MORE DISCUSSION OF GAZA OPTIONS. (UPDATED) I posted about this in "Pulling the Plug on Gaza--and the Counter-Threat" and "Why Israel Has No Good Options in Gaza" Here are more opinions, military and legal, on whether there are real options and what they are: including an article on the legal aspect, which depends on whether Israel still controls Gaza and issues of the international law of war--including collective punishment.

The summaries below are from today's edition of Daily Alert.

Former Mossad Director: "Clear Iranian Fingerprints in Gaza" - Yaakov Lappin
The IDF must stop responding defensively to the daily rocket attacks terrorizing Sderot, and take up an offensive posture, former Mossad chief and Chairman of the International Institute for Counter-terrorism (ICT) Shabtai Shavit said Wednesday. "I can say with certainty that the IDF has a very wide selection of options to activate, enabling it to go from a state of defense to attack, where terrorists will be forced to hide," Shavit said.

He said "security forces have enough information to see very clear Iranian fingerprints in Gaza." In addition, "We have intelligence proof of cooperation, including funding, guidance and provision of means, all from Hizbullah.... Whatever Hizbullah does also represents the Iranians. So all these indicate Iranian fingerprints in Gaza." "The whole idea of Hizbullah was an Iranian idea aimed at setting up a body on Israel's border which threatens Israel," Shavit added. (Ynet News)

Israel Should Pull the Plug on Gaza - Neta Sela
Former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon was asked his opinion Wednesday on whether electricity and water should be cut to Gaza in reaction to Palestinian rocket attacks. Yaalon answered: "It's unacceptable that we are supplying these things to the enemy." "The question is, how is it that we disengaged from Gaza and are still responsible for its fate?" (Ynet News)

See also Pulling the Plug on Gaza Won't Work - Moshe Arens
It has been proposed to attach a price to every Palestinian rocket launched against Israel. We will cut off water and electricity to the population of Gaza until they force the terrorists to stop launching rockets. But it won't work. Collective punishment of civilian populations did not work in World War II, and it won't work in Gaza. The international community will quickly mobilize help for the starving and the thirsty in Gaza. Water tankers will bring water to Gaza, generators will be flown in from Europe, and Israel will be asked to contribute to this humanitarian cause. It is immoral, and not worthy of Israel.

The rockets are being launched from a distance of one to three kilometers from the fence surrounding Gaza. The only way to put a stop to this is for the IDF to enter Gaza to this depth and put the rockets out of range. How long are we going to stay there after the IDF has put the rockets out of range, ask the perennial doubters. The answer is simple - as long as the children of Sderot will need protection. The writer is a former minister of defense. (Ha'aretz)

See also Is It Legal to Shut Off Water and Electricity to Gaza? - Dan Izenberg (Jerusalem Post)

See also Strike Gaza Now - Ron Ben-Yishai (Ynet News)

It could be that the Disengagement did not disengage enough. Hamas has the best of both worlds--Israel is out of the region yet is still held responsible for the welfare of the people firing missiles at her. Even if Israel could summon the gumption to ignore world opinion, there is the issue of international law. The fact that Israel allowed others to control the issue of whether Gaza and Yehudah and Shomron were 'occupied' makes Israel's problem and alleged 'responsibility' even worse.

UPDATE: Soccer Dad pointed me to a post on Daniel Pipes' weblog. Pipes refers to an article he wrote in the Jerusalem Post in 2001 on the general options that Sharon had at his disposal:

With a nod to Brig.-Gen. (res.) Effi Eitam and Haifa University's Steven Plaut, here are a few suggestions.

• Bury suicide bombers in potter's fields rather than deliver their bodies to relatives (who turn their funerals into frenzied demonstrations).
• Freeze the financial assets of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, the PLO, and the PA.
• Prevent PA officials (including Arafat) from returning to the PA.
• Permit no transportation of people or goods beyond basic necessities.
• Shut off utilities to the PA.

Then:

• Implement the death penalty against murderers.
• Seize weapons from the PA and make sure no new ones reach it.
• Re-occupy areas from which gunfire or mortars are shot.
• Raze the PA's illegal offices in Jerusalem, its security infrastructure, and villages from which attacks are launched.
• Capture or otherwise dispose of the PA leadership.
• Destroy the PA.
• Reach separate deals with each Palestinian town or village.

Sharon, in short, has no lack of choices. The hard part is finding the political will to act on them.

