Vol. 73/No. 5      February 9, 2009

While Tel Aviv has allowed 120 UN trucks a day to enter the Strip with food and medicine since the fighting ended, it has refused to permit concrete or steel through the border crossings, claming that such supplies could be used by Hamas for rocket parts or other military purposes. Tel Aviv also blocked the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority from sending cash, claiming the money would end up in the hands of Hamas.

Hamas has agreed to the return of Fatah forces to help supervise the border crossings. Hamas defeated Fatah, which runs the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, in elections in the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian parliament in 2006. Hamas then pushed Fatah out of Gaza in open fighting in 2007.

Both Tel Aviv and Hamas have been sending representatives to Cairo, where Egyptian officials are helping to hammer out implementation of the cease-fire, following the Israeli defeat of Hamas in the assault.

As part of the deal, the Egyptian government is considering tripling its current force of 750 guards at the Gaza-Egypt border and patrolling there 24 hours a day to prevent “weapons smuggling” to Hamas. It has already sent hundreds of additional guards to the border.

The Jerusalem Post reported January 23 that a “new mechanism” set up with Cairo to prevent Gaza arms smuggling includes three layers: “intelligence cooperation, obstacles in Sinai and the deployment of new tunnel-detection technology along the border.”

Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni flew to Brussels to meet with representatives of the European Union to work out details on the forces, ships, and technology the EU will contribute to enforce the Israeli cease-fire terms.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy on January 23 ordered that a helicopter-carrier be sent immediately to the Mediterranean Sea to patrol the waters off the Gaza coast.

The Post reported progress on an Israel-Hamas prisoner exchange. According to the paper, Tel Aviv has said it will exchange hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by the Israeli government and open Gaza border crossings when Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier held by Hamas since 2006, is released.

More details on the destruction caused during the three-week siege are emerging. Even before the Israeli assault, unemployment in Gaza was nearly 50 percent and 80 percent of its residents survived on less than $2.30 per day, according to the United Nations.

Some 50,000 people moved to shelters during the fighting, according to UN officials. They say 15,000 are still there and many more are staying with relatives.

“We have two types of families here—those whose homes were completely destroyed and those whose homes were half-destroyed,” the manager at one UN shelter told the Washington Post. “If you have at least one room left in your home that’s livable, you have to leave. The ones whose homes were completely destroyed can stay.”

Some Israeli officials dispute the total number of civilians reported killed and wounded. An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson told the Jerusalem Post that it had checked on 900 of the estimated 1,300 killed, but claimed they were mostly Hamas combatants.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, which is independent of both Hamas and Fatah, has counted 1,285 dead, 82 percent civilians. It says that among the dead are 280 children and 111 women and has posted a report on its Web site with the names, ages, and circumstances of death. The center says that 4,536 people were wounded, including 1,133 children and 735 women.

Tel Aviv is also disputing charges that it used white phosphorous as a weapon during the assault, although it does not deny that it was used for making smokescreens in open battlegrounds. White phosphorous sticks to skin and burns all the way through to the bone.  
 
Transformation of Israeli military
Besides defeating Hamas, Tel Aviv demonstrated progress in transforming the Israeli military, drawing on the lessons of the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

While the assault was still in full gear, the Jerusalem Post wrote that “one conclusion that can already be made is that in this war, the intelligence is unprecedented, as is the cooperation among the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), the IDF’s Southern Command and the air force.” Unlike in past wars, when each branch worked independently, this time they established “a single joint command-and-control center.”

At least four types of special forces were used heavily during the invasion of Gaza including paratroopers; Shayetet 13 (navy seals); Shaldag, trained in counterterrorism; and the undercover Duvdevan Unit.

In an interview with Yedioth, the IDF chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, said that senior officers personally led the troops during the Gaza invasion, unlike the 2006 war in Lebanon when brigade commanders watched the action from computer screens.

The assault forced Hamas to stop firing unguided missiles into Israel. Prior to the assault, Hamas fired some 70 homemade rockets into Israel a day, aiming at nearby towns. That number rapidly dropped to less than 20 once the Israeli assault was in full swing. Hamas did not shoot down a single helicopter, blow up a single tank, or capture a single Israeli soldier during the fighting. Despite this, Ismael Haniya, a top Hamas leader, announced in a January 18 television broadcast that the group had won a “popular victory.”  
 
Arabs in Israel raise demands
The January edition of Commentary, a conservative magazine that pays close attention to Israeli politics, published an article by Hillel Halkin that expresses concern that the growing number of Arabs inside Israel would undermine Israel’s Jewish “national identity.”

Arab citizens of Israel make up 20 percent of Israel’s population today and 25 percent of school-age children.

Israel, Halkin writes, “even if it withdraws completely or nearly to its 1967 borders, has to prepare for the day on which three out of ten, and possibly more, of its citizens are Arabs.”

Halkin notes that over the last several years, Arab-Israelis have raised a series of demands that would mean “revising practically every aspect of Israeli existence” from symbols like the Israeli flag and national anthem all the way to “the restitution of lands expropriated for Jewish use.”
 
 
Related articles:
Cuban 5 offer solidarity to Palestinians in Gaza
Israel created on land taken from Palestinians  
 
 
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