Israeli troop exit from Gaza without achieving all goals bodes war of attrition
Re-Post from DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis August 2, 2014, 11:27 PM (IDT)

As the first Israel troops began pulling out of the Gaza Strip Saturday night, Aug. 2, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu pledged that Operation Defense Edge would continue until security and calm are restored to all Israel’s citizens – however long it takes. But in his televised news conference, he also said: “The IDF will deploy according to the needs of Israel’s security – and only Israel’s security.”

After expressing deep gratitude to the American people and its leaders for their support, Netanyahuu underlined the importance of the links Israel had established with regional countries as a great asset for the future.

In the view of debkafile’s military experts, Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon have been guided in their management of the Gaza operation by four major misapprehensions:

1. That Hamas wanted a ceasefire;

2. That the Hamas tunnel network has been largely discovered and disabled;

3. That Hamas will take years to recover from the thrashing the IDF administered in the 25 days of its counter-terror operation in the Gaza Strip. (Netanyahu: “We struck many thousands of terror targets and many hundreds of terrorists.”)

4. That rocket fire will die down after Hamas fully appreciates the terrible devastation its war has inflicted on the Gaza Strip population.

The slogans of the last four weeks reflected these assumptions: “Quiet will be met with quiet” was one, or “We shall degrade Hamas’ military strength,” and “We’ll wipe out Hamas’ entire tunnel empire.”

But a change in tenor was apparent Saturday night: Variations on the theme of “No accommodation, only deterrence” were to be heard, as well as “No more ceasefires,” and “We’ll end the operation unilaterally as and when it suits our security needs.”
Those ideas reflected the rationale for Israel’s decision not to send envoys to the truce talks opening in Cairo Sunday.

Shortly before the Netanyahu-Ya’alon news conference, the parents and siblings of the captured Israeli officer, 2nd Lt, Hadar Goldin appeared before reporters for a moving appeal to the prime minister, defense minister and chief of staff not to evacuate Israeli troops from Gaza before ecovering the missing officer. His father and four siblings, all IDF officers on reserve or active service, maintained that it was unthinkable according to the most hallowed traditions of the Israeli army to abandon a serviceman in the field..
One of the prime minister’s answers to reporters’ questions can be traced to the deep impression the Goldin family made on the public. He said the IDF will act solely according to security and no other considerations.

The new set of war slogans are designed to soften the impact of a decision reached by the two war leaders last week, which was to pull the bulk of the troops out of the Gaza Strip and redeploy them behind the border fence in offensive formation. The Rafah sector in the south will remain beleaguered.

As for the claim that all the tunnels will be dealt with first, debkafile reports that despite the weeks of fighting, the IDF has driven no deeper than 1-3 kilometers into the territory, leaving the western areas untouched. Therefore, the soldiers can only deal with the tunnels that come out in the eastern sector or cross under the border into Israel.
To truly finish off the warren of passageways, the IDF needs to burrow much farther west- up to their starting points. But Hamas, with the help of Iranian and Hizballah engineers, constructed the labyrinthine system so that each tunnel forks off into another passage every few dozen or hundred meters. Some of these interconnected passageways lead under the border to places in Israel; others go further underground in Gaza.

The system is totally baffling. IDF spokesmen have said repeatedly that the troops have more or less dealt with the tunnels, while the politicians promise this will be done. They are anxious to allay people’s visceral dread of ferocious enemies jumping out of the bowels of the earth on kibbutz lawns, a terror that has driven more people north than even the rockets.
The truth is that only the tunnel sections reaching the Israeli border have been neutralized, whereas the honeycomb buried deep inside territory which the IDF has not reached has defied Israeli intelligence’s best efforts.And the surprises keep on coming. A capacious, cement-lined passageway leading into Israel was revealed Saturday night with two motorcycles parked inside, ready for terrorists to make a dash to their prey.

As for the rocket fire, Hamas still holds more than a third of the 9,000 rockets with which it launched its blitz – more than enough to keep Israeli civilians within a wide radius running for cover. The IDF has seriously trashed rocket production plants, but at least one-fifth of the facilities remain functional and can continue to replenish depleted stocks.

The assumption that Hamas will need years to recover may turn out to be a losing gamble if Iran and Hizballah decide to step in and rehabilitate their Palestinian ally from scratch.
At all events, if the IDF pulls back the bulk of its ground forces now, with its goals only partly attained, Israel and the communities and towns bordering Gaza will soon be caught up in a lengthy war of attrition and forced to repeat the ground operation.

Re-Posted from PowerLine on August 2, 2014 by Scott Johnson in Arab Israel conflict

Obama’s reckoning

In the current Hamas hostilities against Israel, we have seen Barack Obama and John Kerry join in the war on the Jewish people. Not surprising, perhaps, but sobering. Obama and Kerry are working with Israel’s enemies in Qatar and Turkey to help Hamas emerge from the conflict with its key goals fulfilled. I take its key goals to include terminating Israel’s blockade (blockade of war matériel, that is) and facilitating access to funds for its forces fulfilled.

