Why Israel Isn't Doing Anything About Sderot

Israel's government's unwillingness to do what's necessary to stop the bombardment of Sderot exhibits all its warts.

Sderot is under constant bombardment from Hamastan.  The only residents left are those unable to run away.  The only thing that can stop the rain of Kassams is for Israel's army to go back into Gaza, eliminate Hamastan as a political entity, seize the missiles and their launchers, and kill those who have been firing them.  The back-to-Gaza operation has been talked about for months.  Why isn't it happening?
Israel's legal system will never permit the IDF to do the job as it should be done. If Israel's army must attack Gaza, Israel's judges and jurists want the soldiers to walk up to enemy held buildings, knock on the door, and yell, "any women and children in here?" Playing by these rules, Israel could take massive casualties and, as in Lebanon, not even win.

The question gets sharper when one considers the future.  According to Israeli military authorities, Hamas is about to cross two technological thresholds.  One is to improve the range of its missiles to about 10 miles.  This means it will be able to hit towns in Israel from anywhere in the Gaza Strip.  The other is the ability to store missiles for months at a time without their rocket fuel or explosive warheads deteriorating; today kassams have to be fired off soon after they are manufactured.  Once these thresholds are passed, Hamas will be able to store hundreds of kassams and, in the event of an Israeli attack, rain them on Israeli towns from Ashdod to Netivot, reproducing around Gaza the conditions of Israel's northern region during the Second Lebanon War.

So why doesn't Israel move first?

The answer illuminates a lot that is wrong about Israel's present system of government. 

One element of the answer has to do with Israel's legal system.  A couple of months ago Israel tried to do a simple thing:  Cut the supply of fuel and electricity to Gaza, so as to put pressure on the Hamas regime.  The Attorney General, Menahem Mazuz, intervened.  Can't do that, he said.  It's against the civil rights of the people in Gaza.

Now fighting in Gaza will be tough:  It means going into built-up, urban areas, laced with mines, antitank missiles and machine guns, and thousands of well-trained defenders.  To do the job you need to use aircraft and artillery—really use them; in principle you never want your own troops to assault an enemy-held building while it is still standing, only after your planes and cannon have knocked it down and pulverized the rubble and whoever is in it.  Israel's legal system will never permit the IDF to do the job as it should be done.  If Israel's army must attack Gaza, Israel's judges and jurists want the soldiers to walk up to enemy held buildings, knock on the door, and yell, "any women and children in here?"

Israeli military authorities estimate that an assault on Gaza would cost a hundred fatalities.  That sounds to me like a serious underestimate.  Playing by the Mazuz rules, Israel could take far more casualties and, as in Lebanon, not even win.
The last thing Barak needs is to be held responsible for a bloody, losing fight in Gaza. That would end his second political career before it got properly started. And what could be more important than Ehud Barak's political ambitions?

The second element of the answer has to do with the quality of Israeli politicians.  Ehud Barak is Israel's defense minister.  When he entered the office a few months ago, he thought he was on the inside track to the Prime Minister's office.  It turns out he was wrong.  He isn't much more popular than Ehud Olmert is.  The last thing he needs is to be held responsible for a bloody, losing fight in Gaza.  That would end his second political career before it got properly started.  And what could be more important than Ehud Barak's political ambitions?

Barak was skeptical about Olmert's Annapolis adventure from the beginning.  Then he himself accompanied Olmert to Annapolis, and suddenly became a convert.  "We can't attack in Gaza," he leaked to the press, "that would prejudice our wonderful opportunities for peace."  I find it hard to credit the idea that Barak suddenly discovered, at Annapolis, an Arab world yearning for peace and a Palestinian leadership capable of doing anything to bring it about.  But it makes a wonderful excuse not to get into that losing fight around Gaza.

Of course, such an approach is extremely shortsighted.  In a matter of weeks or months Hamas will start shooting missiles at more Israeli cities like Ashkelon, Ashdod and Netivot—only a few a day, of course, enough for Ehud Barak, safely ensconced in his Tel Aviv office, to consider bearable, while for the residents of the targeted cities life slowly becomes unbearable.  If Israel attacks, then the missile strikes will escalate to a hundred a day, just like in the Lebanon war in 2006.
The Olmert-Barak cabal needs to be swept out of office. And Israel needs to trash its legal system and replace it

All this shows the magnitude of the change Israel needs.  The Olmert-Barak cabal needs to be swept out of office, to be replaced by a leadership whose first priority is to defend the lives of Israeli, not Palestinians, civilians and soldiers.  There is more, however.  Put simply, Israel needs to trash its legal system and replace it: sweep  judges and jurists who won't let Israel fight to save its citizens' lives out of office and replace them with others who will.  For that one needs brave and determined political leaders.

