Securing Palestinian Safety

"There is no attempt here to solve the conflict. We are talking about managing the conflict, and as long as it goes on quiet will only be temporary."
"It's a mistake to think that if you have established deterrence it will stay that way. Deterrence must be maintained."
Shlomo Brom, retired Israeli general, analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies, Israel

Egypt's proposed ceasefire plan left Israel and Hamas last night both stating they were seriously considering the proposal. Israel struggled with the decision then concluded it would accept a ceasefire. Hamas confirming "diplomatic movement", decided against the ceasefire which Egypt's foreign ministry announced that with "unconditional acceptance" by both sides, would go into immediate effect.

Israel's military is well aware that years of generous Iranian shipments has resulted in an estimated ten thousand rockets cached in Gaza. Although Israel insisted that as part of a ceasefire steps be taken to locate and destroy the rockets, it was with the knowledge that it would be difficult-to-impossible to manage. The store of rockets include longer-range foreign-produced weapons able to reach anywhere in Israel.

Smoke billows from buildings following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on July 12, 2014. Photo by AFP

Air-raid sirens have sounded in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, the three largest, most populous of Israel's cities. The first Israeli fatality occurred today. The dozens of interceptions of rockets flying over Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were successfully intercepted by the "Iron Dome" rocket-defence system. Israel has carried out well over a thousand aerial sorties, but the rockets keep coming. Including after Israel had agreed to a ceasefire.

Iron Dome intercepts rockets over the Jerusalem area, July 10, 2014. Photo: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST

According to Israeli analysts, most of the long-range rockets are likely cached under residential buildings, a favourite ploy of Hamas, to ensure maximum civilian carnage should Israel target those caches. The only way they could be completely removed would be to re-enter and occupy Gaza and remain until the job is done, albeit at great risk.

Israel's critics complaining that in responding to the rocket bombardments launched from such sites, along with mosques, hospitals, apartment buildings, Israel is harming civilians in the area. That Hamas has deliberately placed its armaments in harm's way of the Palestinian population for that very purpose, and that it has angrily demanded that Palestinians in Gaza not heed the IDF's warnings to depart sites scheduled for attack, and remain in defiant harm's way speaks volumes.

Claims that Israel has not suffered civilian deaths because of the preponderance of bomb shelters to protect people, are true enough. Claims that Israel is able to build bomb shelters because it is a wealthy country, and poor cash-starved Hamas cannot, require closer scrutiny. It takes effort, time, work and funding to build smuggling tunnels, and even more to build the shelters that Hamas does construct, but only for the use of its members.

It has no intention of opening those shelters or the tunnels for the bomb-avoidance haven of the Gaza population. Not only because it might displace arms stored in them, along with more deserving Hamas members, but because if civilians were protected Hamas's source of invaluable propaganda would be struck a blow with fewer civilian deaths to accuse Israel of deliberately causing.

There are over 1,400 tunnels that could be used for the protection of the Gaza populace, and they run honeycombed underground from one end of the Gaza strip to the other; accessible and useful, but not open for that kind of use. Hamas is big on sacrifice; not necessarily their own, but that of the people whose best interests they claim to represent.

Hamas's use of the population of Gaza as human shields is one they portray to the people as the will of Israel to destroy them as a population. And that defiance is their best defence; illogically since they know that if people are seen to defy the orders to evacuate a centre meant to be bombed, the Israeli military will hold their fire; so much for genocidal Israel.

Hamas cowers behind its vulnerable population while it taunts Israel to continue its aerial bombardment, portraying itself as courageously defensive of its population, itself huddling within its Hamas-reserved bomb shelters. They shoot off missiles adjacent schools, store ammunition in mosques and incite the gullible to defy Israeli fire on Hamas strongholds.

While Israel solicitously trucks humanitarian supplies and medicines along with food into Gaza with a view to preventing an even wider humanitarian crisis. Which Hamas can then credit to the influence of their threats making Israel fearful of world opinion. Resulting in Palestinians in Gaza cheering when they're informed by their Hamas authorities that another strike against Israel has been made on their behalf.