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<h1 class="title" id="page-title"><small>Daring and lethal
Palestinian raids from Gaza sap Israeli morale</small></h1>
<div class="submitted">
<span property="dc:date dc:created"
content="2014-07-30T14:11:38+00:00" datatype="xsd:dateTime"
rel="sioc:has_creator">Submitted by <span class="username"
xml:lang="" about="/users/ali-abunimah"
typeof="sioc:UserAccount" property="foaf:name" datatype="">Ali
Abunimah</span> on Wed, 07/30/2014 - 14:11<br>
<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/daring-and-lethal-palestinian-raids-gaza-sap-israeli-morale">http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/daring-and-lethal-palestinian-raids-gaza-sap-israeli-morale</a></small></small></small></b><br>
</span> </div>
<div class="field-body">
<p>The Israeli army is reeling from two attacks behind its lines
by fighters of the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/qassam-brigades">Qassam
Brigades</a>, the military resistance wing of Hamas.</p>
<p>The attacks are feeding a sense in Israel that its ground
assault on Gaza is turning into a disaster and there are
indications that Israeli anger and frustration are being taken
out with even more deliberate killings of Palestinian civilians.</p>
<p>On Monday, <a
href="http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/Mortar-shell-attack-wounds-10-in-southern-Israel-369179">four
Israeli soldiers</a> were killed and ten injured when
Palestinian resistance fighters fired mortars across the
boundary from Gaza.</p>
<p>But the most dramatic incident was a commando raid in which
seven Qassam fighters emerged from a tunnel, raided a fortified
Israeli army outpost at Nahal Oz inside Israel, killed five
soldiers according to the Israeli count, and returned safely to
Gaza through the tunnel.</p>
<p>Qassam said its fighters killed 10 Israeli combatants in the
attack.</p>
<p>Multiplying the psychological impact is the fact that Qassam
released a video of the incident on Tuesday (above), which the
military correspondent of Israel’s Channel 10 television
acknowledged “<a
href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/day-22-five-soldiers-killed-four-of-them-in-mortar-attack-idf-bombards-gaza/">appears
to be authentic</a>.”</p>
<h2>No ceasefire without end of siege</h2>
<p>Along with the video of the raid, Qassam’s commander Muhammad
Deif <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpt3NTFH5X0">released
an audio recording</a> saying that his group would not accept
a ceasefire which did not end the siege of Gaza. Deif said that
his fighters were prepared for a long battle and were working
according to a plan rather than “reacting” to events like
Israel.</p>
<p>Deif said that the “enemy” had been “defeated” in its ground
war and would continue to pay a heavy price as long as its army
was in Gaza.</p>
<p>The latest resistance attacks across Israeli lines have rattled
frontline Israeli soldiers, one of whom grumbled to <em>Ynet</em>
that ” I’m not sure where is safer, inside or outside” Gaza.</p>
<p>“We have been to a number of rallying points, and were amazed
to discover that the lessons of the Second Lebanon War and
Pillar of Defense had not been implemented,” the soldier added,
referring respectively to Israel’s failed 2006 invasion of
Lebanon and its 2012 bombardment of Gaza.</p>
<p>“Yesterday we were punched hard in the gut,because the feeling
was that outside the Strip was much safer – but it’s not true,”
another soldier said after Monday’s attack.</p>
<p>The attacks have yet to dent the support for the massacre among
the Israeli Jewish public, <a
href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4551824,00.html">90
percent of whom</a> still support the assault, according to a
recent poll.</p>
<h2>Israeli exhaustion</h2>
<p>While Palestinian civilians have been the main targets of
Israeli attacks – the number of fatalities from Israel’s 23-day
assault has now surpassed 1,200 persons, 80 percent civilians –
Israel’s losses are overwhelmingly military.</p>
<p>With more than 50 soldiers dead, a price no one in Israel
expected to pay for attacking Gaza, even the country’s top
leaders appear weary.</p>
<p>After visiting wounded soldiers today, Israeli former president
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/shimon-peres">Shimon
