It will be many years before Israel faces a real war for its survival, but the clock has begun to tick.
'An equation has to be created in which it is not worth it for the Palestinians to fire," said Eli Moyal, mayor of Sderot, after rockets fired from the Gaza Strip killed a 57-year-old woman and severely injured two young men (one of whom lost both legs) last Wednesday in the southern Israeli town. The logic is impeccable: hurt the Palestinians enough and they will stop launching rockets.
Looks like OlmertÂ’s replacement has finally been located.
But the Israeli Defense Force hurt the Palestinians very badly indeed at the beginning of November, in Beit Hanoun, the town nearest to the launch sites of last Wednesday's rockets. The operation lasted for a week, and it killed 60 Palestinians and injured 250. One Israeli soldier was killed. If that kill ratio doesn't stop the rockets, what will?
How about 600:1 or 6,000:1? It wouldnÂ’t hurt to find out.
Most of the Palestinians killed in Beit Hanoun were "militants."
Unless you listen to BBC or ReutersÂ’ wailing about all the fluffy bunnies and baby ducklings that got squooshed.
They were young men who had grown up under the Israeli occupation, and who were finally given the opportunity to fight the Israeli army in their hometown. This was merely an opportunity to die bravely but uselessly, since Kalashnikovs are not much use against tanks, but it made them feel really
That’s the Palestinians for you, always letting off esteem. Let’s hope we can make a lot more of them feel equally “important”.
Since the hopelessly inaccurate, homemade Qassams first began to fall on the Israel towns and villages near the Gaza Strip in 2000, they have killed a total of nine Israelis. In just the four-week period from June 26 to July 24, Israeli Defense Force actions in the Gaza Strip to stop the Qassam rocket fire caused the death of 126 Palestinians.
ThatÂ’s the problem, right there. Nowhere near the 60:1 minimum pain threshold. Gotta get those kill ratios up into the really excruciating numbers, guys. YouÂ’ll never win their respect this way.
According to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, 63 of these were not fighters, and 29 of them were minors. The IDF says it never deliberately targets civilians, but it cannot be unaware that a high Palestinian death toll is a necessary part of the equation "in which it is not worth it for the Palestinians to fire."
Someone finally gets it. Too bad America doesnÂ’t understand this equation yet.
So its operations are less careful than they would be if the civilians in question were Israelis. Consider, for example, the Israeli artillery fire that killed 19 members of the Athamna family in Beit Hanoun a few days after the armoured operation.
Do you mean this Athamna family? The ones who were storing explosives in the same house their children lived in? The linked article poses some very interesting questions. Like:
The radar that locates the targets transferred data showing that 10 shells from one barrage landed at a distance of 400 meters from the house that was hit. The two remaining shells were not detected by the radar. This is a familiar statistical phenomenon. Nonetheless, it doesn't make sense that only some of the shells fired from the same cannon would go off course to such an extent, even if they didn't show up on the radar. If only two shells landed inside a residential neighborhood, where did the others land?
Link at: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2006/11/was-israel-really-responsible-for-beit.html
"A technical failure," said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and he was no doubt technically correct.
”[T]echnically correct? More like factually incorrect.
But more than 350 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since midsummer, versus two Israelis: one soldier killed in Beit Hanoun early this month, and one civilian killed in Sderot last Wednesday.
At a kill ratio of 175:1, IÂ’d say that was a major improvement.
Yet no amount of pain seems to deter the Palestinians, and now the rockets are getting accurate enough to hurt Israelis.
Pain doesnÂ’t seem to be working. Better switch over to death. It has longer lasting after effects.
They are not as accurate as the modified Katyushas that Hezbollah fired at northern Israel last summer, but the ranges are a great deal shorter. Moreover, this is not taking place in the context of a war of limited duration, like the one last summer that was triggered by Hezbollah's seizure of two Israeli soldiers and then escalated by massive Israeli air raids on Lebanon.
No, it is your standard issue terrorist activity. Some things never change. Unless you blow them straight to hell, that is.
That lasted a month; this is an everyday affair of local people fabricating and launching short-range missiles at nearby Israeli targets, and it could go on for years.
Which is why Beit Hanoun made so much sense. Lots of dead people to not fire rockets anymore.
No doubt Israel can also go on shelling and bombing the Gaza Strip and making occasional armoured incursions like that at Beit Hanoun for years, and no doubt it can still count on killing 20 or 50 Palestinian fighters and civilians for every Israeli soldier or civilian who dies. But the Palestinians just don't care any more.
Keep upping the kill ratios until they do care.
That is not literally true. Of course they care when their kids (or their parents or sisters or brothers) are killed. But in the larger sense, most Palestinians, at least in the Gaza Strip, no longer care how high the price is; they have lost their fear.
Up the kill ratios until they find their fear again. ItÂ’s skulking around there somewhere. TheyÂ’ve just temporarily misplaced it.
This poses a danger for Israel, because it means that the traditional strategy of terrorizing the Palestinians into submission no longer works.
Offing them into submission will work just fine. Trust me.
Turning points do not normally announce themselves with great fanfare; you only realize that you have passed them some time later. But this year, for the first time, Israel failed to win a war (in Lebanon).
Let’s see just how many more of those sort of “victories” Hezbollah can stand. Wasn't the kill ratio about 30:1 or 60:1?
For the first time in 39 years, Israel has really lost control of the Palestinians. And now the United States, after 30 years of military involvement, is on its way out of the Middle East. The American withdrawal from Iraq is still a year or two away, but the retreat will not stop there.
This presumes quite a bit. Like Iran being left intact before we depart.
We are probably still 20 or 30 or even 50 years away from the day when Israel faces a real war for survival.
Not if Iran isnÂ’t stopped. WhereÂ’d this writer buy his timeline, at K-Mart?
Avoiding that is a very high priority even for Israel's enemies, for a defeated Israel would certainly destroy the Arab world with nuclear weapons before it went under, and (if you believe the threats of some Israeli leaders) much of Europe as well.
Not that the lot of them wouldnÂ’t richly deserve it.
That outcome is still far from inevitable, but this is the year when the clock started ticking.
If Iran is not stopped, that “outcome" is inevitable.
Interesting to note how the writer alludes to Israel's Sampson Option being expanded to include parts of Europe as well.
I wonder if paybacks for France are on the targeting list? If I were Europe, I'd be a bit more concerned about this and lay off financing the Palestinians so much. But, then again, the Europeans haven't been showing a lot of common sense of late.