Weekly Commentary: What Will Israel Do When The Palestinians Renew Their Rocket Attacks?

2005-08-18

Aaron Lerner

Even an Israel Government Television interview show host ridiculed Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz for proclaiming that Israel would respond with truly decisive action.

Some critics have claimed that if the IDF put as much thought into defeating Palestinian rocket launching teams as it did into its plan to expel the Jews residing in the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria that the Sderot border town would have long ago been rid of the threat of Qassams.

It would be unfair to claim that the IDF hasn't devoted an enormous number of man hours on the Palestinian challenge.

It has.

But the Israeli planners comes doubly handicapped into the problem: a tendency to underestimate the ability of the Palestinians to manipulate situations to their advantage and the ideologically driven belief of the Israeli Left that essentially all of Israel's problems with the Arabs would evaporate if the Jewish state would simply withdraw to the '67 line.

The Israeli tendency to underestimate the ability of the Arabs to manipulate situations to their advantage (human shields, international pressure, etc.) can readily lead to overly simplistic plans. At the same time, the belief that retreat to the '67 lines will yield utopian peace serves to relieve the planners from the pressure to come up with truly viable solutions.

In the absence of serious thinking and planning on Israel's part, the projected renewal of the Palestinian war of attrition could very well push Israel into a downward spiral of territorial concessions to the point that her indefensible borders entice her neighbors to disgorge this "foreign object" from the Arab sea.

Source: IMRA – Independent Media Review and Analysis