Peres</a> said the assault on Gaza had “exhausted itself … and
now we have to find a way to stop it,” <a
href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4552247,00.html"><em>Ynet</em>
reported</a>.</p>
<p>Peres said he hoped the war would end with Israeli-backed
Palestinian Authority <em>de facto</em> leader Mahmoud Abbas
resuming control of Gaza with the support of Israel and
Israeli-allied Arab dictatorships.</p>
<p>Abbas “has the support of Egypt and the Arab world more than
anyone else today,” Peres said. He appeared to be reflecting
broader thinking among Israel’s elites who now see Abbas as
their “<a
href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4552112,00.html">savior</a>.”</p>
<h2>Israel “dragged”</h2>
<p>The raids from Gaza have heightened the sense among
establishment commentators that Israel has lost – or never had –
the initiative in the ground assault that it launched on Gaza.</p>
<p>“From the first day of the operation, we have been dragged and
we are still being dragged,” <a
href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4551558,00.html">wrote
Nahum Barnea</a>, Israel’s leading columnist, in <em>Ynet</em>,
“Hamas is dictating the extent and length of the conflict, and
our forces have not found a move, an initiative or a patent to
break this dictation.”</p>
<p>Commenting specifically on the Nahal Oz video, <em>Ynet’s</em>
Yossi Yoshua <a
href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4552236,00.html">wrote</a>
that the Israeli soldiers who were targeted appeared “unprepared
and off guard, even in broad daylight.”</p>
<p>In a sign of the potential impact of the video in Israel,
Yoshua wrote that <em>Ynet</em> “has chosen not to post” the
video “because of its graphic nature and from the desire not to
aid Hamas in its propaganda.”</p>
<p>But he acknowledged that the Israeli army “has some tough
questions to answer regarding what went down in the pillbox next
to Nahal Oz.”</p>
<h2>“Massive attack” in Shujaiya routs Golani Brigade</h2>
<p>It is <a
href="http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/15/israelpalestine-unlawful-israeli-airstrikes-kill-civilians">well
established</a> that the Israeli army deliberately targets
civilians, civilian homes and other civilian objects.</p>
<p>Unable to break the resistance on the ground, Israel is going
after the civilian population to “terrorize” them into
submission, dozens of international law experts and human rights
experts <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-attacks-designed-terrorize-gaza-population-international-law-experts-say">said
in a recent statement</a>. This is a reprise of Israel’s
so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” used against civilians in Lebanon in
2006 and in Gaza in 2008-2009.</p>
<p>In the <a
href="http://maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=716936">latest
horrifying massacre today</a>, Israeli shells reportedly
slammed into a UN school in Jabaliya refugee camp, killing 16
people.</p>
<p>Yet the sheer unpreparedness of the Israeli army for military
resistance may be causing it to take its rage out in even more
vengeful attacks on Palestinian civilians.</p>
<p>In a <a
href="http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=369102">revealing
account</a> of Israel’s 20 July attack on the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/shujaiya">Shujaiya</a>
neighborhood east of Gaza, <em>The Jerusalem Post</em> revealed
that the army’s elite Golani Brigade suffered a thrashing at the
hands of well-prepared resistance fighters who launched a
“massive attack.”</p>
<p>“The Golani Brigade in [Shujaiya] sustained heavy casualties,”
the newspaper reported citing an army source, “after Hamas
intelligence units mapped out its location.”</p>
<p>Fearing they “would be getting 600 body bags back” containing
dead Israeli soldiers, commanders withdrew the Israeli infantry
and simply shelled Shujaiya, causing mass destruction and the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/shujaiya-massacre">deaths
of dozens of civilians</a>.</p>
<h2>Shoot to kill</h2>
<p>In a Facebook posting, Eran Efrati, a former Israeli army
combat soldier turned dissident researcher and activist, claimed
that Israeli soldiers serving in Gaza had leaked information to
him in recent days that soldiers were “murdering … Palestinians
