Smuggling operations have resumed in the tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border:
The tunnels linking Gaza and Egypt are back in business, despite the hundreds of tons of bombs and missiles that Israeli troops rained down on them. The air reeked from spills of newly smuggled fuel being poured into plastic barrels as winches powered by noisy generators hauled more goods out of the wood-lined openings in the ground.
At other shafts, workers were still raising only dirt as their colleagues labored underground to dig out cave-ins caused by the Israeli bombardment. Egyptian border guards manned watchtowers barely 100 yards away. Their fast recovery underlines the difficulty of stopping the smuggling and reinforces Israel's fears that Gaza's Hamas rulers will use the tunnel network to bring in weapons to rearm after the offensive.
The elimination of this trade was a key objective of Operation Cast Lead:
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Thursday that Israel is willing to reopen hostilities if the bombings weren't enough to stop the smuggling.
''If we need to do additional military operations to stop smuggling, it will be done,'' she told Israel Radio. ''Israel reserves the right to act against smuggling, period.'' Ending the smuggling -- along with stopping Hamas rocket fire on southern Israel -- was a key Israeli objective for its offensive, which killed 1,285 Palestinians, most of them civilians, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights counted.
Operation FAIL!
The Israeli military offensive was sold to the world on several different premises. The operation was supposed to destroy Hamas human infrastructure, convince the people of Gaza to overthrow the government, and destroy smuggling along the border. It's fair to say that none of those objectives have been met; Hamas fighters famously melted away in the face of the IDF, the people of Gaza show no apparent interest in kicking Hamas to the curb (although it's early), and smuggling resumed as soon as the bombs stopped falling. Indeed, the IDF wasn't even able to stop the rocket fire, until Hamas declared its own ceasefire. The offensive has, rather, demonstrated that the Israeli political system produces dangerous, erratic, and strategically suspect policy. Noah Shachtman suggests that this was perhaps the point:
Israel's war against Hamas was launched, in large part, to send a message to its adversaries: Be afraid. Any attacks on the Jewish state will be met with overwhelming, even brutal, force. Traditionally off-limits sites, like Mosques and hospitals, won't serve as hiding places. Enemy leaders will be hunted down and killed -- even if they're surrounded by their children and wives.
Israeli leaders believe they've accomplished that task. "The Arab view is now that Israel is a crazed animal, locked in a cage, fuming to get out all the time," a senior Foreign Ministry official tells Danger Room, approvingly. "Now, it's the responsibility of the Arab leadership to keep the animal in the cage, by not provoking it."
The danger, of course, is that while erratic behavior might seem a plus in relations with the Arab world (not really, but stay with it), such a reputation most definitely isn't a positive with the rest of the world. Some Israelis may sincerely believe that they don't need anyone; I suspect that this is the greatest strategic error of all.
--Robert Farley
