A challenging ceasefire

T. Belman. Not mentioned in this article is the revival of the Palestine cause worldwide due to the publicity it received during the 11 days of war. Palestinians are emboldened to attack Jews in New York and LA further adding to the publicity.  CAIR has just announced “Over 100 organizations today joined the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and activists for the National March for Palestine in Washington, D.C., taking place on Saturday, May 29,”

Israel’s military efforts attained many profound achievements in the recent conflict, but Hamas predictably will rearm, augmented by the thousands of undamaged rockets still in their arsenal.

By Rabbi Dov Fischer, ISRAEL HAYOM

How many Israelis who – for more than a decade – loyally have voted for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now feel intense pain that he and Defense Minister Benny Gantz have agreed to a ceasefire with Hamas? And how much harder is it to digest that ceasefire without Hamas freeing Avera Mengistu, the Ethiopian Jew who wandered into Gaza in September 2014, and returning to Israel the remains of Lt. Hadar Goldin and Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul, who fell in the summer of 2014 during Operation Protective Edge?

Israel now has been compelled to fight off a series of at least four major Hamas-instigated full-blown wars: 2008-2009 (“Operation Cast Lead”), 2012 (“Operation Returning Echo” and “Operation Pillar of Defense”), 2014 (“Operation Protective Edge”), and now 2021 (“Operation Guardian of the Walls”).

In between these continual “operations,” which make Israel sound more like a surgery center than a country, Hamas has rained down rockets on southern Israel almost non-stop since Ariel Sharon expelled 8,600 Jews in 2005 from their homes, farms, industries, schools, and synagogues in Gush Katif.

This absolutely has to stop.

There seems no hope that this endless cycle of “mowing the lawn” ever will end until an Israeli government adopts a strategy of fighting Hamas to unequivocal victory. Victory over King Hussein of Jordan in 1967 meant not only reunification of Jerusalem and the start of populating Judea and Samaria with 475,000 Jews comprising more than 130 new Jewish communities. Beyond that, crushing victory took Jordan out of the arena of combat. By the 1973 Yom Kippur war, King Hussein would not dare open a third front again but simply sent a symbolic armored brigade to Syria. Likewise, Abu Mazen (aka Mahmoud Abbas) and his Fatah knew during this latest conflagration that their Palestinian Authority would be diminished significantly if they opened an eastern war front because Israel undoubtedly would have annexed the Jordan Valley and “Area C” as defined in the 1995 Oslo II accords after such a war. Similarly, crushing victory over Egypt by the end of the Yom Kippur War, augmented by the emergence in 1977 of the fierce Menachem Begin as prime minister, brought Anwar Sadat to a bargaining table that has seen the Egyptian front against Israel removed from battle for nearly half a century.

Israel’s military efforts attained many profound achievements in the recent conflict. The air force destroyed the network of Hamas underground military tunnels, several prominent high-rise buildings housing terror facilities, thousands of Hamas rockets and their launchers, and eliminated several targeted Hamas terror leaders permanently. But was this victory? Israel’s civilian population sustained more than 4,000 rockets fired into their neighborhoods and homes, aimed so indiscriminately at non-combatant centers that Hamas rockets even killed Israeli Arabs. Lives were disrupted throughout the country, with people needing regularly to dash madly to shelters or to lie flat on floors with arms shielding heads. Yet another generation of children have been traumatized, and mental health professionals are on call at schools and all over the media trying to guide parents and teachers. The economy, just reopened and rebounding from the COVID pandemic, was shut down again in many regions.

As the ceasefire was announced, Gaza residents predictably emerged to … celebrate their ostensible victory over Israel. Even as world opinion makers were bemoaning that Israel was defending herself too effectively, hitting back at terrorists “disproportionately,” and as US Democrats like lawmakers Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders were accusing Israel of war crimes, the exuberant spirit on the crumpled streets of Gaza was marked by car horns blaring with joy and celebration.

Throughout the conflict, Netanyahu and Gantz both talked a tough game, but the Goldin and Oron families still do not have their sons to bury in Israel, and Mengistu still is held by Hamas. Hamas predictably will rearm, augmented by the thousands of undamaged rockets still in their arsenal. Miles of their terror tunnels are still intact, and their most prominent leaders still reign supreme and, with their population, buoyantly celebrate their perceived defeat of Israel and thus manifest their utter defiance of Israeli deterrence.

Tragically, it is becoming surreal to gauge whether Israel’s next five years will see more wars with Hamas or more national elections. For each, none should have been more than enough. Until the Goldin, Shaul, and Mengistu families see their sons returned from Gaza, there will be no way for Israel to classify this challenging ceasefire as a victory.