.

• John Reed of The Financial Times was reportedly threatened after he tweeted about rockets being fired from the same hospital.”

Yet Jodi Rudoren, Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times – who was not in Gaza – tweeted:

“Every reporter I’ve met who was in Gaza during war says this Israeli/now FPA narrative of Hamas harassment is nonsense,”

It was a strange remark to make considering the above claims – and having regard to the following comment reportedly made by  New York Times vice president for corporate communications Eileen Murphy that the newspaper’s team in Gaza did not photograph any rocket launches, sent only “two very distant, poor quality images that were captioned Hamas fighters” and “hasn’t even seen anyone carrying a gun.”

Even more intriguing – Rudoren’s deputy at the NYT – Isabel Kershner – was one of the FPA board members who approved the condemnatory statement. How could two colleagues from the same newspaper observing the same sequence of events come to such different conclusions?

British freelancer Harry Fear said he was asked to leave Gaza by three plainclothes Hamas officials at Al-Shifa Hospital – apparently for referring to rocket launches near his hotel.  He reportedly said he did not feel any intimidation or interference.

Some reporters however reportedly received death threats. Sometimes, cameras were smashed. Reporters were prevented from filming anti-Hamas demonstrations where more than 20 Palestinians were shot dead by Hamas gunmen.

Evidence of Hamas controlling the flow of news is obvious in its failure to allow the media to:

1. independently determine, separate and verify the number of civilian and Hamas deaths
2. photograph any Hamas forces launching rockets from residential areas or civilians being used as human shields.

A BBC investigation has uncovered photos of dead children from earlier conflicts being passed off as casualties in the current conflict – being fed to gullible reporters to send around the World to even more gullible target audiences.

Why would reporters keep going back into Gaza to be so humiliated by Hamas?

They are certainly not reporting what is actually happening.

Maybe they should stay out of Gaza and let Hamas do its own media releases.

The media barons would certainly save a lot of money.

David Singer is a Sydney Lawyer and Foundation Member of the International Analysts Network.

He blogs at Jordan is Palestine and publishes at Canada Free Press.

Arlene from Israel – An Ugly Mess.

Posted by: Arlene Kushner 15/08/2014 1 Comment

Note:

Sorry about the way this has posted. I can’t change it. Arlene doesn’t have it on line yet and this happens sometimes when taken from an email.

No matter what happens with regard to Hamas, it will be a mess of one sort or another.  There are no clean, neat diplomatic solutions. There is either war now, with all the pain and cost that is necessarily concomitant, or there is the possibility (only the possibility) of a temporary diplomatic resolution that has the seeds of war embedded within it and that, while providing a respite, will inevitably backfire.

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Where are we, as I write?

The 72 hours of indirect, Egyptian-mediated negotiations in Cairo between Israel and “Palestinian factions” – which ended midnight Wednesday night – led to no resolution of the differences between Israel and Hamas.  We shouldn’t have expected there would be such a resolution, as each side has demands diametrically opposed to the other: Israel is seeking demilitarization of Hamas and Hamas is seeking an end to the blockade of Gaza (in place to prevent importation of further weaponry).

I am reluctant to relay reports of what is said to have gone on, because a good deal of it is undocumented and unreliable: most, if not all, of what we ostensibly learned regarding terms being discussed came from the Palestinian Arab faction (remember, Abbas’s Fatah faction is right in there, negotiating with and on behalf of Hamas).  And they have a strong propensity to exaggerate their achievements in such matters.

Did Israel agree to allow Gazan fisherman to go farther into the Mediterranean?  Or to permit the quantity of goods – either humanitarian or commercial – going into Gaza from Israel to be substantially increased?  Did we concur that Fatah forces might police the border?  Could it possibly be that Israeli negotiators agreed to facilitate the movement of money from the PA in Ramallah into Gaza so that Hamas salaries could be paid???

It’s difficult to state what Israel agreed to tentatively, in the course of negotiations – or even agreed to just put on the table for discussion.

Several times, while those reports were coming out, anonymous Israeli officials were cited as saying that no progress was being made.  Apparently (and, again, there is no confirmation on this) Hamas is refusing to release the remains of two soldiers it is holding – Lt. Hadar Goldin and Sgt. Oron Shaul; this would represent a real stumbling block to any deal Israel might be considering.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/184003#.U-zhP5vlrIU

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Several factors in particular must be mentioned with regard to these negotiations:

First, it is clear that, whatever Israel did or did not agree to, the Palestinian Authority – Abbas’s Fatah faction thereof – is being widely promoted as the “solution” to the problem of Gaza, just as we knew would be the case.  We must continue to declare loudly that reliance on Abbas would be a disaster – both because he’s in bed with Hamas and would not “guard” the situation with regard to preventing it from rearming, and because Fatah forces are weak and liable to be taken down by Hamas.

