Friday, August 22
Headlines:
Israel Kills 3 Top Hamas Leaders as Latest Fighting Turns Its Way
18 Palestinians Suspected of Collaborating With Israel Executed in Gaza
EU States and U.S. Pursue UN Resolution to End Israel-Gaza Fighting
After PM’s Admonition: The Furor in the Security Cabinet Has Not Abated
Mashal: We Are Prepared to Fight for Years
Tunnel Economy Booming Near Rafah
Arab States, Israel Set to Clash at U.N. Nuclear Meeting
Kahlon Indicates Comeback with New ‘Framework’
Commentary:
Yedioth Ahronoth: “How to Get Rid of Hamas”
– By Nahum Barnea
Yedioth Ahronoth: “A New Leaf”
– By Eliot Levy and Smadar Peri
________________________
New York Times
Israel Kills 3 Top Hamas Leaders as Latest Fighting Turns Its Way
Hamas is the party that keeps extending this summer’s bloody battle in the Gaza Strip, repeatedly breaking temporary truces and vowing to endlessly fire rockets into Israel until its demands are met. But the latest round of fighting appears to have given Israel the upper hand in a conflict that has already outlasted all expectations and is increasingly becoming a war of attrition.Barrages of rockets from Gaza sailed into Israel nearly nonstop on Thursday, but they did little damage, and a Hamas threat against Ben-Gurion International Airport failed to materialize. Israel, meanwhile, killed three top commanders of Hamas’s armed wing in predawn airstrikes, and by afternoon had called up 10,000 reservists, perhaps in preparation for a further escalation but in any case a show of strength.
New York Times
18 Palestinians Suspected of Collaborating With Israel Executed in Gaza
Gunmen fatally shot 18 Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel in public on Friday, according to local news agencies and two witnesses, the largest number of such executions reported since the onset of this summer’s battle between Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip. The victims were not identified but were reported to have been previously arrested or convicted of collaboration, a crime punishable by death under Palestinian law. Gaza’s Interior Ministry, which handles judicial and security matters, declined to address the reported executions.
Ha’aretz
EU States and U.S. Pursue UN Resolution to End Israel-Gaza Fighting
Germany, France and Britain have begun working on a UN Security Council resolution that would end the fighting in the Gaza Strip. On Tuesday, they circulated a document to diplomats at UN headquarters in New York outlining the elements they thought such a resolution should contain. These include returning Gaza to the Palestinian Authority’s control, reconstructing the Strip under international supervision to prevent Hamas from rearming, and restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks on the basis of the pre-1967 lines. On Friday, diplomats said the U.S. joined the initiative.
Israel Hayom
After PM’s Admonition: The Furor in the Security Cabinet Has Not Abated
The furor in the government has not subsided one day after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon publicly criticized the security cabinet ministers and accused them of spreading baseless statements and leaks. While there were ministers in the security cabinet who justified Netanyahu and Yaalon’s statement, other ministers said that their colleagues in the government had the right to express their opinions. According to sources in the security cabinet, the prime minister’s remarks in the press conference were aimed primarily against Minister Bennett, and against Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who convened press conferences during the operation in which he attacked the prime minister’s policy and demanded the escalation of the military operation in the Gaza Strip.
Ma’ariv
Mashal: We Are Prepared to Fight for Years
Hamas Political Bureau Director Khaled Mashal told the Turkish news agency yesterday: the Palestinian people have been preparing for 100 years to fight all the way. We won’t become tired after a month, a year, or years of fighting. PA Chairman Abu Mazen met yesterday with Mashal and with Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. Sources close to Abu Mazen said that the meeting took place in a quiet and positive atmosphere. They also told Ma’an that Abu Mazen was attempting to reach an understanding with Mashal that first a cease-fire had to be reached, and only afterwards would they discuss the issues in contention. Mashal said yesterday that there would be no return to the Cairo negotiations until circumstances could be guaranteed that would compel the enemy to accede to the Palestinian demands.
Ynet News
Tunnel Economy Booming Near Rafah
A third of the houses on the main street of this Bedouin town near Egypt’s border with Gaza look derelict, but inside they buzz with the activity of tunnel smugglers scrambling to survive a security crackdown by the Egyptian army. Smugglers and tunnel owners, who once publicly advertised their services, have taken over the nearly two dozen single-story concrete structures and boarded up their doors and windows to avoid the attention of the authorities. While tunnels used by Gaza’s dominant Hamas militants to infiltrate Israel were a priority target of an Israeli offensive in the Palestinian enclave this summer, many smuggling conduits into Egypt have skirted detection.
