Despite its violent attacks, Israel in Gaza faces a strategic dilemma it cannot easily overcome, writes Samir Ghattas* The changing of the seasons is marked worldwide, but in the Middle East it frequently results in sparks. Sadly, an instance has just unfolded right before our eyes. Just as winter was collecting its darkness and coldness and turning to leave, Israel ignited its coattails with a military operation. Dubbed, appropriately Operation "Warm Winter", it reaped more than 120 lives before subsiding, though not completely. The media naturally seized on Israeli Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai's vow to cook up a "holocaust" for those who fire rockets from Gaza into Israeli towns across the border. Before it was over, "Warm Winter" became more popularly known as the "Gaza Holocaust". This does not mean that the worst is behind us. On the contrary, probability is that we have witnessed but the prelude to an open, full-scale war and that the changing of the seasons will take us from a warm winter to a fiery spring and then, perhaps, to a blood-washed summer. Moreover, the likelihood existed before the attack that killed 10 students of the Mercaz Harav Seminary in West Jerusalem on 6 March. It is not the death toll in this incident, the much higher numbers of Palestinian claimed by Operation Warm Winter, or the number of rockets fired into Israeli villages that point to rising temperatures ahead. The coming inferno has been building for months. If Operation Warm Winter showed anything, it is that it could not solve the profound dilemma facing Israel since its unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in autumn 2005. Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak had pledged to end rocket fire from Gaza, halt the smuggling of arms and explosives, defeat Hamas militarily and overthrow the Hamas government in Gaza. He has failed in all of the above. If these are indeed Israel's true objectives, it will take much more to achieve them than an operation that didn't even last one week and that only penetrated some three to five kilometres up to Jabaliya Camp in northern Gaza. This realisation has led Israeli analysts to the belief that the crux of Israel's dilemma resides in a fundamental contradiction between Israel's strategic interests in Gaza and its military actions there. Or, as some put it, Prime Minister Olmert does not really know what Minister of Defence Barak wants, and neither of them really knows what they themselves want in Gaza. Other Israeli analysts suggest that the problem resides in the difficult choices Israel faces in Gaza. According to Yediot Aharonot columnist Nahum Barnia, Israel has to choose between cholera and the plague, which is to say between bad and worse. Initially, Israel rejoiced at the separation of the West Bank from Gaza after the Hamas take over in the Strip on 14 June 2007. Israel has vowed to maintain that situation, which it regarded as in its highest strategic interests. At the same time, it was determined to "isolate and deter" Hamas, to quote the policy drafted by Barak upon assuming the defence portfolio and approved by Olmert. However, the formula failed to pay off. Israel's deterrent factor has deteriorated significantly, as the Winograd Report acknowledged. Israel may have recovered some of its credibility following its strike of a strategic location in Syria and the infiltration of Israeli operatives into Damascus to assassinate Imad Mughniyah. However, it could achieve no such inroads in Gaza where Palestinian factions still appear able to frustrate Israeli designs. But if Israel's hands are tied on the matter of deterrence, they are even more tied on the question of a military solution. An Israeli military victory in Gaza would result in the end of the current status quo, the reunification of Gaza and the West Bank, and the collapse of the whole set of premises upon which it build its policy to obstruct a political settlement by the end of 2008. This indeed is Israel's real strategic dilemma. When calm prevails, the Palestinian factions grow stronger. Their homemade Qassam rockets, which had been tossed over the border like firecrackers, can now reach beyond Siderot, eight kilometres away, to Ashkelon, 17 kilometres away and, tomorrow, may reach Asdud Port or further. The same phenomenon occurred on Israel's northern front where, much to Israel's surprise, it discovered that in the interval between the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the border zone inside southern Lebanon on 20 May 2000 and the summer war of 2006, Hizbullah had acquired missiles that could reach as far as Haifa. The Israeli government has asserted that it will no longer tolerate rocket fire from inside Gaza. But a truce will not quell the fear it has of eventually having to swallow the same bitter pill that it had in Lebanon, a fear augmented by Israeli intelligence projections suggesting that sometime in the future Israel may