I Don't Get the Point

The American intelligence revelation:  The Iranians are not trying to get something they don't need and shouldn't want.  So what?

I confess that I don't follow the progress of Iranian bomb technology at all closely, a habit I perhaps should change.  One can take it for granted that Iran will get a deliverable nuclear weapon, or several, if nobody does anything to stop her.  That's why I find the brouhaha over the new American intelligence report a bit puzzling. 
One can take it for granted that Iran will get a deliverable nuclear weapon, or several, if nobody does anything to stop her.
As I understand it, the report says Iran is not developing a plutonium nuclear device, which requires sophisticate electronics and exquisitely machined parts.  Why this is supposed to be big news is beyond me.  On August 6, 1945, 75,000 residents of Hiroshima were wiped out in an instant, and not one of them was killed by a plutonium nuclear device.

Nuclear bomb technology is, as technology goes, very old.  It represented the frontier of science in 65 years ago. At that time there were four nations—Russia, Germany, Britain and the US—with the knowledge and resources to develop a bomb in a reasonable time.  All of them, however, were busy fighting the biggest war in history, and only the United States possessed the sheer resources to fight and develop a bomb at the same time.  But if Germany hadn't started a war it couldn't win it could have gotten a bomb, easy.  Iran is still considered a third-world nation, but its economy today is a lot larger than Germany's was in 1942, and it's at peace.

Iran's biggest problem right now is getting enough Uranium-235 to be useful in a bomb, and it's working on this problem all-out.  Doing so with magnetic centrifuges requires some pretty fine electronic technology, but remember, this problem was solved 65 years ago.  The Iranians appear to have solved it too.

Making a bomb out of Uranium 235 once you have it is relatively easy.  All you need to do is get a couple of large pieces of the stuff, put them at the far ends of a large metal tube, and place high explosive behind one of them so you can shoot it toward the other whenever you feel inclined to blow someplace up.  The whole project can probably be done with the equipment in a good truck repair shop.
The entire American intelligence report strikes me as a revelation about an irrelevance.

So the entire American intelligence report strikes me as a revelation about an irrelevance.  To get a plutonium bomb, the Iranians need to solve three difficult technical problems:  a) get uranium; b) turn it into plutonium; c) build the plutonium into a bomb.  To get a uranium bomb they only need to solve the first.  They're doing things the simplest way from their perspective.

It still seems to me that if anyone wants to stop them, he better get his act together real soon.   

Stiff Upper Lip

Annapolis turned out worse than we would like, but a lot better than we feared.

Annapolis will prove useless in settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and damaging to the State of Israel, but the
The mood of alarmism in which Annapolis was anticipated, and in which it has been received, among some of us is overdone and damaging
mood of alarmism in which it was anticipated, and in which it has been received, among some of us is overdone, and damaging in itself.  While Annapolis will have immediate negative consequences which should be combated to the best of our ability, it would be a big mistake to focus our efforts exclusively, or even primarily, on fighting the direct consequences of Annapolis.  The most important fact about Annapolis is that the Israeli public views it more or less as do readers of this site:  pointless at best, and likely harmful.  The second important fact about it is that sooner or later it will disappear down the memory hole of history, like the Wye Plantation accords and the Oslo accords themselves.

The great thing to fear from Annapolis was that Ehud Olmert would lock Israel into some kind of diplomatic commitment regarding substance—Jerusalem, borders, settlements, etc.—which might bind future Israeli governments.  This did not happen.  Olmert made clear he loves the idea of a Palestinian state.  He yearns for a Palestinian state.  He sets a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital above his highest joy.  But he did not commit the State of Israel to doing anything about it, except to talk.  He did commit Israel to negotiate an agreement about everything within a year.  Those negotiations will lead to nothing, just as the negotiations of the past six months have led to nothing.  Thankfully, when the negotiations become nothing and the Olmert government, in the fullness of time, becomes nothing, it will leave the next Israeli government with a diplomatic clean slate.

