Pipes: 'War is Not Traditionally Conducted Like This'

Interview with Dr. Daniel Pipes 

Question: Was Israel hurt by the recent Gaza conflict beyond the PR black eye? Did Hamas gain anything from it?

Hamas and the PA both know that if Palestinians die, Israel looks bad. It doesn't matter what the circumstances are. I don't know how deep and important that PR black eye is. There's so much else going on in the world that I think this is not the most important development of late.

But there is this bizarre transformation where the Palestinian leadership wants Palestinians dead and the Israeli leadership wants them alive. It's not the way war was traditionally conducted.


Question: Getting back to the embassy move, it seemed the reaction in Arab capitals was muted compared to what it might have been in previous years?

It was extraordinary. Not a single Arab capital, including Damascus and Baghdad, said more than a perfunctory word or two about this. Instead, it was Ankara and Tehran that were exercised about it, and, to some extent, the Europeans as well.

The Arab states used the conflict with Israel, for some decades, as a way of mobilizing opinion and distracting opinion away from the current local problems. It's a tiger they want to get off of.

What's really interesting is that you see major cracks in Muslim hostility towards Israel, spectacularly in Saudi Arabia. 
[Canadian Jewish News]
*

Gaza Woes Began with a Tragic Mistake

Ariel Sharon was the force behind the disgraced Gaza disengagement.

Looking Back, the Gaza Pullout Was a Mistake - Sever Plocker 

Gaza isn't controlled by the Palestinian Authority, as the supporters of the disengagement - myself included - expected. Gaza was basically handed over to Hamas, which failed to establish a civilian government there. Instead, it established a wild military regime seeking conflicts and lacking any civilian goals.
    

Immediately after Israel pulled out of there, it turned out the strip wouldn't be like Singapore - but rather like Benghazi. The Hamas militias had no interest in an organized transfer of the production and real estate assets Israel had left behind. They preferred to build training camps in greenhouses than grow tomatoes there. And the PA vanished from the area. That sealed the enclave's fate.
    

The economic, social, and security situation in Gaza has deteriorated in the years that have passed since the disengagement.
    

Looking back, the disengagement was a mistake. Had Israel remained in Gaza, the economic gap between the Palestinians in the strip and the Palestinians in the West Bank would have been narrowed, and a solution would have been found for the transfer of goods and people between Gaza and Hebron. The PA would have maintained its rule - and would have even grown stronger. Tens of thousands of Gazans would be working in Israel, as they did in the past, and the level of violence would have dropped. 

(Ynet) 

*

UPDATES: 

Gaza Casualties Don't Tell the Story - Aron Heller

A senior Israeli Cabinet minister rejected international criticism of Israel's open-fire policies along the Gaza border, saying the disproportionate number of Palestinian casualties does not reflect the true story.
    
Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yoav Gallant, who once commanded the Gaza region, urged the world not to "calculate who is right and who is wrong by the numbers of the casualties."
    
"In the Second World War, 7.5 million Germans were killed and only 500,000 British. So who was the aggressor, the Germans or the British? The issue is not the numbers. The issue is who is doing what."
(AP)
*

Is Economic Rehab the Answer to Violence in Gaza? 

- Efraim Karsh 

• The perception of Palestinian violence as a corollary of Gaza's dire economic condition has dominated the discourse on the situation there. Yet this is not only completely unfounded but the inverse of the truth. It is not Gaza's economic malaise that has precipitated Palestinian violence; rather, it is the endemic violence that has caused its humanitarian crisis.
• Countless nations and groups in today's world endure far harsher socioeconomic or political conditions than the Palestinians, yet none has embraced violence and terrorism against their neighbors with such alacrity and on such a massive scale.
• There is no causal relationship between economic hardship and mass violence. In the modern world, it is not the poor who have carried out the worst acts of terrorism and violence, but rather the militant vanguards from among the better educated and more moneyed circles of society.
• The 9/11 terrorists were not impoverished peasants or workers driven by hopelessness and desperation, but educated fanatics motivated by hatred and extreme religious and political ideals.
• In short, it is not socioeconomic despair but the total rejection of Israel's right to exist which underlies the relentless anti-Israel violence emanating from Gaza and its attendant economic stagnation and decline.
• Only when the population sweeps its oppressive rulers from power, eradicates endemic violence from political and social life, and teaches the virtues of coexistence with Israel can Gazans look forward to a better future.
  
  The writer, director of the Begin-Sadat Center, is emeritus professor of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at King's College London.

(BESA Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University)

*