Reuters
Arab States, Israel Set to Clash at U.N. Nuclear Meeting
As war rages in Gaza, Arab states will likely try to heighten diplomatic pressure on Israel over its assumed nuclear arsenal at next month’s annual meeting of the U.N. nuclear agency’s 160 member states, diplomats said on Friday. An Arab initiative to single out the Jewish state for criticism was defeated in voting last year. But Western diplomats opposed to the Arab move said the unresolved Gaza conflict may influence any wavering countries at this year’s debate, although there was no direct link between the issues.
Jerusalem Post
Kahlon Indicates Comeback with New ‘Framework’
Former welfare and social services minister Moshe Kahlon indicated on Tuesday that he would soon be returning to politics after the current security situation calms down. Asked Tuesday if he would return to the political arena after he decided in late 2012 to take a break and not run for the 19th Knesset, Kahlon said he had “decided to form a political framework, but definitely not at this time.” Kahlon made the announcement at the Israeli Conference on Medicine at the Jerusalem International Convention Center, an event that Finance Minister Yair Lapid used as a springboard for his political career two years ago.
Yedioth Ahronoth – August 22, 2014
How to Get Rid of Hamas
By Nahum Barnea
The hotel at the entrance to Jericho, which once boasted its own casino, hosts families from the West Bank, from East Jerusalem and Israeli Arab families. There is no better place between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River to be in midsummer: no mortar shells, no body searches at Ben-Gurion Airport or Allenby Bridge. There are girls in bikinis at the pool, it’s as if there were no wars in the world.
I arranged to meet a veteran Fatah man in Jericho. We wanted Ramallah, but it didn’t work out. He asked not to be quoted. “It’s not just me,” he said, “it’s what everyone thinks.”
So what does everyone think? “We have no national strategy,” he replied. “There are two organizations that act in our name. Each of them has a different goal: Fatah wants peace; Hamas wants war. Each of the goals pose a list of demands from the Palestinian people. There is no way to reconcile the two. The result is that one organization, Hamas, has been dragging the entire Palestinian people into war.
“What achievement do we want from this war? They say, lifting the siege on Gaza. But it’s not just Gaza that is under siege: so is the West Bank. No Palestinian can leave or enter the West Bank without approval from Israel. Why just Gaza? Others talk about a limited goal: expanding the fishing zone, for example, or opening the crossing into Egypt, or bringing about the fall of the Netanyahu government.
“If the Netanyahu government falls, an even more extremist government could come in its place. That’s why our goal cannot be the fall of the Israeli government.
“Except for international pressure, what else could change Israel’s position? Hamas says, casualties. According to your figures, Hamas has fired more than 3,000 rockets so far. They killed only three Israelis. More than 1,000 rockets per Israeli fatality. That is not pressure.
“The IDF casualties were of greater weight, but they did not make a difference either. You, the Israelis, inflated Hamas’s importance. When Netanyahu talks, in his appearances, about Hamas as an enemy equal to Israel, he strengthens it on the Palestinian street. So does the Israeli media. The truth is that Islamic Jihad has done no less than Hamas in this war, but everyone only talks about Hamas.
“You don’t understand how central religion is among these groups, from Afghanistan to Gaza, how great the fanaticism. Every religious group, every sect, rejects the faith of the other groups. The day will come when they will fight each other. That has happened in the past: before the war, Hamas killed the commanders of Islamic Jihad in Gaza.”
There were violent demonstrations in the West Bank against Israel and against the PA in recent weeks, I said. How strong is the PA?
“Twenty four people were killed in the demonstrations,” he said. “Twenty one of them were Fatah supporters, two were from the Popular Front and one from Islamic Jihad. The Palestinians are affected by the media propaganda. It seems to them that Hamas is winning in Gaza. The Palestinian street supports Hamas at the moral level. People have forgotten Hamas’s cruelty to the Fatah people when it took over Gaza.”
A lot of Israelis, I said, hope that the civilians in Gaza, who were so badly hurt in recent weeks, will rise up against Hamas. Will that happen?
