Here is a caption by someone who lives under bombardment in Gaza:
After five days
Gaza Strip
After five days of the Israeli aggressive Cast Lead military operation on the
Gaza Strip which aims at destroying Hamas’s control, I can claim easily that it
is stronger. The movement, its leadership, and popular sympathy ‘SOCIAL
CAPITAL’ is more solid. The Cast Lead operation started with what was called
shock and awe, or shock treatment, by targeting more than 40 premises in one
air strike. During the last five days, Israel committed grave breaches to
International Humanitarian Law resulting in more than 400 deaths and 2000
injuries, most of them are civilians, including the blue police who are Law
Enforcement Officials rather than combatants. Yes we were shocked by the number
of casualties as Gaza has been saturated with civilian blood. None of the
Hamas military or political leaders were among the dead and injured.
In Gaza, Hamas has one front to lead the operation, but on the Israeli side
there is a triangular front. It is composed of the Israel’s Premier, its
Minister of Foreign Affairs, and its Defense Minister with each one of them
having a different political agenda and goals to achieve by Cast Lead. Gaza
has one unified and coherent goal and one agenda; to simply survive.
Within the last five days Israel’s Air Force demonstrated its superiority in a
very immoral way in Gaza. It bombarded the same targets, which became rubble
after the first bombardment, three or four more times. It demolished these
targets, and then after destroying them completely, it continued to target them
simply to shake our homes and destroy innocent people’s shelters. Now, the air
strike phase and the bank of targets have reached its end and the locally made
Palestinian rockets still reach the same number, or more, of southern Israel
cities. Hamas is not under shock but is still in control, and the main
question facing the triangle is what would be next? Is the incursion into the
Gaza Strip inevitable? Who will control Gaza afterwards? These questions face
the triangle after five days of the operation as it also hesitantly rejected
the crappie French proposal for a 48 hour humanitarian ceasefire.
If Israel is to push its troops into the most populated area in the globe,
casualties among innocent civilians will definitely be countless as a result.
After the last five days, Israeli forces had proven that targeting innocent
civilians is an integral part of their military doctrine. If an incursion
happens, Israeli troops will be visible targets for Palestinian combat teams in
the heart of unfriendly territory.
Most probably, the current Israeli military aggression on Gaza has internal and
competitive electoral goals for the triangle within Israel, and merely one
external goal. The external is to strengthen Hamas’s political control in
Gaza, since it will continue to be in power regardless of the price civilians
will pay. Moreover, the ongoing Cast Lead is the mercy bullet ending a
clinically dead process; the two state solution, and to moderates in the
region.
The surviving Hamas will not accept a truce without dictating its conditions of
lifting the closure imposed on the Gaza Strip, including the Rafah border with
Egypt. This will be an absolute triumph for Hamas, and if not, it will win the
social capital and sympathy of all Gazans. Hamas’s social capital will also
come from the region which is rapidly moving toward extremism and is asking for
the withdrawal of the Arab Peace initiative. This will not be helpful for the
triangle’s electoral agenda even inside Israel. The irony today for Gazans is
that the triangle attacks them from the sky while Hamas came out of the ballot
boxes.
Currently, after five days it became more obvious that the Cast Lead operation
and its triangle have no political goals, but rather unachievable military
ones. On the other side, Hamas has no military goals, but rather achievable
political goals. Today all world capitals, including Israeli cities, are full
with demonstrators against the Israeli war crimes in Gaza. This will lead to
the isolation of Israel and its triangle, and most probably some of the
triangle’s heads will be prosecuted before some European national courts if not
the International Court of Justice.
Finally, on the sunset of the sixth day, heading toward the New Year, in which
the triangle had a meeting for more than six hours to decide whether they will
widen the Cast Lead operation on Gaza or not, Gazans and Hamas are asked to
prepare for the triumph rallies. I can assure you that this is not wishful
thinking, but rather realistic since the structure of Hamas, its control and
leadership are still operating on all levels and spheres. In Israel, the
triangle would face a new Winograd Commission and may be losing the coming
election.
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