Keep in mind that earlier this week, there was an article about an option the Palestinian terrorists had:

Fatah: We Will Rocket Israel's Ashkelon Power Station
The Buraq Army unit of the Al-Aqsa Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah, warned Tuesday that if Israel deprives Gaza of electricity, the Israeli power generating station at Ashkelon will be bombarded. On Tuesday the Al-Mujahideen Brigades, another unit of the Al-Aqsa Brigades, claimed responsibility for launching a rocket at the Israeli town of Sderot. (Maan News-PA)

Pipes also links to Blog Central where the question of cutting off water, electricity, and gasoline is asked of Elliot Jager, Isi Leibler, Jonathan Rosenblum, MJ Rosenberg, Michael Freund, Barbara Sofer, Stewart Weiss, and Daniel Pipes himself.

Opinions range both pro and con--one calling the idea 'barbaric' and revolting as we approach the Yamim Noraim. While world opinion is considered, no one addresses the issue of international law.

Lots to read and consider.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Gaza.

WHY ISRAEL HAS NO GOOD OPTIONS IN GAZA. Earlier I quoted from an article summary that indicated that even turning off electricity to Gaza was not an option--or at least not a safe one.

Noah Pollak writes that cutting off electricity--like the other options discussed--is really no option at all:

In this context, it is not the least bit unrealistic to imagine the fallout from a strong Israeli military campaign or aid cutoff in Gaza: Mahmoud Abbas, who is involved in delicate negotiations with Israeli and American officials, would almost certainly be compelled to denounce Israel; the schizophrenic Palestinian “street” in the West Bank would be galvanized in support of Hamas; and Fatah’s security forces (which have been penetrated thoroughly by Hamas supporters) would have their incompetence exposed, and might become complicit in terrorist attacks against Israel—attacks ordered by the Hamas leadership in Damascus. In other words, the entire project of bolstering Fatah in the West Bank as both a counterexample to Gaza and a competent vehicle for curtailing Islamist influence seriously would be debilitated and possibly even scuttled.

He points out that the peace negotiations that the US has urged on Israel, and which Olmert is determined to pursue, have put Israel in this position where limited strikes, targeted assassinations and threats to turn off electricity is all that is left in Israel's arsenal.

Pollak concludes:

A renewed Fatah kleptocracy in the West Bank is not a sufficient benefit given the cost entailed—namely, that of a Gaza Strip that can terrorize Israel with impunity.

Read the whole thing.

This is the result of the absurd policy of holding negotiations with a partner who is not interested in peace--but rather in having Israel systematically, and unilaterally, make concessions in land and policy until she is negligible if existing at all.

See More Discussion of Gaza Options

Technorati Tag: Israel and Gaza and West Bank and Pollak.

PULLING THE PLUG ON GAZA--AND THE COUNTER-THREAT. Here are the summaries--from Daily Alert--of some news articles on the option now being considered of cutting of electricity to Gaza.

Israel Weighs Responding to Rocket Attacks by Cutting Electricity to Gaza - Amos Harel, Aluf Benn and Barak Ravid
In response to the ongoing Palestinian rocket fire at Israel, Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered the Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday to examine the implications of temporarily cutting off Gaza from Israeli infrastructure, including electricity, fuel and the supply of basic commodities - as an alternative to a broad IDF incursion into northern Gaza. (Ha'aretz)

See also Pulling the Plug on Gaza - Sima Kadmon
To what extent do we really understand the lives of these people who live near Gaza, who must face a constant tangible, existential threat? A threat so chilling it is almost surreal: Will my house be hit by a Kassam rocket today? Or where will my child be in the next Kassam attack? And the dilemma of each sane parent in Sderot: Am I being irresponsible by continuing to live in a place where my children are in danger's way? Once, the solution of "pulling the plug" on Gaza sparked harsh criticism. But that was before thousands of Kassam rockets. (Ynet News)

In response, the armed wing of the moderate Fatah (supported by Israel and the US)--which is battling Hamas--has threatened to attack Ashkelon if Israel takes action that is likely to further weaken Hamas--if it can drag itself away from firing missiles at Israel.

So much for our peace partners:

Fatah: We Will Rocket Israel's Ashkelon Power Station
The Buraq Army unit of the Al-Aqsa Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah, warned Tuesday that if Israel deprives Gaza of electricity, the Israeli power generating station at Ashkelon will be bombarded. On Tuesday the Al-Mujahideen Brigades, another unit of the Al-Aqsa Brigades, claimed responsibility for launching a rocket at the Israeli town of Sderot. (Maan News-PA)

See More Discussion of Gaza Options

Technorati Tag: Israel and Gaza and Hamas and Fatah.

