Hamas says the “truce” with Israel is over. Is anyone truly surprised by this? Obviously, Hamas doesn’t need the truce. Israel has proved that no matter how many rockets Hamas sends over the Gaza border, no real operation by Israel occurs. At best, it’s a pinprick attack that takes out a few rocket launchers, a few terrorists—nothing that causes Hamas to lose any sleep over.
Hamas leadership in Damascus announced Sunday they will not renew a truce with Israel in the Gaza Strip after it expires Friday.
“There will be no renewal of the calm after it expires,” the statement quoted Khaled Meshaal, the Islamist group’s exiled leader, as telling a Hamas television station.
Let’s take a guess on how the AP will spin this.
Of course, there are those in Israel who think this is the typical bazaar attitude of Middle Eastern bargaining.
Defense ministry officials told Haaretz that Israel has made it clear to Hamas, via Egypt, that it will not agree to a continuation of the current situation and that it requires a return to a full ceasefire.
The assumption in Jerusalem is that while Hamas will seek to extend the cease-fire, the Islamic group will try to alter the terms of the agreement to allow it to continue firing rockets and mortars at the western Negev at will.
In the coming days, Israeli defense officials expect Hamas to increase the number of provocative attacks against Israeli targets, in an attempt to force Israel to accept worsened cease-fire conditions from Jerusalem’s point of view. Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who backs the extension of the cease-fire, bases his position – in part – on a document prepared by his ministry, which argues that Israel’s interests are best served by extending the cease-fire.
But again, why? Why should Hamas even bother with an informal “truce” when the rockets and mortars have been coming nearly every day during the “truce” for the past few months, just as they were when there was no “truce”? Why should Hamas bother when Israel refuses to stop sending in supplies, cash, and fuel? Why should Hamas bother when the world continues to pressure Israel to lift the blockade, feed, clothe, and presumably diaper Gazans? Why, when the UN is about to pressure Israel again and when the UN does absolutely nothing to pressure the Palestinians to end terror?
Why would Hamas bother with a “truce”? Only for PR reasons. And it seems that Hamas has determined that they no longer need the cover story of a “truce.” Which is true. There is no world condemnation of the constant rocketing of Israeli civilians. There is only the constant drone of the anti-Israel crowd, and the world telling Israel it must not harm a hair on the heads of the people who voted in the terrorist regime that is turning Gaza into an Islamist caliphate. There is only the insistence by the world media that Hamas can do nothing to break the truce—only Israel can do that.
Despite the sporadic rocket attacks, the ceasefire largely held, but began falling apart early last month after Israel killed five militants in a raid to destroy a tunnel it said was being dug under the border to facilitate the abduction of Israeli soldiers.
The militants responded by renewing the rocket barrages, leading to Israeli airstrikes against rocket launching teams.
And why end the “truce” when the world will ignore (again) Hamas’s clearly-stated refusal to acknowledge Israel’s existence:
The Islamic Hamas movement will not give in to demands to recognise Israel’s right to exist, and sanctions imposed against it by the Jewish state have only succeeded in strengthening it, the Islamist movement’s leader Ismail Haniya said Sunday.
‘We will go to brothers in the 1948 territories (Israel) instead of letting them come to us,’ he added, in reference to a comment by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni Thursday that the future of Israel’s Arab citizens lay in a future Palestinian state.
So, Hamas is being smart. Why bother with a truce? No matter what Hamas does, the world will blame Israel. And no matter what Hamas does, Israel will not launch a major operation to defeat the Islamists in the Strip—or at least, that’s been the status quo under Olmert. Perhaps things will change with the election in February.
One can only hope.
Meryl,
Things will get better under the next Pres.Jimmy Carter says so.(see Powerline)
Sure it will, in the Greek Calends.
I’m fed up with this dreck. the Israelis must be even more fed up.
Turnabout is fair play. Hamas shoots rockets indiscrimintely at Israelis, Israel should follow their lead and shell and bomb Gaza indiscriminately until every structure is destroyed and everyone is dead, or the Arabs there give up fighting against Israel and make peace. The world seems easy enough with the attacks on Israel, accepting that those indiscriminate attacks are being carried out within the de facto international law of war(since they are definitely illegal de jure under the Fourth Geneva Conventions). Therefore such attacks are, de facto, legal under international law. Therefore Israel has as much right to use such tactics as the Arabs do. Of course Israel’s attacks will be more deadly and kill more people, but the basic principle is one the Arabs have established and therefore they have no moral standing under the law to complain when they become the targets of similar tactics, any more than the Germans did in WWII to complain about Allied bombing, after the Nazis had carried out terror bombing campaigns against their enemies for years.
Anybody who objects should get the Arabs to stop their genocidal war against Israel and the Jews. Until people do that, they have no standing to complain about any tactics Israel sees fit to use to defend the country and its people.