The very model of a middle east correspondent

Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post is one of those Jerusalem bureau chiefs who have parlayed their time in the Middle East into a book and further fame and fortune. Now the Deputy Editorial Page Editor of the Washington Post, he holds forth about foreign affairs most weeks. This week he treated us to The Road Map to a Gaza War.Like him I believe that Israel is reaching a point where it can’t ignore the rockets from Gaza any more. However, I don’t view an eventual Israeli counterattack as an intolerable escalation.

Diehl starts:

Seven years ago George W. Bush’s incoming foreign policy team blamed the Clinton administration for an eleventh-hour rush for a Middle East peace agreement that ended with the explosion of the second Palestinian intifada. Now, with less than 10 months remaining in office, Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are engaged in a similar last-minute push — yet they don’t seem to recognize the growing risk that their initiative, too, will end with another Israeli-Palestinian war.

I don’t remember how Diehl felt in 2000. However the incoming Bush administration was correct. The Clinton administration’s push for a treaty couple by its ignoring the constant Palestinian violations of previously signed agreements were contributing factors to the “Aqsa intifada” that Arafat launched in September 2000. The value place on Arafat as being an indispensable “peace partner” shielded him from the diplomatic isolation he so richly deserved.

That battle seemed on the verge of beginning a month ago, when Hamas for the first time began firing Iranian-made missiles at the Israeli city of Ashkelon — in addition to the volleys of homemade rockets it has been aiming at the smaller town of Sderot for several years. After a punishing series of Israeli airstrikes the fighting subsided, and with the State Department’s encouragement Egypt began to broker discussions about a more enduring truce. In previous columns, I’ve argued that such a cease-fire in Gaza is the least bad of Israel’s limited options.

Well, yes, Diehl did argue that allowing rockets to continue falling on Isreali citizens was the least bad option. But what’s driving the Israeli view?

But officials portray Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak as having little interest in a deal with Hamas. They acknowledge that a suspension of attacks by both sides might make the ongoing peace talks easier — and that the outbreak of an all-out conflict would almost certainly kill the Annapolis process. Yet, increasingly Israeli officials see the confrontation in Gaza with Hamas as more important in strategic terms than the talks with moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The view in Jerusalem, as more than one official put it to me, is that there is no alternative to a military collision with Hamas in Gaza, probably before the end of the Bush administration.The grim Israeli view is driven to a large degree by what officials say is the massive and continuing smuggling of weapons into Gaza, sponsored by Iran and tacitly allowed by Egypt, which despite considerable pressure from Washington shrinks from actions that might trigger its own confrontation with Hamas. Hamas is building hardened bunker systems and stockpiling missiles in imitation of the infrastructure built in southern Lebanon by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement. The Israelis say hundreds of Hamas militants have traveled to Iran for training in targeting and firing Grad missiles, Iran’s version of the old Soviet Katyusha.

Note how, to Diehl, the idea that the current situation is intolerable is an “Israeli view.” Somehow it doesn’t occur to Diehl that if a portion of a sovereign country was uninhabitable due to terrorism, that is reason to wage war against the terrorists.

Worse, he acknowledges that Egypt a country officially at peace with Israel is turning a blind eye to the terrorist build up. He also acknowledges (though with “the Israelis say” as a qualification) that Hamas is a proxy of Iran the neighborhood bully.

Sobered by the bloody nose it suffered when it attacked Hezbollah’s Lebanese base in 2006, the Israeli army has been training against Hamas’s Gaza strong points. But officials say that the longer the army waits to take on what is now viewed as a strategic threat, the greater Hamas’s chance will be to inflict heavy casualties or strike southern Israeli cities with missiles. The cease-fire Egypt seeks (and that Hamas sometimes says it wants) would only make the problem worse, in the Israeli analysis, by giving Hamas the opportunity to accelerate its buildup.

Notice again that Diehl writes about the threats Israel is facing and then qualifies it with “in the Israeli analysis.” Anyone who observed what happened in northern Israel in 2006, knows this to be true. Hezbollah was allowed to arm and fortify its positions for six years with no harassment from Israel. Hamas is doing the same; not because it’s a social services organization, but because it is a terrorist organization.