Olmert's big concession at Annapolis was to hand over to the United States the responsibility for judging how both Israel and the Palestinians are doing in fulfilling their commitments under stage one of the "road map."  Under stage one, the Palestinian authority is supposed to suppress "terror."  Since "terror," in the form of Hamas and its patron Iran, is much more likely to suppress the Palestinian Authority, we can safely bet that the first stage of the road map will never be completed.  That is the uniform opinion of Israel's military establishment, up to and including Ehud Barak.  But the United States, concerned to show "progress," will probably make Israel press ahead with its own commitments, which hitherto Israel has refused to implement unilaterally:  Expelling Jews from "outposts" in Judea and Samaria and reducing its security presence in those areas.  The Jews in Judaea and Samaria, and perhaps in Israel itself, are about to take damage.  The damage will be pointless, because there is no way it can lead to an agreement, far less its implementation, but that's the way it is with Olmert in charge.  Lives will be wrecked—perhaps mine, perhaps my neighbor's—but the Jewish People will be able to repair the damage and go on.
The people now see the big picture our way. They just don't know what to do about it.

How can I write such a hard and heartless thing?  I don't mean to be heartless, but we can use some stiff upper lip around here.  Since the Lebanon War last year, the tide in Israel has turned.  The people now see the big picture our way.  They just don't know what to do about it.  Everything we do and say ought to be directed at leading public opinion in Israel.  What we need to do is not just fight Olmert's commitments under Annapolis but get the public to see them our way:

1. Olmert's commitments will cause needless damage to Israel's interests, to the cohesion of its badly riven society, and to individual Israelis, and it will all be pointless.
2. Anyone who stays in the Olmert government and lets this happen, especially Shas and Avigdor Lieberman, is helping Olmert inflict pointless damage on his own people and should be punished at the polls.
3. The two-state solution is dead.  Hopelessly unattainable.  Israelis ought to become impatient to get on with some alternative solution to Palestinian society's unappeasable hatred of us, such as compensated Palestinian emigration to other lands.
   Olmert's commitments will cause needless damage to Israel's interests, and it will all be pointless. Anyone who stays in the Olmert government and lets this happen, especially Shas and Avigdor Lieberman, is helping Olmert inflict pointless damage on his own people and should be punished at the polls.
   

In all this a lot depends on our ability, not to scream "gevald" and wring our hands, or to allow Olmert to create the impression that this is an issue solely between him and "the settlers," but to stay focused on the objective:  Israeli public opinion.  Yesterday my colleague, Prof. Moshe Koppel, reported to me with displeasure that he heard an interview with residents of Judaea and Samaria, in which the latter promised "to defeat"  Olmert's plans.  Why displeasure?  Because this allows the press to portray the issue as one that does not concern the residents of Raanana, Kfar Saba and West Jerusalem, when actually they stand to suffer the fate of Sderot if Olmert succeeds in realizing any part of his plans.  What should the interviewees have said?  "We warn residents of Raanana that if Olmert succeeds in his plans for us kassams will rain down on their houses, just as Ariel Sharon's plans led to kassams on Sderot."   Most Israelis who hear that will now agree.

After Annapolis

 Annapolis will prove that Oslo is dead.  The question for Israel is, "what next?"

In Israel, the Hebrew press is already into post-mortems about the amazing disappearing summit in Annapolis.  This was supposed to be the summit where Israel and the Palestinians agreed to divide Jerusalem and set up a Palestinian state.  Public opinion and (since the Lebanon war) its spokesman, Israel's right-wing opposition, put the heat on Shas and Avigdor Lieberman, and they put the heat on Olmert.  Olmert had to retreat and agree to turn the summit into fluff:  A solemn announcement of the two sides' determination to achieve, within a year, an agreement which neither is prepared to agree to now.  Meanwhile, it became clear that the Palestinians never had any intention of agreeing to anything but their most maximal demands.  Now, as the invitations are printed, it seems like there won't even be a joint statement, just a photo opportunity and eminently forgettable speeches.

At Annapolis, Olmert will go two steps further than Ariel Sharon did.  He will announce Israel's willingness to divide Jerusalem, and to negotiate a settlement before terror ends.  However, both statements will share the fate of Sharon's commitment to establish a Palestinian state:  They will fall stillborn from Olmert's lips, because the conditions that could make a Palestinian state, the division of Jerusalem, or the signing of a settlement at all possible will never be met.  As commitments they will be damaging enough, but one cannot foresee Israel actually implementing them.