TIME TO LAY DOWN THE LAW. Jonathan Rosenblum knocks the Dickens out of the concept of "International Humanitarian Law"

The law is an ass

by Jonathan Rosenblum
Jerusalem Post
July 12, 2007

The term "collective punishment" conjures up images of Nazis executing entire villages in retaliation for a partisan ambush. No wonder Jews are acutely sensitive to charges of imposing collective punishment or targeting civilians.

And we hear those charges a lot: last summer in Lebanon; every time Israeli artillery hit back at the source of Kassam fire from Gaza. Were Syria to fire missiles at Israeli cities, and Israel to strike back at Syrian cities with even greater force, the international community would undoubtedly condemn Israel.

Accusations of war crimes by states attempting to defend against terrorist attacks have become a major weapon in the terrorist arsenal. In the words of Boaz Ganor of the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center, so-called customary international humanitarian law (CIHL) is a "force multiplier" for terrorist groups, who think nothing of putting civilians in the line of fire.

That requires some serious rethinking of the laws of war predicated on an outdated model of opposing armies facing off on an open field far removed from civilian populations. Modern warfare inevitably implicates civilian populations.

The doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), which protected against nuclear conflagration during the Cold War, for instance, is predicated on the threat of collective punishment on a massive scale. Few citizens of the Soviet Union would have had any input into the decision to launch a nuclear attack on the United States. But they would nevertheless have been incinerated by the American retaliation. Similarly, Israel's survival today depends on the credibility of our willingness to respond in kind to any attack on Israeli civilians by Iran or Syria.

One might distinguish Soviet citizens from residents of Gaza or southern Lebanon on the grounds that the former were part of a hierarchical governmental structure. But the distinction is far from clear. Hamas in Gaza and Hizbullah in southern Lebanon essentially function as autonomous governments. And they are far more representative of the populations they rule than the government of the Soviet Union ever was. Hamas was popularly elected, and Palestinian polls show widespread support for the ongoing Kassam attacks on Israel. And residents of southern Lebanon have more to say about Hizbullah rocket launchers in their backyard and weapons stored in their basements than Soviet citizens had about the actions of their regime.

IT IS TIME we recognize, to paraphrase Voltaire on the Holy Roman Empire, that "customary international humanitarian law" is neither customary, nor law, nor humanitarian. It is not customary because it is not based on the actual behavior of nations past or present. When the Southern states began executing captured former slaves fighting in the Union Army, president Lincoln announced that the Union would execute captured Confederate soldiers in reprisal. The executions stopped. (In the same vein, denying Palestinians access to security prisoners held by Israel would be far more effective in securing access to our captive soldiers than beseeching the international community to intervene.)

During World War I, the Allies blockaded the Central Powers to force them into submission via starvation. And in 1943, Churchill ordered 1,000 British bombers to hammer Hamburg. (For good reason did the British omit the bombing of civilian populations from the Nuremberg indictments.) The firebombing of Dresden in the waning days of World War II killed tens of thousands of German civilians. Was that firebombing, however, self-evidently immoral if it also saved thousands of far more innocent Jews in the death camps by hastening the end of the war?

Yet if Israel engaged in any of these actions, it would be roundly condemned by the international community.

NOR IS customary international humanitarian law law in any meaningful sense. Its "rules" were not enacted by any international governmental body to which sovereign nation-states ceded the right to legislate. Nor are they even embodied in reciprocal treaty obligations entered into by sovereign states. They are nothing more than "rules" derived from declarative statements made by any and everybody - from various tinpot dictators and tyrants to Human Rights Watch - on what they think international law should be; and presto, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), it is.

Nor are the "rules" humanitarian. As Ganor points out, they render civilian populations more vulnerable by creating incentives for terrorists to operate from their midst.

And notes Jeremy Rabkin, an incisive academic critic of the inanities of CIHL, the rules are designed to favor guerrilla and terrorist fighters. In particular, they sever the obligations on states trying to defend themselves against terrorism from any reciprocal obligations on the part of terrorists.

Those "rules" are the outgrowth of a Geneva Conference convened by the ICRC in 1975, at which Third World countries outnumbered Western powers. And they form a pattern with UN General Assembly resolutions of the period demanding a New World Economic Order. In effect, they have redistributed military power to terrorist groups.

In responding to claims that Israel has violated CIHL, our recourse must be to elementary logic and an examination of the actual conduct of nations. Just as the US Constitution is not a "suicide pact," neither is international law. Until human rights advocates tell us what we can do to protect our cities from missiles and our citizens from suicide bombers, CIHL has no claim on our attention.