Obama’s hostility to Israel emerges in ways large and small, even as he professes understanding of the challenges that confront Israel. Here is one small example from Obama’s godawful press conference yesterday (White House transcript here):

You have children who are getting killed. You have women, defenseless, who are getting killed. You have Israelis whose lives are disrupted constantly and living in fear. And those are costs that are avoidable if we’re able to get a cease-fire that preserves Israel’s ability to defend itself and gives it the capacity to have an assurance that they’re not going to be constantly threatened by rocket fire in the future, and, conversely, an agreement that recognizes the Palestinian need to be able to make a living and the average Palestinian’s capacity to live a decent life.

Obama juxtaposes Arab women and children “getting killed” with Israelis whose lives are “disrupted” and who are living in fear. No mention of the Israeli losses that rivet the country. For those otherwise lacking a clue, that ought to help.

And “an agreement that recognizes the Palestinian need to be able to make a living and the average Palestininan’s capacity to live a decent life” — that’s code for Hamas’s strategic objective in the conflict. Obama means to help Hamas achieve it.

Poor Hamas even with the UN and Obama/Kerry on their side they are getting their ass kicked!

Hamas is Hamas, after all, why would and rational person expect them to honor any agreement!

Hamas denies knowing captive officer’s whereabouts, says he may have died. IDF continues to blast Rafah
Re-Post from DEBKAfile Special Report August 2, 2014, 10:02 AM (IDT)

Hamas’ military wing issued a statement early Saturday, Aug. 2, claiming: “We have lost contact with the group of fighters that took part in the ambush [in which 2 soldiers were killed and 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin, 23, went missing in Rafah Friday] and we believe that they were all killed in the [Israeli] bombardment. Assuming that they managed to seize the soldier during combat, we assess that he was also killed in the incident,” the Hamas statement said, clearly trying to get off the hook of international condemnation and Israeli punishment.

All Friday night until early Saturday, Israeli jets, tanks and heavy artillery continued to pound parts of Rafah. The Palestinians say they have lost 150 dead, of whom 70 were killed in Rafah since Friday morning, when their “ambush,” was mounted 90 minutes after an international ceasefire went into effect.

debkafile’s military sources report on the findings of an inquiry into the Rafah attack, in which two Givati Brigade officers, Major Benaya Sarel, 26, from Kiryat Arba and St.-Sgt. Liel Gidoni, 20, from Jerusalem, lost their lives. It turns out that the plan for the attack was devised in detail by Hamas and most likely Islamic Jihad for the abduction of an Israeli soldier.

An ambush squad of 10-15 commandos, some wearing large explosive vests, stole into the Seri district of Rafah early Friday, covered by a group of local civilians who, upon hearing that a ceasefire had gone into effect at 8 a.m. that morning, scattered to their homes.

The attackers then crept up to the building where the Givati troops were busy dealing with a tunnel.

At 9:30, two suicide bombers moved in on the Israeli team and blew themselves up.

The rest of the squad grabbed Lt. Goldin.
The attack and abduction were deliberately timed to occur after the 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire announced by the US and UN went into effect.

Friday night, US President Barack Obama said that to sustain the ceasefire, Hamas must unconditionally release the Israeli officer who had been seized in the course of the truce, although he admitted to doubts about the Islamist terrorists “following through” on a ceasefire agreement.

This was a reference to Hamas violations of all five previous truces in the 25-day armed conflict in Gaza.

Israel’s security and policy-making cabinet ended a long meeting starting Friday and ending Saturday morning without releasing a statement. The IDF’s mode of attacks in and around Rafah, a town of some quarter of a million inhabitants, indicated that they are trying to trap Lt. Goldin’s abductors before they fled and went to ground, possibly with their captive.

Hamas and Jihad have tried time and again to kidnap Israeli soldiers. This time they took advantage of the ceasefire to achieve this goal.
The fate of the negotiations, scheduled to be launched between Israeli and Palestinian delegations in Cairo Friday at the same time as the 72-hour ceasefire, is up in the air as far as Israel’s intentions are concerned.

Israel held off sending its delegation to Cairo Friday in outrage over the shock Hamas attack-cum-abduction in Rafah. Whether Netanyahu decides to respond to the US appeal, and send negotiators to Egypt on Sunday, may depend on the way matters evolve in the Gaza Strip Saturday, especially if the missing officer is found.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon have still to reach a decision on whether to order the IDF to expand the harsh punitive operation devastating Rafah since Friday to other parts of the Gaza Strip.

As to the ceasefire, it is abundantly clear, as President too acknowledged Friday, that however any talks through Egyptian intermediaries may turn out, and whatever the parties may sign, Hamas can’t be counted on to follow through.

As the latest ceasefire attempt demonstrated, Islamic terrorists will seize on any cessation in hostilities for surprise attacks on Israeli soldiers and any civilian targets within reach, whether by ambush, rockets, or tunnel terror. So a signed deal if it happens may be a diplomatic breakthrough, but have little relevance on the field of combat in Gaza.

Islam the religion of peace, when you are dead you are at peace!