After the experience of 2008, Israel is more reticent about waging war on Gaza, its difficulties compounded if Palestinian resistance factions coordinate, writes Saleh Al-Naami Nawal, 34, was fast asleep at 2am when she woke up horrified with blood running down her face. She quickly forgot about her pain when she heard her three children screaming. She consoled them although she was shaking with fear. Nawal and her children woke up to the sound of a loud explosion that shattered the windows in her house, sending shards of glass flying through the air. Nawal suffered several wounds to her body, but miraculously the children escaped without injury. The loud explosion was an Israeli jet warplane dropping a one-tonne bomb on a target site belonging to the Ezzeddin Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's military wing, located 200 metres away from Nawal's home in Al-Zaytoun district in southern Gaza City. Hundreds of residents neighbouring the military site were wounded and terrorised, while the target, which was unoccupied at the time, was entirely destroyed. Israel's sudden military escalation against the Gaza Strip, during which the occupation army deliberately targeted security sites near residential areas, resulted in many Palestinians abandoning their homes in anticipation of further bombings. Residents living in areas close to the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip followed suit, because select troops in the Israeli army infiltrate these areas, razing fields and destroying homes there. They also target Palestinians living there, under the pretext that they are planning to attack occupation soldiers. Once again, Israel has resorted to using unmanned drones to carry out many attacks on the Gaza Strip, killing seven Palestinians and injuring others. The escalation comes amidst an onslaught of threats by military and political leaders -- Israel's Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Benny Ganz in particular does not miss an opportunity to indirectly and directly threaten the Gaza Strip. Israel's ruling elite is using the pretext of rockets launched from the Gaza Strip -- in response to Israeli attacks -- as justification to make these threats. Israeli military spokesmen imply that the Israeli army is close to launching a wide military attack on the Strip. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu used the opportunity of a visit by Germany's foreign minister to occupied Jerusalem to threaten Palestinians in Gaza, saying, "they will pay the price, as they did in the past." Netanyahu was referring to the hundreds killed and thousands injured during Israel's war on Gaza at the end of 2008. The question now is whether Israel truly wants to escalate attacks on Gaza beyond airstrikes with drones, or whether it is trying to sustain its deterrence against the Palestinian resistance. Nearly four years after Israel's brutal onslaught on the Gaza Strip at the end of 2008, it is important to revisit the lessons Israel learnt from this war in order to be able to predict Israel's actions in the future. Israel's military leadership views that war as "a tactical victory and a strategic defeat", while they consider the 2006 war on Hizbullah as "a tactical defeat but strategic victory". In both wars, Israel's clear strategic goal was ending rocket attacks. While the 2006 war did eliminate these operations entirely from South Lebanon, the situation in Gaza is entirely different. Missile attacks have barely ceased in response to Israel's aggressions. While Israel has in fact accumulated some deterrence factor in Gaza, namely that Hamas's leadership is more mindful of Israel's response, Hamas has not taken any major steps to end missile attacks by other groups in response to Israel's aggressions. What is certain is that the biggest loss for Israel in the 2008 war on Gaza was losing face on the international stage, and an increased questioning of its legitimacy. This was especially true after the Goldstein Report that accused Israel of war crimes. Thus, any decision by Israel to launch a war on Gaza would keep these international repercussions in mind. The mood in the region has also undergone root changes since the last war on Gaza in a manner that is bound to influence any Israeli decision to go to war in Gaza, most prominently the Arab Spring revolutions. For example, the ruling elite in Tel Aviv now realise the influence of domestic public opinion on decision makers in Arab capitals, especially where revolutions occurred. Israel views the Camp David treaty as a pillar of Zionism's national security, because it removed Egypt from the circle of enemies and war. At the same time, it freed the Israeli army to pay more attention to other Arab fronts. Tel Aviv is now concerned that any military operation in the Gaza Strip will cause Egyptian public opinion to pressure decision-makers in Cairo to terminate the Camp David treaty. Or that without coordinating with the state, a popular movement could take action against Israeli interests or parties that cooperate with it. For example, Netanyahu still remembers the difficult night he spent scrambling to contact anyone in the US administration to save members of Israel's diplomatic mission in Cairo, after hundreds of Egyptian demonstrators attacked the mission in protest of Israel killing six Egyptian soldiers near Eilat in September 2011. Israel fears that Egyptian protesters could blockade the Suez Canal for Israeli navigation or that US interests in Egypt would be harmed because of protest against Washington's support for Tel Aviv. Therefore, decision makers in Israel believe that any strategic goal met by attacking Gaza would be modest in comparison to the strategic losses that Israel could incur as a result of Arab reactions, especially in Egypt. Israel's ruling elite understands that the regional environment is unstable and not only because of transformations in the Arab world. Deteriorating relations with Turkey pose a serious challenge for Israel, and there are rising calls to repair ties with Ankara, since this would enable Tel Aviv to cut the losses incurred by unexpected changes in the Arab world. It is clear that broad military operations on the Gaza Strip do not serve Israel's goal of improving relations with Turkey, especially since Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has linked future relations with Tel Aviv to Israel's conduct in Gaza. While all of the above can be viewed as impediments for a new military operation in the Gaza Strip, responsibility also lies with those launching rockets into Israel. Ismail Haniyeh's security agencies are cracking down on small Salafist groups, especially in the southern Gaza Strip, in coordination with Egyptian security apparatus. The crackdown also aims to curtail the ability of these groups to embarrass the Gaza government by launching rockets against Jewish settlements. Nonetheless, Israel holds Hamas and its government responsible for the activities of other groups operating in the Gaza Strip. It is in this context that Gaza authorities now realise that if the Palestinian resistance is not united while escalating attacks on the occupation, this enables Israel to easily manoeuvre on the Gaza front. It also gives Israel international legitimacy to disproportionately strike the Gaza Strip and catch the resistance unprepared. Large sectors in Gaza agree that there is a need to synchronise resistance operations and unite their stand while halting missile attacks by fanatic groups that only seek to embarrass Hamas and its government.