And then, it seems to be the case (is it??) that Israel has dropped the demand for the full demilitarization of Hamas, focusing instead mainly on ways to prevent its rearming.  Preventing more sophisticated weapons from being brought in to Gaza is, needless to say, an important and necessary thing to do. But it is not sufficient in and of itself.  Hamas still has some 3,000 rockets in its arsenal.

What is additionally the case is that Hamas currently has the capacity to build more of its own rockets, and is continuing to do so.

See here: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4558720,00.html

Editor’s note: This video was posted by MEMRI yesterday

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Reports, some leaked, that did come out citing Israeli sources yesterday seemed quite troubling.  We learned that a Security Cabinet meeting that was supposed to have been held had been cancelled because there was “no progress” and nothing to discuss or vote on.  But what happened instead of a full Security Cabinet meeting was a series of private meetings that Prime Minister Netanyahu had with various key members of that Cabinet (primarily but not exclusively heads of factions) – notably Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu), Finance Minister Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid), Economics Minister Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home), Justice Minister Tzipi Livni (Hatnua), and Communications Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud).  Some sources described these meetings as a way for Netanyahu to alert these people to what to anticipate.

Other sources described what happened as an attempt by Netanyahu to “soften up” the Cabinet members in order to get them to vote for some controversial concessions. Something they might or might not agree to:

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/183984#.U-y-KJvlrIU

Additionally there were complaints from some Cabinet members that they were being kept in the dark:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4558420,00.html

Uh Oh.  What doesn’t he want them to know?  What might he be promoting?

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For the record, I do not believe Netanyahu WANTS to give Hamas anything.  He is clear-eyed as to the nature of this adversary.  But I am concerned, very simply, that he lacks the nerves of steel required right now to buck the considerable pressure being brought to bear on Israel from a host of international sources.  Binyamin Netanyahu has demonstrated himself to be someone who worries a good deal about the international community and functions while watching over his shoulder.

In fairness to him, I acknowledge very readily that the pressure has to be absolutely incredible. (I am not sleeping well at night and right now I wonder how he can sleep at all.)  There is reason to believe that he might be considering a host of unpalatable factors – the rising world-wide hostility to Israel because of the deaths of babies in Gaza, the up-coming UNHRC “inquiry” – dubbed Goldstone 2 – into whether we committed “war crimes” in Gaza (which I’ll address another day), the malevolence of Obama (about which more below).  It might seem to him that not taking on Hamas right now would be prudent because of all of the other issues that we confront.

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But there is a solid case to be made for dealing with Hamas without making concessions – with all that this likely implies.  Period.

Two days ago, the “military wing” of Hamas, al-Qassam Brigades, released this statement:

“The warriors in Gaza are waiting with Allah’s help to renew the fighting, or to return to planning the next campaign. There’s no escape. Either jihad or planning [for the next jihad].”

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/183978#.U-zLGZvlrIV

Now, we know that this is how the jihadis operate.  It’s hardly a surprise. But for them to be so “in our faces” about it?  We should allow them to buy time to plan a better attack on Israel?

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The hours leading up to the midnight termination of the temporary ceasefire last night were tense.  Egypt – the mediating party – was pushing for an extension to the temporary ceasefire because more time was needed.  But, while apparently Israel agreed at some point, Hamas was defiant – with Khaled Mashaal, head of the politburo, the most intransigent – and it seemed that this was not going to happen.

So certain did Hamas seem to be that there would be no extension, and that “negotiations” had failed, that rockets were launched from Gaza into several communities in the south of Israel a full two hours before the official end of the ceasefire.  (Something that Hamas later denied having done.)

The situation suddenly seemed clear: Enough fooling around in those negotiations; once again Hamas failed to even honor its full commitment to cease firing for 72 hours.  The Israeli negotiating team had returned home. Time to get serious.  Additional reservists had been called up and our troops were moved up to the border of Gaza.  Yair Lapid made a statement about how, if we must attack again because they start launching rockets again, “this time we’ll hit much harder.”

So be it then…

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Just to interject a small personal note here.  I was relieved – because the prospect of making concessions to Hamas felt terribly wrong: one does not negotiate this way with terrorists.  But I was hardly upbeat.  I had more of a pained, it’s the right way to go and we’ll have to deal with this with resolve, attitude. I spoke to my visiting grandchildren about where we would would go if there were a siren; having lived through this multiple times already in their own home, they were cool.  But I felt an incredible sadness, that the absolute evil of Hamas was making all of this necessary.

~~~~~~~~~~

Even as Hamas started launching those rockets, however, news began to trickle out from Cairo about an agreement from both sides to extend the temporary ceasefire so that more effort might be expended in reaching a permanent agreement.  And indeed, by midnight, the new ceasefire was announced: fire would be held for five days, but it was my understanding that there would be a two-day hiatus before talks began again, which would mean another 72 hours of negotiations.

What turned the trick, apparently, was direct intervention by Barack Obama, who let it be known that he wanted either a final agreement or, at the least, a temporary extension.  Reports are that a call he placed to Netanyahu to convey this was exceedingly tense, as have been most of their recent exchanges.

