The IDF must find a way to inspire fear in Israel’s enemies, as in days past, laments Dov Weisglass, a former aide to Ariel Sharon, in Ynet:

Once upon a time, when our founding fathers were in power, that same Mossad which [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah now disparages would have eliminated him a long time ago. However, Israel today is not the Israel it used to be.

Hamas too realizes that it is dealing with current-day Israel. It fires rockets and mortar shells with no fear; it forced Israel to lift the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip; it holds on to abducted soldier Gilad Shalit and keeps fooling those negotiating on his release.

Despite its misery and inferiority, Hamas is talking to Israel as an equal. Its leaders threaten us, make demands, and present conditions. They conduct themselves as though they know Israel has no other choice except for negotiating in line with their rules. And they’re right.

Also in Ynet, former Yitzhak Rabin aide Eitan Haber offers a lament of his own about next week’s second anniversary of the start of the Second Lebanon War. There will be no festivals to mark the occasion, only memorial prayers, Haber writes:

Indeed, in almost every possible way, the decision to embark on the Second Lebanon War was a case of completely flawed judgment.

In any case, the damages caused to the State of Israel and to the Israel Defense Force in this war are immense; most certainly, the 158 bereaved families who lost their loved ones paid a terrible price. And what for? And why?

A recent poll commissioned by Peace Now showed that 73 percent of Israelis have not visited any settlements in the last five years. Peace Now’s reaction? Bus more Israelis to West Bank settlements.

In other news from the wild West Bank, a Ha’aretz editorial calls on the Israeli government to do more to ensure the rule of law in the territory — particularly when it comes to violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians.

It’s going to take time for the Hamas-Israel cease-fire to take hold, which is why Israel’s military hasn’t responded to the firing of Kassam rockets from the Gaza Strip over the last three weeks, Ha’aretz writes in an editorial. Hamas is trying, Ha’aretz says:

Hamas’ public effort to fully keep its commitment is evident. The Hamas mufti has called anyone who fires a Qassam a “criminal,” and its leadership is declaring that the Qassams damage Palestinian interests…

This does not mean Israel must sit on its hands and do nothing for six months, absorbing Qassams with no response just so the cease-fire will be observed on its part. However, it must allow the Palestinians the opportunity to enforce the agreement, without playing into the hands of gangs or splinter organizations, thereby crushing the responsible party in Gaza at the moment.

Meanwhile, Ynet’s Alex Fishman writes that Israel has failed to take advantage of the relative lull in the fighting to improve defenses in Israel’s Gaza-adjacent communities to prepare for the next round of rocket attacks:

The ceasefire is the first lull in Hamas’ “war of independence” since it took over Gaza. The group uses every moment in this lull in order to better organize and build up strength ahead of the next round of fighting. And what do our leaders do in order to take advantage of the lull ahead of the next round? Nothing. We’re on vacation…

If the homes are not fortified people will be leaving…

Seemingly, the lull came at the right time. Residents could have expected to see their communities flooded by contractors and laborers the moment quiet prevailed, with secured rooms being constructed at a dizzying pace. After all, this is what was decided; this is precisely what the government promised.

Moreover, it is clear to everyone that the relative quiet brought by the lull is only temporary, and that every day that passes without it being used for building fortifications and improving our anti-rocket alert system is a wasted day. Yet for the time being, nothing has changed on the ground. Not one brick has been laid, and no wall has been moved.

On Sunday, Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff of Ha’aretz wrote that captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit has turned into a hostage of the crisis over Gaza’s border crossings, which Israel has been closing in response to rocket attacks from Gaza.
(more…)

Gilad Sharon pens an angry Op-Ed in Ynet delivering Israeli Arabs an ultimatum: “Do you wish to enjoy all the good Israel bestows upon you? Then be completely loyal to it. If you cannot do it, be prepared to pay the price.”

Sharon’s missive was prompted by last week’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem by a Palestinian from eastern Jerusalem who carried an Israeli ID card. Though not an Israeli citizen, the terrorist lived within Israel’s borders. Sharon, a son of the former prime minister, writes:

The repeated terror attacks carried out by Arab terrorists possessing Israeli ID cards highlight the need for a frank and open discussion regarding relations between Arabs and Jews in Israel and the future of these ties…

This pretention must stop: You shall stop pretending that you are loyal to the State the way it is, and the State will stop pretending that it does not discriminates against you, because it does. It has no choice, as you come out against its essence as a Jewish state and are working to turn it into something else. For example, how can we not discriminate against an elected representative such as Azmi Bishara or Ahmad Tibi, who served as an advisor for Arafat the terrorist, when it comes to sharing sensitive security information?

This juggling act, whereby on the one hand Arab Israelis enjoy the State’s health and welfare services and freedom of expression unlike anywhere else in our region, while on the other hand their representatives condemn and attack Israel at every opportunity, and particularly in enemy states, must end.