“No,” he said. “Because Israel has magnified Hamas’s reputation as an organization that fights against the occupation. For 20 years, the Palestinian leadership adhered to peace. What did you give it in exchange: more settlements, more land confiscation, more occupation. How can you expect people to demonstrate against Hamas?”
There are some ministers in Israel who propose having the PA return to Gaza, I said.
“The PA cannot return to Gaza just to defend Israel,” he said. “That’s what Hamas wants, for Fatah to be shown as collaborating with Israel and Hamas to be shown as fighting against the occupation.”
So how do we get rid of Hamas, I asked.
He laughed, and his laugh was bitter. “First of all, you created Hamas. Second, you wanted Hamas to take control of Gaza. Israel claims that it, and only it, has prevented Hamas from taking over the West Bank, that’s how mighty it is. Did it ever occur to you that Hamas could have taken control of Gaza if Israel had been opposed?”
One of the reasons, I said, for the Israeli government’s opposition to the Palestinian reconciliation government was the concern that Hamas would again be active in the West Bank.
“That is a very narrow way of looking at things by Israel,” he said. “You can’t make Hamas disappear. The fact is, Israel is now conducting negotiations with it.”
What do you think, I asked, about the attempt to assassinate Mohammed Deif.
“The Israelis think,” he said, “that if they kill someone it will solve the problem for them. That is a mistake. This only sweeps other people into more extreme positions.”
Mohammed Deif is not a great saint, I said.
“Do you think that nobody will found in his place?” he asked. “You killed Yihye Ayyash, you killed Salah Shehade, you killed Ahmed Jaabari. Replacements found were for all of them.”
Yedioth Ahronoth – August 22, 2014
A New Leaf
By Elior Levy and Smadar Peri
Hamas is stunned: it finds it hard to digest the triple blow it took when the Air Force killed its top commanders in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday morning. The assessment is that it will take Hamas a long time to recover from these assassinations, which left a deep hole in its military leadership.
Two of the three were considered the “sheriffs” of the southern Gaza Strip. Raed al-Attar, 40 and Mohammed Abu Shamala, 40, held senior positions and were among the candidates to replace the commander of the military wing, Mohammed Deif, whose fate is still unclear.
Attar was the Rafah Brigade commander. He is the man who planned and carried out Gilad Shalit’s kidnapping in 2006 and was among his captors. On the day of the Shalit deal he was seen by his side together with Ahmed Jaabari, the Hamas chief of staff assassinated in 2012. Attar was also responsible for other terror attacks and was considered the architect of the tunnel program.
Mohammed Abu Shamala was responsible for the southern Gaza Strip and his hands were also steeped in blood: he oversaw several terror attacks against IDF outposts and took part in Shalit’s kidnapping. Last month he was responsible for the attempt to infiltrate 13 terrorists near Kibbutz Sufa.
Mohammed Barhoum dealt with smuggling weapons and raising money.
Their assassinations, coming after the assassination attempt on Deif, caused a great shock in Hamas’s chain of command. Whether or not Deif is alive or dead, it appears that Hamas is searching for someone who can replace him.
This won’t be easy: there is no figure today in Hamas’s top military echelon who has the charisma to take his place. It is for good reason that the identity of his successor is being shrouded in shadow. Even though Marwan Issa, Deif’s deputy, stepped into Jaabari’s shoes after the latter was killed, he is considered a gray, lusterless figure.
There are another two candidates to succeed Deif: Ahmed Randour, the commander of the brigade in the northern Gaza Strip and Ayman Nofal, the commander of the brigade in the central Gaza Strip. Nofal, who was arrested by the Egyptian security forces in 2008, was charged by the Cairo authorities of planning terror attacks but managed to escape from Egyptian jail during the uprising in 2011 and to sneak back into Gaza.
There is new information on the attempt on Deif’s life on Tuesday night: Palestinian sources say that he was located thanks to a phone call that Hamas Political Bureau Director Khaled Mashal placed from Qatar to Deif’s hiding place in Gaza. A Palestinian news website reported that Deif broke his silence and talked to Mashal on a cell phone and that three hours later the building he was in was bombed. It reported that Mashal had wanted to persuade Deif to accept the cease-fire agreement formulated in Cairo.
Chainsoff's Blog 