~~~~~~~~~~

This is what I am seeing:

According to a Wall Street Journal article, which cited government sources, “the US administration has halted a shipment of Hellfire aerial anti-armor missiles to Israel.

“The sources noted that Israel had requested the transfer of ammunitions directly from the Pentagon, without receiving the approval of the White House or State Department officials.

“’We were blindsided,’ one US diplomat said, while a US defense official insisted that ‘there was no intent to blindside anyone. The process for this transfer was followed precisely along the lines that it should have.’

“According to the sources, White House officials were concerned about Israel’s use of artillery, instead of precision-guided munitions in the more densely populated areas in the Gaza Strip…

“After the shipment of the 120-mm and 40-mm rounds caught the White House by surprise, the Pentagon was instructed to put another arms shipment to Israel – a large number of Hellfire missiles – on halt and the administration instructed all of its defense agencies to consult with the White House and State Department before approving any additional arms requests from Israel, the Journal reported.

“A US official told the paper that ‘the decision to scrutinize future transfers at the highest levels amounted to the United States saying “The buck stops here. Wait a second… It’s not OK anymore.”'”  (All emphasis added)

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4558615,00.html

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Michael Oren, who served a term as Israeli ambassador to the US that ended last fall, has weighed in on this:

“There is a claim in the Wall Street Journal that Israel went around the back of the United States to get a resupply of ammunition from the Pentagon, that it didn’t get permission from the White House. I can only tell you as an ambassador that is impossible because there’s a very specific and deeply embedded procedure for doing that and Israel, in order to get access to preposition military equipment in this country, American equipment, has to go through the administration.“

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4558760,00.html

Oren says the WSJ story is unsubstantiated.  But if a US “source” deliberately leaked this faulty information on orders?  If this provides Obama with a fabricated public rationale for holding back on Israel?

~~~~~~~~~~

When did this story appear? Wednesday?  When did Obama place his call to Netanyahu insisting that the ceasefire had to be extended?  Wednesday.

Here I move into speculation – but speculation informed by a sequence of events that gives it considerable plausibility.

Perhaps Netanyahu was not thinking about “Goldstone 2” or anti-Israel riots in various places.  Maybe his concern – a very real and enormously serious one one – was that the US, by withholding military equipment, would make it difficult for Israel to sustain a full war against Hamas.  Perhaps this is what he sought to communicate privately to key members of the Cabinet.  Perhaps his nerves were sufficiently steel-like in this situation, but he calculated that it might be better to forestall that final confrontation with Hamas until Obama was out of office. (Which might mean making nauseating compromises in the interim.)

Perhaps…

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Obama’s position on the record in this situation was clearly established some while ago:  First he has no desire to see Hamas brought down.  And then, he is eager to see that “two state solution” advanced via placement of Abbas in Gaza.  What better way to promote these interests than by weakening Israel’s hand?

If there is truth to my speculation, then it is my very fervent hope that Netanyahu will not sit still for this.  Oren’s commentary seems the first return volley, but a great deal more would need to follow.  Often threats are not spoken about. But, for a number of reasons, whatever threat may have transpired here would need to be addressed as boldly and perhaps publicly as possible.  We have many friends in the US.

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 And there is one last piece to my speculation.  Obama would have had to do something to get Hamas to agree to a ceasefire extension.  It is quite clear that there was not unanimity within Hamas on this score.  The president has a very distorted and distinctive MO in his dealings with other countries: he fails to be supportive of those who are traditional US allies, and he overtly courts and makes concessions to radical regimes such as Iran that embrace values inimical to American interests.

My guess would be (and Kerry played this very game with Abbas during recent negotiations) that Obama either exaggerated to Hamas what Israel is ready to concede or promised Hamas that he would do everything in his power to get Israel to… whatever (perhaps release prisoners)…to provide Hamas with that much needed sense of victory.

We might then, look for increased pressure on Israel to…whatever…

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All this said, there is no reason to expect that, when the next 72 hours of negotiations is over, a long-term ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas will necessarily have been achieved.  It still remains quite unlikely, I think, concessions or not.  If (or when) those Hamas rockets start flying again, there will still be some very tough decisions that will have to be made here in Israel.

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