Decent points, maybe, but the hole in this argument is that the converse can be argued just as easily. Israeli Arabs can say to Sharon and the Israeli government: When you stop discriminating against us, when you treat us like equals, when you craft a national anthem and flag that speaks of us, then we will be loyal to the state.

It’s a complicated situation.

A day after the second major terrorist attack in four months by a Jerusalem-area Palestinian, the Jerusalem Post’s Calev Ben David asks how Israel can protect its people against terrorists among the 200,000 Palestinians who live on the west (i.e. Israeli) side of the West Bank security fence. It’s not so easy.

Sascha Baron Cohen narrates “the running of the Jews” in Borat.

The serious-minded former director of Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Yossi Alpher, who also is co-editor of Bitterlemons.org, a Palestinian-Israeli Web site, writes about a close encounter of the Bruno kind in his latest column in the Forward.

Marty Peretz has a piece in The New Republic that echoes JTA’s analysis last week about Israel’s sudden “peace offensive.” Peretz declares the chances of success of an Israeli-Syrian peace deal (as measured by Syria moving away from Iran) virtually nil, and he opposes Israel’s latest cease-fire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip (which doesn’t seem to be working so well).

Though Peretz gets Mahmoud Abbas’ name wrong (he calls him Mohammed, which I don’t believe is the same thing), he more than makes up for it by sticking that line through the “o” of Terje Rød-Larsen’s name. Well done, Marty.

The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto suggests that the accidental killing of American activist Rachel Corrie by an Israeli tractor in March 2003 may have given the Palestinian who perpetrated yesterday’s tractor attack in Jerusalem the idea for turning a tractor into a deadly weapon.

Come on.

On a related note to my post yesterday about the battle over language in the Middle East conflict (“Arab” vs. “Palestinian”), now that we know the perpterator of the attack was Palestinian, we can say so.

And my colleague Dan Sieradski was exacting enough to point out that the deadly weapon used in yesterday’s attack was neither a bulldozer nor a tractor, but a backhoe loader. Given that it’s part tractor, I think we’ll still be safe if we keep calling it a tractor. And if someone calls it a bulldozer, we may just let it slide.

Many readers — and some fellow reporters — are questioning JTA’s use of the more general term “Arab” rather than “Palestinian” to describe the terrorist who perpetrated Wednesday’s deadly attack in Jerusalem.

A note of explanation: In the aftermath of the attack, it was not immediately clear exactly who the perpetrator was. His name was spelled a variety of different ways in the Israeli and international press, his age was given alternately as 30 or 31, and he was described as a resident of eastern Jerusalem.

Now, here’s where things get tricky. Eastern Jerusalem is code for the part of Jerusalem that was controlled by Jordan until the 1967 Six-Day War — i.e. Arab. But now Jerusalem is a united city, since Israel annexed East Jerusalem in the war’s aftermath (though almost no one in the international community officially recognizes that action). When East Jerusalem became part of Israeli Jerusalem (and we began calling it “eastern Jerusalem” — note the lowercase), the Arabs who lived there were offered Israeli citizenship. Some accepted it, but most did not. Virtually all, however, were granted Israeli ID cards.

JTA’s style is to refer to Arabs who are citizens of Israel as Arab Israelis (occasionally we slip up and call them Israeli Arabs), but these people mostly call themselves as Palestinians, or Palestinian Israelis. We refer to other Arabs in the neighborhood as Palestinians.

So, is someone from a village on the eastern outskirts of Jerusalem — which was not even considered part of Jerusalem when the Jordanians controlled the territory — who has an Israeli ID card an Israeli?

It wasn’t clear to us whether or not the terrorist had Israeli citizenship; hence, our preference for the more general term. The only thing we could say with certainty is that he was Arab.

(Some news outlets, like the New York Sun, never use the term Palestinian, instead using Palestinian Arab).

In this part of the world, language, identity and conflict are all interconnected.

Finally, if you’re wondering why I used the word “tractor” above and not “bulldozer,” take a look at the video from the attack. Looks like a tractor to me.

The debate in Israel about the efficacy of the prisoner swap deal with Hezbollah continues.

Alexander Yakobson writes in Ha’aretz that the real cost of the exchange of “prisoners for bodies” with Hezbollah is more Israeli bodies, since the deal projects Israeli weakness. He could have argued his point much more effectively and clearly simply by saying that this deal gives further encouragement to Hezbollah and other terrorist groups to kidnap more Israelis and demand ransom.

In an editorial whose point escapes me, The Jerusalem Post, which argued against the deal, says, “All of us must now respect the decision” by the Israeli Cabinet to make the swap.

Ynet’s Roee Nahmias writes that the deal constitutes a victory for Hezbollah, albeit “by points rather than by knockout:”

Nasrallah looked into the cameras a few times and promised to Kuntar that he shall be released. The operation to abduct the IDF soldiers was called “the promise that was kept.” What can we say; this promise at least was indeed kept.