"Yes, I concede Israel has the right to respond to Hamas' rockets,"
So who decides where and when to stop the retaliation? If Hamas are (and they clearly are) fighting the dirtiest of battles by fighting from their tunnels and drawing return rocket fire, what does one do?
Start with the problems:
- one is the mentality of the Islamic majority in the region, that is worked into a lather by its religious leadership
- two is the battle between Sunni and Shi'ite - neither are immune from the madness. Hamas (Sunni), Muslim Brotherhood (Sunni), Hezbollah (Shi'iite), Asaib Ahl al-Haq (Shia), a host of others and now an even more radical ISIL (Sunni).
These groups see to it that the average garden variety Muslim trying to mind his own business, never can.
- three - Although by far, most of the violence is associated with Islam vs Islam, Israel is automatically the convenient common enemy, firstly because it represents the 'jew' (hated by Allah, or more specifically, the nutjob Mohammad) and also due to its strength relative to its physical size, as well as its economic, scientific and social success, however, even some countries in the region are happy for Israel to eliminate the more radical Islamic troublemakers. The envy of Israel's success is too much to bear for the radical religious power merchants.
For Israel, it is now a matter of zero-tolerance. As I heard one commentator say, in paralleling Israel's situation to a football season (one might think it a trivial comparison, but there is a parallel). A football team can go 8-2, or even 8-1 and sit on top of the ladder, but Israel must go 8-0 - there is no other choice for them, because the risk of losing one game is that it is all over. Their neighbours have a clear death wish for Israel (despite what many say, there is no distinguishing between Israel and jews), as evidenced for example, by the Charter of Hamas or by the words that come out of the mouths of leading Clerics. The latest evidence:
Zero tolerance has associated with it very unfortunate collateral damage. Either the people eliminate the threat, or Israel must do it themselves.
Egypt is the other neighbour of Gaza, but despite its own closed border policy - for the same reasons (it does not want a bar of Hamas), if Hamas were to lift a finger against Egypt, they know that the world would not judge Egypt's response in the same way that it judges Israel.
I believe the hope is that a more moderate leadership (Egypt friendly) will take over in Gaza (and by default, in the West Bank). Abbas is actually too weak (he is under the thumb of the radicals) and this is too much of a threat to Israel.
Islam is however a Shame-based culture - this is a big problem for Israel because of its historical strength. The bigger picture is the same for the West.
