Last month I wrote about the situation between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. I fully expected it might turn into something more extensive. But I also am aware that the Israeli government has no interest in occupying /Gaza, and that is no one else willing to do so. This gives Hamas a much greater range of options. If Israel is unwilling, for whatever reason, to topple their regime (without discussing how that is to be done) they have a great deal of freedom in determining how they act.
What Hamas has been doing is smuggling arms, building rockets, digging tunnels, and using demonstrations at the separation fence to distract attention from any other activities they are engaged in. Even big media names lie CNN and the New York Times have connected the latest round of violence to an Israeli intelligence mission that encountered (accidentally?) a similar Hamas group at night. The Hamas squad was wiped out and the Israeli commander was killed in that engagement. What those media pundits overlook is that the two sides are really still at war. It may have the appearance of the 1939-40 “Phoney War” on the Franco-German border, but it is a war. They ignored it when Israeli blew up tunnels from Gaza that had already penetrated the separation fence. Nobody was killed. But an Israeli operation across the line is a “provocation”?
There has been a lot of really false information flying around on twitter the past two days. “Fake News” is the term many people use. Of course the big media groups are going to be interested when Hamas fires over 400 rockets into Israel and the Israeli air Force blasts around 100 targets. Last night I heard the attitude of the ‘man in the street’ in Gaza characterized as “We hoot a few rockets at them, they bomb a few empty houses, and then everything will be go to what it was”.
There is more to be said about this, but I’m going to wait a few more hours (or days) before doing so.
Wetherhorn 