be caught in a pincer between Hizbullah in the north and Hamas in the south. Consequently, there has been growing pressure from within the military establishment and the political right for a full-scale land offensive into Gaza. The casualties that Israel suffered during the recent operation may lend impetus to this opinion. The Golani regiment that executed the recent incursion into the Jabaliya Camp lost only two soldiers to the Palestinian resistance. For the moment, however, Olmert and Barak are deferring the full-scale invasion option until they have exhausted all other steps in a gradual escalation of pressure against Hamas. Some suggest that this position is founded upon Israel's previous experience with Hamas. When Sharon turned from punishing Arafat for failing to pressure Hamas to the more direct method of targeted assassinations of top ranking Hamas officials (Ibrahim Al-Muqadma, Ismail Abu Shanab, Salah Shahata, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdul-Aziz Al-Rantisi), Hamas by March 2005 agreed to a truce and abided by it. More importantly, it decided to engage in a political process that it had long rejected, fielding its candidates in Palestinian legislative elections and entered into the Palestinian Authority government. Some maintain that Hamas has a strong pragmatic streak, that it won't risk all its assets through suicidal recklessness. Others, however, contend that Hamas in 2008 is not the same entity it was in 2004. For one, Hamas is in power in Gaza. To back down in front of Israel is to encourage its adversaries to oust it from power. In other words, its battle right now is not so much against Israel but against its Palestinian rivals. At the same time, Hamas's project is part of a larger project of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is another reason why it will cling to power. Strengthening this resolve is the fact that it is also part of a regional alliance led by Iran and including Syria and Hizbullah and the Islamic Jihad. In addition, the Hamas leadership has seen some encouraging signs of a change of tack in US and European opinions towards it. Some officials from those quarters have begun to urge the inclusion of Hamas in the peace process, instead of isolating and demonising it. Further encouraging Hamas leaders to remain patient and steadfast is their awareness that Israel is caught in a strategic dilemma and that it will hesitate before changing its current tactics from "isolate and deter" to an all-out offensive. Hamas in 2008 can also be relatively certain that Israel will allow Mahmoud Abbas no more than to keep his head above water, a policy that will only further weaken the Palestinian president and further minimise the prospects of any true progress in the negotiating process -- a state of affairs that ultimately will work in the favour of Hamas. As difficult as it is to predict the future of a Middle East that is packed with surprises and can suddenly explode anywhere at any time, one could nevertheless cautiously project the following: Israel is closely studying the Mercaz Harav Seminary attack. Although the identity of the gunman is known, Israel is more concerned with identifying who was behind it. Because of the way it was carried out, it does not look like Hamas was responsible, which has turned suspicions on Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade or the Islamic Jihad, both of which Israeli intelligence reports suspect have been infiltrated by Hizbullah. Already investigations in Israel are casting a broader net that includes Syria and Iran. At the same time, the Israeli government is under intense pressure from the religious and extreme right to retaliate. It is doubtful, though not to be ruled out entirely, that Israel will risk a massive ground invasion of Gaza at this time, although it will probably continue to escalate pressure. In addition to targeted assassinations of top Hamas and other Palestinian faction leaders, we may also anticipate an intensification of economic pressures as well as, perhaps, more "surgical" sweeps into Gaza with the purpose of striking Hamas strongholds. On the other hand, in the event that rockets from Gaza claim Israeli lives, the Olmert government, if it doesn't collapse first, will have little alternative but to give the green light for a full-scale incursion, the political purpose of which would be to end the current stalemate and change the rules of the game. It thus appears that the turning of the seasons will again be marked momentously. As the autumn leaves were beginning to fall, Annapolis kindled some hope of a political settlement. The steely clouds of winter soon cast their gloom over that prospect and just before that season subsided Gaza flared into flames. It seems reasonable to expect a warmer spring and an even nastier summer, which will dispel the vestiges of the illusory peace process. * The writer is director of the Middle East Forum thinktank centre, Cairo.