In the meantime, let Israel begin to place the lives of its citizens first, as has every other nation in history. We have no wish to see the people of Gaza starve, but unless the Hamas government stops the Kassams, closes the tunnels bringing in lethal weapons and returns Gilad Schalit, neither does Israel have any obligation to supply food, water and electricity to a quasi-state that has declared war on its existence.

Other articles by Jonathan Rosenblum are available on Jewish Medial Resources

See More Discussion of Gaza Options

Technorati Tag: Israel and International Humanitarian Law and CIHL and Jonathan Rosenblum.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT SDEROT? (It's not even clear that Olmert even has learned the lesson of what not to do in the future.) Jonathan Rosenblum has thoughts.

What do do about Sderot?

by Jonathan Rosenblum
Yated Ne'eman
June 13, 2007

Two things are ever clearer about the current situation in Sderot. The first is that it is intolerable; the second, that nobody has any clear idea of what to do about it. "There are no good answers, no good options," says Gerald Steinberg, director of Bar Ilan University’s Center of Conflict Resolution.

Two weeks ago, under heavy Kassam fire from Gaza, over half of Sderot’s 24,000 citizens had fled the city. Three-quarters of the city’s children are suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress, and over a dozen Jews have been killed by Kassams. In peak season, residents find themselves scurrying for cover, after the sounding of the Red Dawn alert system, five or more times a day. In short, Sderot has become a place that no one would continue to live in, if they had the slightest alternative.

The great fear hovering over Israel’s Jews is that this border town, populated mostly by immigrants from Arab lands, who were shunted to the periphery of the country over half a century ago and newer Russian immigrants, could easily become a model for other Israeli towns and cities.

Already Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin warns that terrorists have succeeded in smuggling into Gaza across the Egyptian border missiles that can target Ashkelon, with over 100,000 citizens and strategic oil refineries, and will soon be able to reach even more heavily populated Ashdod just up the Mediterranean coast. In other words, some solution must be found for Sderot lest it become a harbinger for an even more intolerable future.

THE SUFFERING OF SDEROT did not begin with the 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

Kassams were already a regular fact of life for Sderot’s residents before that. But unquestionably the situation has worsened significantly as a result of the Gaza withdrawal, in particular because of massive arms smuggling from Sinai into Gaza via the Philadelphia Corridor. According to the Shin Bet, 20,000 guns, 1,000 anti-tank rockets, and an additional 100 tons of armaments have flooded into the Gaza Strip over the past year. While some of these will doubtless be employed in the internecine fighting that has turned Gaza into a war zone, most are aimed at Israel.

The Philadelphia Corridor was far from hermetically sealed even when patrolled by Israeli forces, but the stream of weapons formerly coming into Gaza has turned into a flood. When the Gaza withdrawal was first proposed, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stated that Israel would maintain control of the Philadelphia Corridor precisely to prevent the massive arms smuggling currently taking place. But the logic of withdrawal always made that unlikely, for as long as Israeli troops remained in Gaza, Israel would still be considered responsible for its residents by the international community.

The Egyptians, who are now responsible for preventing arms smuggling, have almost no incentive for doing so – certainly none that would put Egyptian troops at risk. They do not mind seeing Israel bleed by Kassams.

Prime Minister Sharon promised that after the Gaza withdrawal Israel would respond very harshly to any further rocket fire from Gaza. Similar promises were made by Prime Minister Ehud Barak after the withdrawal from Lebanon. And just as they were not acted upon in Lebanon, they were not acted upon in Gaza, and for the same reason.

In both cases, the withdrawals were designed to win international favor, and a harsh military response to Hizbullah or Palestinian attacks would have immediately cost Israel any diplomatic capital in accrued. In addition, the necessity of any major military action would have exposed the initial withdrawal as poorly conceived.

So the logic of withdrawal itself made it unlikely that Israel would ever make good on its promises to react forcefully against future attacks from the evacuated areas. But the consequence of not acting was that missile attacks on Israel – of a type that no country would tolerate – are now viewed as part of the status quo.

And that status quo is intolerable. But when Israel eventually responds to missile attacks against its cities in the same fashion that any other country in the world would, it will be blamed for breaching the status quo, precisely because of its earlier policy of restraint.