It's time to leave off feverish speculation about Annapolis and consider, coolly and calmly, where we will be after Annapolis.  First we have to understand what happened.  Then we have to see what choices Israel faces.

Ehud Olmert is the most radical left-wing Prime Minister Israel has ever had, with the exception of Shimon Peres' brief stint in office in 1996.  He is willing to divide Jerusalem and multiply tenfold the human and political disaster created by the disengagement from Gaza and Northern Samaria.  In the absence of anything better, he is willing to take a powerless puppet like Abu Mazen and crown him "partner."  He is not going to succeed in doing any of this.  The reasons why are important.

What Olmert is trying to do at Annapolis, and what he will fail at, is to revive a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians as a live option.  Other than a few cronies in his government and the Israeli press, almost no Palestinians or Jews believe in this scenario.  Among the Palestinians, the only viable political force is Hamas and its allies, which want to destroy Israel and its Jews root and branch, not achieve a settlement with them.  Fatah and the Abu Mazen/Salam Fayyad cabal are moribund, and their incapacity to carry out any kind of agreement is common knowledge.  Among Israel's Jews, the Second Lebanon War and the subsequent takeover of Gaza by Hamas finally brought about the inevitable:  Deep awareness of how badly Israel has been hurt by Oslo, disengagement, and the flight from Lebanon, and deep skepticism about the possibility of a negotiated peace.  Don't get me wrong:  Most Jewish Israelis want peace, and would be willing to give up a lot in exchange for it.  It's just that they no longer believe in it, and have consigned the whole idea to the realm of political Messianism.  It's clear to everyone that any concessions in Judaea, Samaria and Jerusalem are going to wind up being a gift to Hamas and Iran.

These claims about the attitudes of Israel's Jews are based on in depth polls we conducted at the Israel Policy Center on the morrow of the Lebanon War and again toward the end of October 2007.  The Center's website is suspended pending elective surgery, so readers are invited to see a translation of the 2007 poll here, on Dr Aaron Lerner's website "IMRA."  The poll shows clearly that the Jewish public believes that Abu Mazen is a hollow shell, that Hamas will move into any vacuum the IDF leaves, and that those who oppose further disengagements outnumber those who want one by better than 3 to 1.

The Annapolis Conference will commit Israel, on the declaratory level, to a policy that cannot be carried out.  The situation will exhibit some odd characteristics.  Building in Judaea and Samaria will be frozen, because that is regarded as necessary for peace negotiations, but no meaningful negotiations will be going on.  Israel and the Palestinians in Judaea and Samaria will be locked in a conflict little less bitter than the hot war expected to break out in Gaza after Annapolis, and yet Israel will be incapable of doing anything about it because it will remain committed to a policy that it hasn't a prayer of implementing.  Israel will be deadlocked by its commitment to implementing a political daydream.   

Such commitments don't last.  Israel is going to need a whole new policy, a whole new direction, a whole new way of thinking about and resolving its conflict with malignant Palestinian hostility, one that does not involve making a settlement, evacuating territory, or setting up a Palestinian state, because that is clearly impossible.  The public is not going to allow its politicians just to sit on the problem forever without doing anything about it.  There's going to have to be a new approach, and whoever comes up with one that sounds reasonable is going to sweep the next elections.

From this perspective the most interesting element of our poll is a question we asked the public in 2006 and again in November 2007:  "Do you approve of Israel offering Palestinians in Judaea and Samaria reasonable compensation in return for emigrating to other lands?"  In 2006 a plurality of Israel's Jewish population, 48%, answered "yes" to this question.  In 2007 the majority has risen to 54%.

Heresy

For Israel's peace camp, the people responsible for the forthcoming failure of the Annapolis conference are those who warn of it

The fog surrounding the upcoming Annapolis Conference is starting to clear a little.  Ehud Olmert will go to Annapolis and take care to mention Palestinian rights to a state, including rights in Jerusalem.  He will not say what Israel plans to do about those alleged rights.  His coalition partners, Avigdor Lieberman of Yis
For the Israeli Left, the "people to blame" are not those who cause the conference to fail, but those who warn that it will.
rael Beitenu and Eli Yishai of Shas, will proclaim themselves satisfied.  If Abu Mazen makes trouble, Olmert will ask him before the international press, "are you prepared to say right now that you acknowledge that Israel is a Jewish state?"  If Abu Mazen says "no," as he must, the conference will collapse and the onus will be on Abu Mazen—for 24 hours, at any rate.  The "Jewish state" question is Olmert's ace in the hole.  It means that he won't have to shoulder all the blame when the conference becomes a bust.

