Wisdom -- or insanity?

We will not know for some time whether the tactical considerations behind Israel’s cease-fire in Gaza are shrewd or insane. I have to say that it seems to me crazy to leave Hamas still in control in Gaza, but I hear the counter-arguments. There is a tendency in the west – and indeed in some parts of Israeli society too – to view through a western and thus distorting prism matters in the Middle East which are driven by a very different cultural dynamic. Accordingly, I suggest that while deciding how to assess what's happened, it’s worth bearing in mind the following:

• The idea that this war could or would destroy in one go Hamas – a force of some 15,000 men -- was never sustainable. As the Israelis said right at the start, this operation was but the opening salvo in what would undoubtedly be a long and difficult campaign. The most that could be achieved through operation Cast Lead was to degrade the Hamas infrastructure so badly that it became much more likely, both through the erosion of terrorist men and materiel and the political fall-out among the Palestinians, that it would gradually be weakened to the point where it was eventually eclipsed. This will take time.

• The danger of course is that Hamas will use this lull to re-arm and regroup. Much therefore depends upon whether Egypt really will now police the border with Rafah to stop the smuggling of weapons through the tunnels. The signs are not good. The offer of help from the international community – such as Gordon Brown’s offer to send a Royal Navy warship to help – can be dismissed as bluster to cover the way he actually kicked the chair away from under Israel’s feet during this war through the UN resolution to leave it to swing.

• It is therefore to be expected that Hamas will continue its aggression -- but hopefully from a far weaker position as a result of Israel’s gains in this war. Israel must therefore continue to hit it until, by a process of attrition, it is finally defeated. Much now depends on whether Israel will continue to keep Hamas under pressure, and prevent it from regaining its strength. It has achieved this in the West Bank. Conventional wisdom has said until now that it couldn’t do the same in Gaza because it no longer occupied it. The question now is whether the gains it has made through operation Cast Lead can help it overcome that problem.

• The claim by Khaled Mashaal that Hamas has won can be dismissed as bluster. He has no alternative but to say this. The fact is that Israel has humiliated Hamas and the Arabs know it. Having boasted that they would burn the Israelis in the fires of hell if they so much as set foot in Gaza, Hamas ran away. They hid in schools and mosques and hospitals, using even the sick and the dying as human shields. This will not be lost on many Gazans, who are already to be heard blaming Hamas for the calamity that has befallen Gaza. And through the Israeli strategy of targeting their terrorist infrastructure, Hamas have lost hundreds of their most valued terrorist cadres.

• That’s why they had no alternative but to accept the cease-fire – even though they may well break it. The fact that they accepted it shows that, for the present, they have been routed and are close to breaking up altogether.  It is also no small matter that the Hamas leadership in Gaza is now so bitterly blaming Khaled Mashaal in Damascus, saying: ‘You brought terrible disaster and death on Gaza’.

• Israel has achieved all this through a text-book military operation. The risk now is that through political cowardice it may be squandered. But there’s an election coming up – and the majority of Israelis wanted the IDF to stay in Gaza until Hamas was properly defeated. That political pressure may stiffen otherwise frail political resolve.

• Israel now faces yet greater perils. And we can also see, from that UN resolution, that the idea that Israel can rely on its allies America and the UK to support it in defending itself is an illusion. The west is a false friend. Israel must now recognise that it fights essentially alone.