There have been a great many developments over
the past two days and many of them are perhaps unclear in their implications to
those who are unfamiliar with the subtleties of the region. I’ll try my best to decode some of these
items for you.
Johnny’s back! After visiting
Israel every other week for months, John Kerry returned today after snubbing us for
the past three months. I don’t blame
him, he has been busy dealing with the world’s crises that she should have been
dealing with while he was doing his best to earn himself a peace prize and a leg
up in the 2016 Presidential Elections.
As it turns out, while he was he was running back and forth between
Israel and the Palestinians – which was the quietest corner in the entire
region at the time – Russia was busy planning the invasion and annexation of
Crimea and eastern Ukraine, ISIS was planning its capture of half of Iraq and
Syria, Iran was inching ever closer to having a nuclear bomb, and Libya slid
into complete civil war.
Back in April, in this blog, I facetiously noted that because of Kerry's peace push that the region's forecast
was “Cloudy with a Chance Missiles.” I wrote
this because after every round of “negotiations” in the “peace process” there
is a terror wave, intifada, or missile war. You don’t have to be a genius to
understand why this is. It is because you build up false expectations and then
when they do not materialize, you strengthen the hand of the radicals in
society. Note also that, in over twenty
years of negotiations, Palestinians have not budged one inch in their demands.
Yet have been rewarded with international assistance and buttressed by moral
support from the Left. From their perspective, they need only hold out a bit
longer and the world will impose a solution on Israel – one which will come
close to their maximalist demands. To
some degree they are absolutely right.
For example, this time around the US pressured Israel to release of
Palestinian prisoners with blood on their hands and the Palestinians gave
absolutely nothing in return. In other
words, “Something for nothing and your pricks for free…”
In short, what the US, the Europeans and others
do not understand is that neither side is interested in resolving the conflict
right now. Israel sees too many regional
threats on the horizon (e.g. Syria, Iran, ISIS) to give up strategic territory and
control of the border crossings and the Palestinians see no reason to compromise
when Europe and the US are doing the hard bargaining for them. There is much
more to it than this, but there it is a nutshell. Another way to put this is that the US has
been the arsonist of the Middle East.
Feckless and flat-footed on almost every issue, both this and the
previous administration have managed to bring the region to the brink of total
disaster.
So now Kerry shows up uninvited after
instigating the whole slide into chaos and wants a ceasefire. Since the State Department has no leverage
over Hamas, the brainiacs in the State Department have decided to wage economic
warfare on Israel. Though nothing has
changed in the past few days EXCEPT that there are now FEWER missile attacks,
the State Department has chosen this moment to release a warning against all “non-essential”
travel to Israel. Then today, shortly
after Kerry’s arrive, the FAA sends out a State Department approved notice to
airlines that they should not fly to Israel.
As a result, except for El Al, there are no flights coming in and out of
Ben Gurion airport as of tomorrow.
Obviously, this will have serious ripple effects on the Israeli
economy.
Some Thoughts on the Above: Considering that all the major Western
papers have shrugged off Israeli concerns regarding rocket attacks on our
civilian population, it is at least reassuring to see that even the US and
Europe now admit (through these travel warnings) that there exists a legitimate
danger to life and limb. Also, since the airport is now closed, it is hard to
imagine any country in the world that would not be justified in doing anything
and everything in its power to keep open its only commercial airport.
It is not hyperbole to say that the region is
undergoing its greatest upheaval since at least World War I and more rightly
since the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. You cannot see what is going on in Gaza as
separate from what is happening in the region.
The spread and strengthening of ISIS, is both an indictment of the Obama
administration’s policies in Iraq and Syria and a palpable threat to the
stability of the entire region. Due to
the Syrian Civil War, 2 million Sunnis have become refugees in Lebanon,
upsetting the nation’s delicate ethnic balance.
Most importantly it has erased the Shiite majority that first developed
in the 1980’s. Similarly, in Jordan, one
million refugees have made Palestinians a minority there for the first
time. If these destitute refugees join
the cause of ISIS, then you could see the countries around Israel tumble like the
proverbial dominos. Israel is aware of
this real threat and for that reason (among others) feels the need to defang
Hamas now or face being attacked in the rear should a regional war break out (and
it will). Of course, Hamas has been weakened by the downfall of Morsi and has
lost much of its regional support by its backing (on and off) of Iran and
financial support from Qatar (Saudi Arabia’s arch enemy). Though the PLO is in a partnership with
Hamas, no one there is saddened by it getting punched in the face and Egypt has
already declared the organization a terrorist outfit. The downside in all of this is that Hamas has nothing to lose
and hopes to gain as much sympathy as possible in its “martyrdom.”
There is a whole chapter that can and should be
written about how these changes are affecting and changing the political
calculus of the region's minorities (e.g. Christians, Druze, Alawites, Kurds,
Shiites, and Jews). Maybe we’ll get to this next time.
In Other News:
- Apparently an Israeli soldier’s body was kidnapped from the battle in the Shajaiya the other day. Hamas announced that Israel will have to “pay” just to see a picture of his body.
- Several foreign correspondents tweeted that they saw Hamas cross-dressers in women’s clothing (i.e. burqa) and rifle. One of these “fighters” tried to approach an army unit and was shot dead before they could detonate their suicide vest.
- Among the ten infiltrators killed or captured yesterday as they were headed to attack a Jewish community, one was injured and is now being treated in an Israeli hospital. He is 16 years old. A thirteen year old child wearing a suicide vest was also caught yesterday by soldiers in Shujaiya. Next time the news reports that minors were killed by Israeli airstrikes, ask yourself if perhaps they might have also been enemy combatants.
- A tunnel that led to a dining hall in an Israeli kibbutz and another one that led to a nursery school were uncovered. It’s not like it was any secret that these tunnels existed – Hamas repeatedly warned that it would “surprise” the enemy once the time would come. But no one thought that there were so many and so sophisticated. These were built at great cost and over a long period of time, hooked up with electricity, supplied with food and weapons, and clearly designed to harm Israel’s civilian population. These were not headed to any of the military bases in the region.
- One of the ten demands that Hamas has made in order for it to agree to a ceasefire is that it be given unfettered access to cement. Now we know why.
- If even a fraction of the cement used to build these tunnels was used by the Hamas government to build bomb shelters, I wonder how many people’s lives could have been saved.
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