Making the case for a ceasefire
- Author: Ami Eden
- Filed under: Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
May 1,2008
Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Larry Derfner makes the case for an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire:
There are reasons for Israel not to want a cease-fire with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. For one, the terrorist groups will take it as a victory; it will be a great morale booster for them. For another, it will undercut Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian moderates; the message they’ll take from it is that their way, the way of negotiation, didn’t work, while the Hamas/Islamic Jihad way, the way of terror, worked. And this conclusion will be drawn not only by Palestinians, but by much of the Muslim world, including Iran.
Not good.
Nevertheless, I am in favor of Israel accepting a cease-fire with Hamas. How the Palestinians and other Muslims interpret such a cease-fire would be one thing; the true import of it would be something very different - which the Palestinians and other Muslims would see soon enough.
If a cease-fire worked, it would bring peace and quiet on both sides of the Israel-Gaza border, while the downside for Israel wouldn’t be any steeper than it’s already been for several years. By agreeing to a cease-fire we don’t have anything to lose, and a lot to gain. If Hamas offers, we should accept.
I KNOW some of you have questions. Such as: What if it doesn’t work? What if Hamas keeps firing Kassams? Or what if Hamas upholds the cease-fire but Islamic Jihad doesn’t?
The answer is: Then the cease-fire is over and Israel goes back to war in Gaza like we’ve been doing for the last seven years. Nothing gained, but nothing lost, either. …
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One Response for "Making the case for a ceasefire"
I assume that back door diplomacy is ongoing along with sanctions and official non-recognition of Hamas etc. The problem, as it has been all along, is the PLO/Hamas policy of maintaining asymetrical warfare against Israel while professing overtures of peace and or “truce” at the same time, arguing that their “tit” is the result of Israel’s “tat”. Since rejection of a two state solution, ie: UN Partition Plan, is a given despite Oslo, along with internal power plays within the PLO (which includes Hamas as I understand it) it seems to me that what is going on is an exercise in futility. An ongoing state of asymetric warfare needs to be accepted by the Israeli public as well as by the Jewish diaspora with all the attendant implications which would include acceptance of large casualties on the part of Israel’s enemies. There is no way, I can see, that the hearts and minds of its enemies can be “won”. I daresay world “opinion” would be irrelevant after the fact of Israel’s destruction. To complicate matters there is the use of Palestinian Arab and other proxies by competing Arab and non-Arab Muslim (Sunni/Shia) powers seeking regional hegemony which use Israel as their method of mobilizing opinion and establishing influence. Truces have been defacto and will continue to be so, if only to allow either side to claim what it will.
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