Check out these and other news stories today:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080229/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians
"Israel warns Gaza invasion Impending"
and
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080228/wl_time/israelsgazatrap
"Israel's Gaza Trap"
So much for hopes of a non-violent resistance. Will Israel attack Gaza? It will be a big gamble for Israel. If Israel invades, but tries to minimize civilian casualties, it is impossible for Israel to gain any tactical or strategic advantage. The lessons of Vietnam, Algeria, Iraq, and countless other insurgencies tell us this. As long as Hamas has foreign support, and as long as Israel approaches Gaza with some measure of restraint, in naked, real terms, Israel can never hope to realize any advantage from such an invasion. An invasion carried out along such lines will lead to a large number of IDF casualties, an eventual withdrawal from Gaza, and the political destruction of Olmert and his Kadima party.
If Israel decides to continue with the status quo of a blockade, border incursions,
and targeted airstrikes against Hamas, Israel will face a continuance of rocket attacks against its cities. This may not bring any serious threat to Israel in terms of security, but it will continue to cause an erosion of political support for the Kadima party in favor of the more hard-line blocs in the Knesset.
If however, Israel abandons all pretense of humanity and restraint, and attacks Gaza with everything they have in their formidable military arsenal, indiscriminately killing every man woman and child they see, and reducing Gaza to rubble, a-la Nahr Al Bared camp in Lebanon, Israel will succeed in destroying Hamas, in liquidating Gaza as a home for Palestinians, and in making sure Fatah will come crawling on their knees to lick the Israeli jackboots. Kadima in the process will be able to establish a fascist stranglehold on power, through emergency measures to suspend the democratic process and declare martial law, and the hard-liners will support Kadima enthusiastically, since Kadima will have morphed into the vicious genocidal killing machine they have always dreamed of.
That's the up-side. The downside will be:
1. Hezbollah will attack from the north, and Hamas sympathizers from the West Bank, as soon as the extent of the IDF invasion becomes apparent. These forces will be liquidated with the same ferocity that is directed against Gaza. But the chances increase that the war will then spread to Jordan, Syria, Iraq and last but not least, Iran. Will Israel be able wage a multi-front war which they started? Only with the help of the US.
2.But the US is bankrupt, and militarily spent already. Images of the bodies of women and children gunned down by IDF soldiers will not play well to a war-wearied American audience worried about the dissolution of their own ability to keep food in their cupboards and a roof over their heads, especially in an election year.
3. Such a war, whether it is confined to Gaza, or worse, if it spreads, will send the world price of oil, gold, wheat, rice and other commodities soaring to heights as yet undreamed of, further putting unsustainable pressures on the world economy, already staggering under the pressure of the evaporation of trillions of dollars of derivative-based securities... it is doubtful Israel, the poster-child of a globalized economy, will be able to find the monetary liquidity , much less the actual raw materials, needed to sustain its war machine.
Israel's options grow more limited and stark, every day. But one fact remains: The fate of the entire globe hangs in the balance between Israel and Gaza. The effects of a war against Gaza will, in an already destabilized world situation, rapidly spread to bring the entire GLOBAL system of law and order, of economics and distribution of goods and services into chaos. Gaza may not be Kosovo, circa 2008, BUT IT VERY WELL MAY BE SERBIA, CIRCA 1914!!!!
What transpires in the next days or weeks will determine whether 6.5 billions of humans will live on a planet characterized by relative peace, or whether they will live on a planet that can only be described in Dante-an terms.
If a Hamas leader ever reads this forum, I beg him to consider a non-violent resistance as the most effective way to gain Palestinian objectives, not only for his people, but for all the world. If an Israeli leader ever reads this forum, I beg him to consider a good-faith return to the UN Resolutions by the Israeli government, including the right of return, and the option of a SINGLE STATE as the
best solution, not only for Jews, but for the ENTIRE PLANET.
