At the pace of Israeli life, it looks like an event that happened here a long time ago, but only a week ago we were immersed in fighting in Gaza – attacking and eliminating, intercepting and absorbing, and waiting for the end of another round of the never-ending campaign in the south.
This is also the bottom line: Unlike this week's victory parades in the Knesset, nothing began with Operation Shield and Arrow, and nothing ended there. This was a small and limited operation, against a small and limited enemy, in which the IDF and Shin Bet brought a series of beautiful tactical achievements, whose strategic importance is quite marginal. Although the security forces met their three main objectives – severely damaging Islamic Jihad's operational leadership, leaving Hamas out of the campaign, and refraining from launching a multi-front campaign – as always, one is left to wonder what deterrence was achieved, and for how long.
It is not recommended for residents of the envelope to hold their breath. The familiar pendulum of their lives swung them to five days in the safe rooms, and pulled them away just as easily. They will likely be required to return there sometime in the near future, courtesy of Islamic Jihad or another rogue organization that will find an excuse to launch a rocket or mortar into the western Negev. The question of how not to get there was left to Israel, as in the past, as a theoretical matter. This week as well, it proved that it has no real interest in seeking a fundamental solution to the Gaza problem, and worse: that by its actions it continues to strengthen its main enemy, Hamas, and weaken its partner – the Palestinian Authority.
Paracetamol won't help here
For years, Israel insisted on demanding that the sovereign exercise his sovereignty in the territory, and take active action so that terrorist activity against it would not be carried out from his territory. This was true in Gaza, when every shooting, launching or balloon was met with attacks on Hamas targets, and it was true even during the most difficult days of the Syrian civil war – when the Assad government barely controlled Damascus and did not know to its right or left what was happening in the Golan Heights – when Israel insisted that the Syrian army was responsible for the entire territory of the country and would pay a price if it did not fulfill its responsibility.
This policy has a clear advantage: it does not allow the sovereign to roll his eyes, and it puts a price tag on what is carried out on his territory. It also has one obvious drawback: any minor terrorist or ephemeral organization can lead to a major conflagration. Within this spectrum, Israel operated for years, with considerable success, but in recent years it has decided to withdraw from it in practice. Gaza is not the only evidence of this, with a third operation in three and a half years aimed directly at Islamic Jihad; Hezbollah also did not pay a price for the brazen firing of dozens of rockets from Lebanese territory into the Galilee last Passover. Israel was quick to release him of responsibility and blame Hamas, dividing its response between Gaza and Damascus.
Beirut then remained immune, out of the equation. Israel has quite a few reasons to refrain from harming it – the main one is not to be dragged into a painful campaign against Hezbollah, which Shield and Arrow will look like a calm trip on the other hand, but there is also a flip side to this: Hezbollah understood that Israel is willing to ignore the fact that it sent a terrorist to attack Megiddo, and grants immunity to its members and senior members of other organizations sheltering in its shadow. The series of well-publicized meetings that the Iranians (and Nasrallah) held in Beirut with Ziad Nahaleh of Islamic Jihad and Saleh Arouri of Hamas sought to convey unity of the Iranian resistance axis, but also showed the status of Hezbollah, which has become the big brother in this axis.
Despite the text and pictures from Beirut, the axis was in no hurry to storm for Islamic Jihad. With the exception of the Iranians, who would love to see Israel bleed at any time and place, the rest of the parties found reasons to sit on the fence. Although Nahaleh tried to make them worse and continued the fighting for a few extra days until he agreed to the ceasefire, he found himself alone again. It is doubtful whether this will deter him from another round, which may, like his predecessor, be connected again to what is happening in Judea and Samaria.
The road to Shield and Arrow, for those who forgot, began a few weeks earlier, with rocket launches in retaliation for the killing of Islamic Jihad operatives in operations in the West Bank. It culminated in the firing of 102 rockets at Sderot at midday, following the death of hunger striker Khader Adnan. Israel sought to sever this connection, and so far has succeeded in doing so. This year's Jerusalem Day "Flag Parade" was significantly quieter than in previous years, when Hamas – the main engine behind efforts to stir up the capital around the false slogan that "the Temple Mount is in danger" – was not eager to drag Gaza into the fighting again.
Hamas had other reasons not to join the fighting. Beyond the fact that he enjoys seeing Islamic Jihad crushed and weakened (and consequently the internal threat to it is reduced), he is busy with two main efforts for him, for which fighting was disruptive: the first is the effort to strengthen itself, that is, to reach the next round stronger and more prepared, and the second is the effort to improve the standard of living in Gaza, inter alia by leaving workers to Israel, promoting projects, and keeping the crossings of goods to Gaza open continuously in order to sustain its economy.
Israel is an active partner in all these efforts, out of a parallel desire to distance itself from a battle against the largest and strongest organization in the Gaza Strip. But her actions in this regard are only tactical, paracetamol for a malignant disease. It must boldly decide what it wants from Gaza: reach long-term arrangements that will keep war away – projects like a carrot versus a real and unafraid whip of exacting a price – or continue with the current format of a round of fighting every few months, which preserves only momentary deterrence. At this time, the second answer is the correct one. The invoice will soon be submitted to residents of the south.
Ad hoc unity
The fighting in Gaza has momentarily pushed aside protests over the legal legislation. The IDF boasted that all the reservists (and pilots at their head) showed up immediately without an "if" and without a "but" – proof that when national security is at stake, we are all united. This is true, with three asterisks: the first, that everyone was comfortable putting aside the rifts for a moment and uniting, but this unity did not really change anything. The second is that the legislation is currently frozen, and if it is renewed, everything will return to turmoil, on a larger scale than in the past. And third, that there are now several other matters on the agenda that have considerable potential to rock the boat again.
The "draft law" that exempts Avrachim from service stands out among what is on the agenda, but it is not the only one; The protests are now fueled by a combination of looting of the public purse by the ultra-Orthodox and the savage cost of living
The "draft law" that exempts Avrachim from service stands out among what is on the agenda, but it is not the only one; The protests are now fueled by a combination of the looting of the public purse by the ultra-Orthodox and the savage cost of living – issues that have the potential to bring to the streets not only the anti-government camp (along with the ever-undermined personal security, and not only in the Arab sector).
All these promise a hot summer, which may even overshadow the summer of social protest in 2011. As always, this will have direct effects not only on society, but also on the economy and security; Israel's enemies may have seen its intelligence and operational capabilities in Shield and Arrow, but they also see and hear the voices in the Knesset and on the street, and may be tempted to act again soon.
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