And yet, the Israeli response so far has been quite restrained. The air force made do with symbolic attacks in response to the rocket fire (for the first rocket; the second prompted no response at all). In the West Bank, the response has been to interrogate and arrest people suspected of planning additional attacks.
But despite its harsh rhetoric, the government has stuck to a policy of avoiding collective punishment in the West Bank. The Palestinians killed were the perpetrators of the attacks (the driver in the car ramming attack and the two young men who stabbed a policeman in Jerusalem’s Old City). There is a clear effort not to harm civilians who are not involved in the violence.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been taken to task as a result. The right wing and the centrist Kahol Lavan party have blamed him for the deteriorating security situation near the Gaza border and in the West Bank and have demanded a harsh response to the attacks. But for the time being, there is no sign that the prime minister is changing his position. It appears that his basic aversion to military entanglements, about which a great deal has been written in recent years, is still intact.
The real test will come ahead of the Knesset election in less than a month: If there is a major escalation, in the form of hundreds of rockets again being fired at southern Israel, as occurred last November and in May of this year, will Netanyahu continue to demonstrate restraint? That depends mainly on the casualty toll on the two sides and his Likud party’s situation in the polls.
During the escalation in May, at the height of failed government coalition talks, Netanyahu chose to hold back even after four Israeli civilians were killed, seeking a hasty end to the exchange of blows after a wave of Israel Air Force assaults. His response might change if he feels that events in the Gaza Strip are threatening his ability to win the September election.
Other variables
Two other variables need to be added to this equation. One is the stance of the Israel Defense Forces, which is now led by a new chief of staff, Aviv Kochavi, who seems slightly more willing than his predecessor to demonstrate the capabilities the IDF has amassed in the Gaza Strip. The other is the position of the Hamas leadership, which itself is facing a growing challenge to its control of Gaza from the smaller Palestinian factions and groups that have splintered from Hamas itself.
The new term used by the Hamas leadership and the media outlets associated with it to describe activists killed in incidents at the border is “angry young men.” Most of the young men who have tried to cross the Gaza border fence into Israel in recent weeks were in the past associated with Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Some left those groups and moved closer to the extremist Salafi groups active in the Gaza Strip. Others have not officially left the mainstream organizations.
Al-anwar Newspaper English news in Australia