by sniper fire in [Shujaiya] neighborhood as punishment for the
deaths of soldiers in their units.”</p>
<p>Efrati claimed that commanding officers had given shoot-to-kill
orders ostensibly meant to protect Israeli forces, but whose
real purpose was to “enable soldiers to take out their
frustrations and pain at losing their fellow soldiers (something
that for years the IDF [Israeli army] has not faced during its
operations in Gaza and the West Bank)” by killing Palestinian
civilians.</p>
<p>Efrati cited the cold-blood sniper shooting, <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/war-crime-video-shows-sniper-killing-wounded-gaza-civilian">caught
on video</a>, of Palestinian youth Salem Shamaly in Shujaiya
on 20 July, as a likely example of this phenomenon.</p>
<p>Efrati <a href="http://www.soldierandrefusenik.com/about-us/">spent
years</a> working with <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/breaking-silence">Breaking
the Silence</a>, an Israeli group that collects and publishes
testimonies of abuses from Israeli soldiers but also protects
them from consequences by concealing their identities.</p>
<p>Since Efrati’s posting, a copy of which was captured by The
Electronic Intifada, Efrati’s entire Facebook page is no longer
available.</p>
<h2>Looming political disaster for Netanyahu</h2>
<p>Nahum Barnea <a
href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4551558,00.html">points</a>
to the political crisis the heavy losses of Israeli soldiers is
causing to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is
facing pressure to expand a ground attack in Gaza which Barnea
and other commentators say is falling far short of the stated
aim of destroying the resistance’s system of tunnels.</p>
<p>There are signs of internal disarray as senior Israeli army
officers leak to the media about disagreements with the
country’s political leadership. One “senior officer” disputed
Netanyahu’s claim that the army had not made him fully aware of
the “threat” from Gaza tunnels.</p>
<p>“Our responsibility is to lead the offensive to where it needs
to go, not to where the public wants. This is not reality TV and
rating is not a factor,” the senior officer <a
href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4551817,00.html">told
<em>Ynet</em></a>.</p>
<p>If Netanyahu presses on, Barnea writes, “he will have to deal
with the [rising Israeli] death toll. He probably remembers what
happened to former Prime Minister Menachem Begin in similar
circumstances; if he stops, he will have to deal with
disappointment and internal criticism.”</p>
<p>Barnea is referring to Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon which
killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese.</p>
<p>It was seen as a catastrophe in Israel, which lost almost seven
hundred soldiers. Begin, once the revered leader of the Irgun
Zionist terrorist group in the 1940s, left office in disgrace
and died soon afterwards.</p>
<h2>Israel looking for a way out</h2>
<p>In an astonishing sign of Israel’s eagerness to end the Gaza
assault on less than humiliating terms, the foreign ministry <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.607936">advised
Netanyahu to initiate a UN Security Council resolution</a>
that would set favorable terms for Israel. Israel normally seeks
to avoid any action by the UN.</p>
<p>The resolution would call for Gaza to be “disarmed,” <em>Haaretz</em>
reported, and for Abbas to return to Gaza. It would be modeled
on resolution 1701, that allowed Israel to retreat from Lebanon
in 2006.</p>
<p>But despite the face-saving 2006 resolution, no one in Israel
doubts that Lebanese resistance forces are likely to be fiercer
than ever should Israel ever plan a return. No matter what the
Security Council says, Palestinian resistance groups are not
going to unilaterally disarm, giving Israel the victory it could
not achieve in battle.</p>
<p>The 1982 and 2006 Lebanon wars, like so many of Israel’s
aggressions, showed that if “winning” is measured in
slaughtering civilians, Israel, like the United States in
Vietnam, remains the champion.</p>
<p>But politically and strategically, Israel and its leaders may
be realizing that they are <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-being-defeated-gaza-it-was-lebanon">facing
another defeat in Gaza</a>.</p>
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