No victory photos from Gaza op
Op-ed: Hamas is left with some 6,000 rockets, a functioning military wing and many more terror tunnels; Israel faces all of these with passive defense strategy after yielding on offensive initiatives that could have prevented future attacks on us.
"It was a minor war," said one of Prime Minister's Benjamin Netanyahu's closest advisors on Thursday. So don’t expect a reconstruction of the famous Six Day War image where Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, and Uzi Narkiss walked proudly in the old city of Jerusalem towards the Wailing Wall, because in minor wars there are no victory photos.
In this war each will have to choose its own photos and heroes. For me it's the tragic photo of the rocket fire at Kibbutz Nirim that took the lives of the Kibbutz's security chief and his deputy shortly before the ceasefire went into effect.
Related stories:
- After Gaza, Netanyahu faces tough political battles
- Local leaders doubt Netanyahu's commitment to southern residents
- Gaza ceasefire is too little, too late
Netanyahu, for his part, is trying to shove photos of himself and his two campaign partners, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon and Chief of Staff Benny Gantz down the public's throat.
Only time will tell whether this is the picture that will be engraved in our collective memory from Operation Protective Edge: The three leaders who achieved absolutely nothing. Should an independent investigation committee be established to probe the conduct of the operation in Gaza, its members should check first how Netanyahu, Ya'alon and Gantz knew that Hamas was planning to drag Israel into a war in July, guessed that the organization would repeat its strategic maneuvers from Operation Pillar of Defense and in the end, couldn't have been more wrong?
This is the reason that the IAF dropped thousands of bombs on targets in the Gaza Strip, bur failed to bring down Hamas.
In addition, Netanyahu, Ya'alon and Gantz are bragging about the crushing blow Hamas has suffered, but the bottom line is that the terror organization is left with some 6,000 rockets, a military wing whose commanders managed to survive and God knows how many more terror tunnels.
Israel is facing all of these with a passive defense strategy under Iron Dome, after yielding, almost completely, on offensive initiatives that could have prevented these wild attacks on us.
As far as Netanyahu's concerned, the picture is completely different: He claims that Hamas "got nothing" and that all the organization's demands were rejected by the Israeli side. Perhaps that's true, but since we are tallying up a summary of wins and loses, the big question here is what did we get? And the answer is grim: dozens of mortalities, hundreds of casualties, billions of dollars worth of damages and the mass abandonment of residents along the Gaza border
Meaning, if we use Netanyahu's words, we also "got nothing". And the reason for that is that we demanded nothing: no demilitarization, no destruction of all tunnels, we barely asked for calm. The international community is now raising money to rehabilitate Gaza, but who will pay for the damage done to Israel? We are, through tax increases, or via budget cuts in education and health.
Adding to the sense of despair, in recent days Netanyahu has been focusing on the political horizon, as if there is a chance that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will ever replace Khaled Mashal in Gaza. It's the same as always; just as he was forced, against his will, to accept Reuven Rivlin as president and Karnit Flug as Governor of the Central Bank, he will have to get used to negotiating with Mashal, whether he likes it or not.
So, what is going to happen here in the near future? Again, using Netanyahu's own words "nothing". The prime minister will do whatever he can to avoid the international community's equation of returning to the pre-1967 borders in return for the Arab countries' recognition of Israel.
And this is the harsh part of the war story's finale': We have entered into a period of great and dangerous uncertainty. If the Military Intelligence Directorate will present Netanyahu and Ya'alon information regarding Hamas efforts to manufacture rockets and build terror tunnels, will they admit that they prefer to stay quiet and keep down?