Bush and Rice would like Israel to hold off against Hamas until Olmert can complete an agreement on principles for a final Israeli-Palestinian settlement with Abbas. While Olmert still wants that deal, it’s become increasingly clear to the Israelis that an Abbas-led government will never be able to implement it. Despite extensive international aid, the West Bank Palestinian administration remains little more than a shell kept in power by Israel’s troops. Hamas, the Israelis say, can stop the peace process at any time by resuming missile attacks against Ashkelon. And whatever happens in Gaza — whether an Israeli-Hamas truce or all-out war — Abbas stands to be further damaged. His prime minister, Salam Fayyad, has hinted privately that he might favor an Israeli attack on Hamas, because it would allow Abbas’s Fatah movement to take control of Gaza. But Abbas’s security forces are unlikely to be strong enough to control Gaza’s population of 1.5 million anytime soon.

If Bush and Rice would like Israel to “hold off” then they are mistaken. In essence Diehl is arguing here that Hamas is essential to peace and Israel ought to deal with Hamas rather than fight it. Fatah is probably not capable of taking over anything. I wouldn’t trust them even if they were. But Fatah’s capabilities have been largely destroyed by Israel because, despite its commitments, it built terror infrastructure instead of an economic one.

The Israelis say the coming confrontation won’t necessarily involve a full-scale reoccupation of the Gaza Strip. Given the predictable international backlash against any Israeli offensive, and the inevitable satellite television coverage of suffering Palestinians, Olmert is likely to wait for a clear provocation from Hamas. Perhaps it won’t happen for a few more months. But what concerns some Israelis is the lack of readiness by the Bush administration for the possibility that its drive for Mideast peace will be overwhelmed by a Mideast war.

But there’s also a lack of readiness on the part of some analysts to acknowledge that clear provocation has been given over the past 7 years. (Yes Hamas terrorists were firing rockets into Israel before “disengagement.” Their frequency increased after Israel surrendered Gaza.)

Daniel Pipes writes:

Sadly, indeed embarrassingly, the children are those of S’derot, an Israeli town of 19,000 near the border with Gaza that has been under a missile barrage since the Israeli retreat from Gaza in September 2005, with thousands of missiles to date. These have causing damage to property and injuries and death to residents.The national government of Israel has basically averted its collective eyes from this tragedy, leaving the citizens of S’derot and potentially other towns to fend basically for themselves.

Into the breach now has come www.SaveIsraelsChildren.com, a Brooklyn-based non-profit that matchmakes between “families wanting to send their children abroad, and families who are willing to provide a temporary ‘home’ for these children.”

Comment: The need for such a private initiative points to the moral and operational bankruptcy of the Olmert government in Israel. (April 3, 2008)

Similarly, Norman Podhoretz who supported the Israeli abandonment of Gaza writes:

Obviously I could not foresee that Sharon would be felled by a stroke and that Ehud Olmert would be left to follow through on his strategy. Nor did I anticipate the takeover of Gaza by the terrorists of Hamas. Nor in any of the wildest worst-case scenarios I could conjure up did it ever occur to me that, in the aftermath of disengagement, an Israeli government—any Israeli government—would sit by passively while missiles were being fired day after day from Gaza into Sderot or any other patch of Israeli territory.

The provocations are ongoing. Israel has shown incredible (but misguided) restraint. That allows analysts like Diehl to assume that Israeli cities under fire is a natural state of affairs. There is no other country that would tolerate what Israeli tolerates if it had the capacity to strike back. And Israel has the capacity to do so.

To Diehl, the worst possible thing would be for Israel to strike back. But for Israel to strike at the Hamas infrastructure stands the best chance of giving Israelis living in Sderot normal lives. It stands the best chance of keeping larger cities such as Ashkelon or Ashdod of coming into the range of longer range rockets. Hamas cannot be trusted. Egypt cannot be trusted. Iran must not be trusted.

If the Bush administration is holding Israel back it is doing Israel grave harm and hurting the fight against Iran. Terrorists do respond. Israel’s non-response has given Hamas encouragement to continue terrorizing Sderot and prepare to sow fear and destruction over a wider area. However much Diehl thinks that an Israeli war with Hamas is a bad idea, the status quo is worse.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.