Stating the goal in Gaza

Charles Krauthammer lays out what Israel needs to achieve in Gaza. Israel needs to achieve what it failed to achieve when it completely withdrew from Gaza in September, 2005.

Hamas' rejection of an extension of its often-violated six-month cease-fire (during which the rockets never stopped, just were less frequent) gave Israel a rare opportunity to establish the norm it should have insisted upon three years ago: no rockets, no mortar fire, no kidnapping, no acts of war. As the U.S. government has officially stated: a sustainable and enduring cease-fire.

If this fighting ends with anything less than that, Israel will have lost again. It can ill afford to lose any more wars.

That, however, is not going to be an easy task. For, as Krauthammer also states, Hamas has a relatively easy goal to achieve - just kill a lot of people and it doesn't matter if they're Israelis or Palestinians if they can somehow blame those deaths on the Israelis.

That is the asymmetry of means between Hamas and Israel. But there is equal clarity regarding the asymmetry of ends. Israel has but a single objective in Gaza -- peace: the calm, open, normal relations it offered Gaza when it withdrew in 2005. Doing something never done by the Turkish, British, Egyptian and Jordanian rulers of Palestine, the Israelis gave the Palestinians their first sovereign territory ever in Gaza.

What ensued? This is not ancient history. Did the Palestinians begin building the state that is supposedly their great national aim? No. No roads, no industry, no courts, no civil society at all. The flourishing greenhouses that Israel left behind for the Palestinians were destroyed and abandoned. Instead, Gaza's Iranian-sponsored rulers have devoted all their resources to turning it into a terror base -- importing weapons, training terrorists, building tunnels with which to kidnap Israelis on the other side. And of course firing rockets unceasingly.

The grievance? It cannot be occupation, military control or settlers. They were all removed in September 2005. There's only one grievance and Hamas is open about it. Israel's very existence.

Nor does Hamas conceal its strategy. Provoke conflict. Wait for the inevitable civilian casualties. Bring down the world's opprobrium on Israel. Force it into an untenable cease-fire -- exactly as happened in Lebanon. Then, as in Lebanon, rearm, rebuild and mobilize for the next round. Perpetual war. Since its raison d'etre is the eradication of Israel, there are only two possible outcomes: the defeat of Hamas or the extinction of Israel.

With an organization that doesn't mind at all losing its own people, perpetual war is relatively simple to achieve. It's only peace that is difficult.

The one hope is that enough Palestinians in Gaza have woken up to what it means to have Hamas in power there. They didn't get government or any of the benefits that having the Israelis leave was supposed to bring. Instead they got destruction, constant fear, and squalid living conditions. I found it extremely interesting how Israel was able to gather enough intelligence to launch their original attacks on Gaza. They knew where members of Hamas were and when they'd be there. That type of intelligence implies a lot of eyes and ears belonging to Palestinians who were willing to give that information out. Perhaps some information came from Fatah members who were being attacked by Hamas. But there must be quite a few ordinary Palestinians in Gaza who would like to see the end of Hamas's presence there. They may hate the Israelis with an undying passion, but they're learning that Hamas isn't the answer.