What Olmert will say about a Palestinian state and Jerusalem is bad enough, and we will hear about it henceforth in every international conference and from every foreign ambassador.  But nothing will really happen in Annapolis, nor result from it.  Both the wild hopes raised in some quarters by the conference and the dire predictions of the consequences of failure will prove empty.  The Palestinians will not "lose hope," because no rational human being ever vested much hope in Annapolis.  They will not take a new turn to violence, because every element in Palestinian society capable of harming Israel and Israelis is already doing everything within its power right now to encompass the downfall of the Jewish state. 

What will happen is that there will be a lot of disappointed people on the Left of the Israeli political spectrum. They will start looking around for someone to blame, and in doing so reveal an interesting psychological phenomenon:

For the Israeli Left, the "people to blame" are not those who cause the conference to fail, but those who warn that it will.

The reason for failure is the complete unwillingness of Palestinian society to come to terms with a Jewish state.  From this position flows Hamas' commitment to neverending Jihad against Israel until all its Jews are dead, fled or converted to Islam.  From this stems the fact that Abu Mazen—who would gleefully join Hamas' Jihad if he weren't totally dependent for his life on Israeli protection—refuses to acknowledge that such a thing as a Jewish state can actually exist.  As a result, any steps Israel takes toward ending its military rule of the Palestinians will lead to Judaea and Samaria becoming a base of operations meant to destroy Israel.

Mind, these are not necessarily the reasons I would give for not cutting a deal with Abu Mazen.  I believe that Judaea, Samaria and Gaza, to which the IDF will soon return, belong to the Jewish people, and that if any accommodation with the Palestinians is possible it has to start with their acknowledgment of that fact.  But these are the reasons why any rational Israeli leftist ought to concede that we will not see a Palestinian-Israeli agreement, or a Palestinian state, in our time.  Some of these points were made last week in an article by MK Gidon Saar, head of the Likud Knesset faction, in a Hebrew daily.

The reaction of the Israeli Left was explosive.  An editorial in Ha'aretz equated Saar to Haled Masha'al, the head of Hamas who hangs out in Damascus.  Saar was the equivalent of a world-class terrorist, not because he is trying with blood and fire to sabotage the Annapolis conference, but simply because he refuses to believe in it.

A similar point of view is expressed by Uzi Benziman, writing in the same journal this week.  Benz
I have often wanted to ask an Israeli Leftist, "Under what circumstances would you believe an Israeli-Palestinian peace not possible within a reasonable period of time?" I've never had the opportunity. I suspect that anybody with a reasonable answer to that question thereby disqualifies himself from membership in the Israeli Left.
iman notes the repeated assessments of Israel's military establishment that Annapolis will go nowehere.  "The problem," writes Benziman, "is that this opinion, even if entirely accurate, reflects not just intelligence assessments regarding the Palestinian position but the spiritual and ideological state of its holders in the Israeli establishment."  What Benziman is demanding is not a changed assessment of the facts, for which there is no warrant, but for Israeli generals to undergo a spiritual conversion and be born again as unconditional believers in peace.
 
What this means is that when it comes the Israeli Left's views on Israeli-Palestinian relations, we are not dealing with a foreign policy perspective but with an act of faith.  In the real world, opinions on things have to be falsifiable in order to be considered seriously.  If someone asks you, "what would have to happen in order for you to change your mind?" you have to have an answer.  Otherwise your opinion isn't based on reason.  It's just a belief, which nobody but you is required to take seriously.  I have often wanted to ask an Israeli Leftist, "Under what circumstances would you believe an Israeli-Palestinian peace not possible within a reasonable period of time?"  I've never had the opportunity.  I suspect that anybody with a reasonable answer to that question thereby disqualifies himself from membership in the Israeli Left. 

The Israeli Left likes to describe itself as the "rational camp."  There doesn’t seem to be anything rational about it, however, just a blind faith that cannot be challenged by any facts, no matter how persuasive.  In this "spiritual and ideological state," the people to blame are not those who are responsible for making dreams impossible but those who dryly point out the facts.  These people are heretics, and we know the punishment for them.