SO WHAT ARE SOME OF ISRAEL’S OPTIONS NOW? One, of course, would be to admit that the 2005 withdrawal was a huge mistake, and retake the Gaza Strip. That, however, seems to be an option no one wants. The last thing that Israel seeks is to become responsible again for 1.25 million Palestinians just as Gaza breaks down into complete anarchy and returns to the primitive state of nature. Nor does it wish to provide the one thing that might perhaps reunite the feuding Palestinian militias – an Israeli invasion.

Two weeks ago, Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin warned the cabinet that Hamas has prepared for an Israeli invasion with a vast network of booby-traps, mines, suicide bombers, and snipers. After the Winograd Commission findings, it would be impossible to deny that Diskin had a duty to present the cabinet with an assessment of the likely costs of an invasion. But the way his warnings were leaked to the media and then reported in scare headlines handed Hamas a huge propaganda victory by making it seem that Israel could not reconquer Gaza.

That is almost certainly not the case. The real question is what it would do once it did so. How could it avoid a low level war of attrition with Jewish soldiers killed every week? For that reason, others, like former chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon, argue for a large-scale ground action designed to destroy the terrorist infrastructure currently leveled at Israel, along the lines of the 2002 Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank to be followed by an Israeli withdrawal.

Unquestionably Operation Defensive Shield, which began just after the Seder night suicide bombing in Netanya, did reverse the terrorist momentum in Judaea and Samaria. But that result has required a continuous military presence in Judea and Samaria, lots of checkpoints, and the building of a huge security fence. In short, for the results to be sustained the IDF must remain in large numbers, and that is what the government wishes to avoid in Gaza, at this time.

To have any lasting impact an operation against the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza would have to be coupled at least with Israel retaking control of the Philadelphia Corridor. Some have even suggested building a sea-water channel along the Philadelphia Corridor to prevent future tunneling under the border by smugglers. Such a step, however, would run the risk of a confrontation with the Egyptians, who are currently responsible for the border.

In addition, the Philadelphia Corridor is too narrow to be defended by itself, and Israeli troops would have to clear a wider swath and knock down hundreds of dwellings in Rafah to do so, with the predictable international outcry to follow.

Others urge Israel to employ a series of strong disincentives to Palestinian missile strikes against Israel. For some that means a forceful artillery or missile response at the place of any missile launch, even if that launch comes from a rooftop in a highly populated area. For others that means threats to cut off Gaza’s water and electricity, both of which are supplied by Israel.

Former head of the National Security Council, General Giora Eiland, offers as a possible option declaring Gaza an enemy state and sealing the border and ending the supply of water and electricity. He acknowledges that such a step would provoke a strong international response, but it would also force the international community to recognize that Israel cannot allow the current situation to continue and to take some responsibility for the situation.

In 2006, despite Hamas’s takeover of the Palestinian Authority, international aid to the Palestinians actually increased by 200 million dollars over the previous year. The Palestinians are by far the largest recipients of international aid in the world – $300 per person as opposed to $44 per person for the even poorer inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa. They have not been forced to pay any price for continued terrorism against Israel. Eiland would like to see that change.

Either cutting off Palestinian water and electricity or heavy strikes against launch sites would unleash an international chorus accusing Israel of practicing collective punishment. And that would be correct. But it is worth noting that the entire doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, which prevented nuclear war during the Cold War, was also predicated on collective punishment. Presumably few citizens of the Soviet Union would have had much input into the Kremlin’s decision to launch a nuclear strike. But they would have been the victims of American nuclear retaliation.

The best deterrence against Syrian or Iranian missile attacks on Israeli cities is the fear of the leaders of these countries of an even more powerful Israeli response against their own cities. If those leaders came to believe that Israel would never strike their cities, but would rather strike only military targets, that would be a virtual death-knell for Israel. So at some level, Israel cannot afford to take the possibility of collective punishment completely off the table. And there is a certain logic to collective punishment in the form of cutting water and electricity to places from which terrorists strike. Such action would presumably make the missile launchers unpopular with the local population, and encourage locals to prevent their neighbors from setting up launching pads on their roofs.

In the meantime, the Israeli government has adopted a policy of targeting terrorist groups and the Hamas leadership, coupled with limited ground operations within northern Gaza. That policy has worked in the past to bring about a relative calm, at least for a period to time. But the problem is that a ceasefire only offers a temporary respite. And by providing the Palestinians an opportunity to go on arming, it may only pave the way for a more difficult day of reckoning in the future.

In the meantime, the choice for Israeli policymakers seems to be largely one between least bad alternatives.

Read other articles by Jonathan Rosenblum on Jewish Media Resources.

See More Discussion of Gaza Options

Technorati Tag: Israel and Sderot and Gaza.