WSJ EDITORIAL: THE HAMAS VICTORY
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323713104578133501693560738.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
The cease-fire leaves the terror group intact and politically stronger.
Regarding America’s war in Vietnam, Henry Kissinger once noted that “the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win.” Regarding Israel’s latest war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the same considerations apply.
No wonder Wednesday’s announcement of an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire prompted enthusiastic cheering in the streets of Gaza, with a Gaza TV station calling it “victory for the resistance.” That’s not an idle boast.
No doubt many Gazans were simply relieved to face no more bombing raids. But the leaders of Hamas also understand that they have emerged politically intact and strategically stronger after eight days of inconclusive fighting.
The terrorist group fired more than 1,500 rockets at Israel—forcing millions of Israelis into bunkers and bomb shelters—but suffered no decisive military defeat. Hamas openly dared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to invade the Gaza Strip, and by not doing so Mr. Netanyahu left the terror leaders alive to strike again. Hamas also won a new international patron in Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who brokered the cease-fire.
Under the cease-fire terms, Israel has agreed to launch no ground attacks or targeted strikes in Gaza such as the one that killed Hamas military supremo Ahmed Jabari last week. The Egyptian government has been accorded a special role in maintaining the cease-fire, but that will mean little unless it halts the flood of arms coming from Iran into the Strip from Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. Israel received a similar guarantee after its last cease-fire with Hamas in 2009, but the rockets multiplied and with longer ranges.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported Wednesday that the agreement also does not “force upon [Hamas] the responsibility for enforcing the cease-fire on the other [terrorist] organizations in the Gaza Strip.” That allows Hamas to delegate rocket attacks to groups like Islamic Jihad while it gains an additional measure of political impunity. The outcome will enhance Hamas’s standing both in the Arab world and against its Palestinian rival Mahmoud Abbas.
Mr. Netanyahu avoids a costly ground invasion shortly before a January election, and he also avoids further world condemnation and the risk of a public disagreement with the Obama Administration. But there’s a reason that news of the cease-fire was greeted with public protests in southern Israeli cities that have taken the brunt of Palestinian rocket fire.
“Why did we go to all that trouble,” texted one Israeli soldier who had spent the previous three days poring over target sets in Gaza, “if now we need [Egyptian President Mohamed] Morsi’s permission to take out a ticking bomb?” That view may spread in Israel as the election nears.
Israel lives in a bad neighborhood that has become more dangerous since the Arab Spring, and a case can be made for a cease-fire that buys perhaps a year or two of quiet on its southern front. Israel has at least degraded Hamas’s ability to attack if there is a war with Iran next year.
But Iran, whose missiles formed the bulk of Hamas’s arsenal, surely noticed that the Jewish state had an opportunity to strike a decisive military blow but declined to do so under world pressure. That can only embolden the mullahs as they prepare for the next, inevitable, confrontation.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page 16
A version of this article appeared November 22, 2012, on page A14 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Hamas’s Gaza Victory.
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