M.J. Rosenberg has laid out the real players and the logic of the attack on Gaza quite well.
The takeover of Gaza by Hamass was set up in large part by several key missteps made by the Bush administration. First was the decision of the Bush administration to oust Yassar Arafat, who had successfully almost completely stopped terrorism after 1997. This was compounded by providing minimal support to the replacement Palestinian government of Mahmoud Abbas, apparently to try to make him more compliant. The worst though, was then Bush forced an election in Gaza, one which both the Israelis and the Palestinians argued against. It looks like only Bush was surprised when Hamas won that election, and it is clear that the residents of Gaza would reelect Hamas again if they needed to. Even if Hamas is destroyed, the residents of Gaza will not accept the government of Fatah back. They would consider it the puppet of the U.S. and Israel. So if the invasion of Gaza can succeed in destroying Hamas, who will replace them? M. J. Rosenberg lays it out clearly.
Hamas' likely successors would be Al Qaeda--and its allies--which already have cells in Gaza. Hamas and Al Qaeda hate each other for many reasons, most of which are of interest only to students of Islam. The one that matters to us is that Hamas is willing to compromise with its enemies.So what is the strategic goal the Israelis wanted to accomplish by invading Gaza? If they aren't going to stay and occupy Gaza, the likely alternative to Hamas is much, much worse. And now that the Israelis have invaded, the situation is not going to return to the relative simplicity that characterized relations between Israel and Gaza before the invasion. The best that can be hoped for is a return to the government of Hamas.
Al Qaeda and its ilk are at permanent war with the West, a war which cannot end until either AQ or the infidels are destroyed. Al Qaeda is not fighting for political goals but to create a pan-national Islamic State that would supplant not only Israel but all the Arab states.
Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim brotherhood, limits its ambitions to achieving a state in Palestine. It believes in compromise, if only as a stop gap. That is why it could sign a ceasefire agreement with Israel and, according to even Israeli sources, observe it until it decided that Israel was not living up to its end of the deal. It has even raised the idea of a 15 or 20 year ceasefire with the Jewish state.
All this is anathema to groups like Al Qaeda, for whom the destruction of the World Trade Center was a triumph--although it advanced no political goals. AQ has none, just as the terrorists in Mumbai killed for killing's sake.
And these are the people who could make Gaza--a few miles miles from Tel Aviv--its ultimate base of operations.
Writing in the London Jewish Chronicle, reporter Jonathan Freedland predicts, "Gaza could become a vacuum, rapidly descending into Somalia, a lawless badland of warlords and clans. . . . And from the rubble of Gaza, the attacks on Israel will surely resume."
If so, it seems very unlikely that Hamas is going to be amenable to making agreements with Israel for quite a while, since Israel does not keep them. Hamas will not make the mistake, though, of thinking that Israel will not make the mistake of self-defeating measures.
M.J Rosenberg has laid out some of the key errors made by the U.S. and Israel. I haven't found a similarly good and concise article on the errors made by the Palestinians. Nor have I found any good articles that offered Israel an alternative solution (that would have been likely to be effective) to invading Gaza.
As for what happens next, clearly a cease fire is critical. What can follow that is another mystery. Did the Israeli political leadership have a strategic plan for the invasion of Gaza? Anthony Cordesman makes that point.
What is the strategic purpose behind the present fighting? After two weeks of combat Olmert, Livni, and Barak have still not said a word that indicates that Israel will gain any grand strategic benefits, or tactical benefits much larger than the gains it made from selectively striking key Hamas facilities early in the war. In fact, their silence raises haunting questions about whether they will repeat the same massive failures made by Israel’s top political leadership during the Israeli-Hezbollah War in 2006. Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without a clear strategic goal or at least one it can credibly achieve? Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? Will Israel’s actions seriously damage the US position in the region, any hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process?Whatever the strategic plan might have been (if there was one) the after effects of the invasion will require efforts that go way beyond use of military force. Tough talk and military actions to back it up have created this current disaster. And the government of Israel is still the same one that invaded Southern Lebanon at Israel's political great cost, and had to be restrained by (of all people) George W. Bush from attacking Iraq and trying to take out Iran's nuclear installations.
To be blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes. To paraphrase a comment about the British government’s management of the British Army in World War I, lions seem to be led by donkeys. If Israel has a credible ceasefire plan that could really secure Gaza, it is not apparent. If Israel has a plan that could credibly destroy and replace Hamas, it is not apparent. If Israel has any plan to help the Gazans and move them back towards peace, it is not apparent. If Israel has any plan to use US or other friendly influence productively, it is not apparent.
As we have seen all too clearly from US mistakes, any leader can take a tough stand and claim that tactical gains are a meaningful victory. If this is all that Olmert, Livni, and Barak have for an answer, then they have disgraced themselves and damaged their country and their friends. If there is more, it is time to make such goals public and demonstrate how they can be achieved. The question is not whether the IDF learned the tactical lessons of the fighting in 2006. It is whether Israel’s top political leadership has even minimal competence to lead them.
When Bill Clinton left office he left the critical Middle Eastern problems of terrorism and the Palestinian - Israeli situations to George Bush and the beginnings of a mild recession. Clinton had stabilized the Palestinian - Israeli situation and appeared to be making progress, and his entire White House was working on the terrorism problem and tried to pass on their urgency to the incoming Bush administration. George Bush dropped both Middle Eastern balls as the attack on 9/11 almost immediately demonstrated, and discussion of the causes of the current economic situation have yet to determine what happened. Bush has now left Barack Obama with an active and escalating war in Afghanistan, an occupation/war still simmering in Iraq, an economy already in the worst recession since the Great Depression, and a seriously deteriorating Palestinian - Israeli situation. And Bush actually was reported as going on vacation in December.
Bush is going to be a hard act For Obama to follow. And I really wonder what the Israeli elections are going to bring.
Disclaimer. I am not an expert on the middle east, and clearly not on the Palestinian - Israeli problems. I have, however, studied corporate strategy and management decision making extensively, and I can recognize when an effective strategy is being implemented. This is not one of those times when an effective strategy is apparent.
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