Israel's mostly complacent public in the center of the country is at war again, but is likely to forget this by the time the next cease-fire is declared within a few days or at worst, weeks. For most Israelis, the threat from the south –as the fronts on the east and the north - is a mere inconvenience, and proof that peace with the Palestinians is impossible.
Hamas to them is an illegitimate anti-Israeli entity whose revenge can be harsh, but only brief, while the recognized Palestinian Authority is the force that must be reckoned and reasoned with, though there too, most Israelis – despite the overwhelming number in favor of a two-state solution - see no partner, regardless of its overtures. This war is to the Israeli public another brief disturbance and another nail in the coffin of the peace process.
War in Israel since the second intifada, for most of the country's secular and moderately religious society, is a passing affair: while the south sustains massive hits on a daily and weekly basis, as East Jerusalem and the West Bank burn and Gaza is ruthlessly attacked, residents in the center of the country run fearfully with the spontaneous sirens and return to normalcy just as quickly. The same is true of the south, but the rate and frequency with which they are attacked has forced them into a more sober reality.
This month's conflict was spurred in the West Bank, with the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teens, and the subsequent revenge attack of a Palestinian of the same age. These events, which broiled the extreme right-wing in Jerusalem and the parts of West Bank, have taken a back burner now that Gaza has returned to the map.
As the rocket barrages burst into the center of Israel on Tuesday, an inconclusive five-star and star-studded affair with war on its agenda took place: Haaretz's acclaimed Israel's Conference on Peace. And there were even fireworks to punctuate the event.
Dozens of rockets were fired at Israel over the course of the evening – one over Tel Aviv in early evening and at least seven more in the center of the country after dark, including four identified in Jerusalem and a siren near the main power plant in Caesarea for the first time since the 2006 war in Lebanon - each met with slight alarm from residents and a quick return to business as usual. The southern city of Ashdod, once an anomaly and now a regular target, sustained multiple direct hits as well.
As Israel's leading politicians and security experts – Tzipi Livni, Yuval Diskin, Shimon Peres and more - rubbed elbows with its leftist elite and journalists at the conference in Tel Aviv, jihadists in the Gaza Strip took the opportunity to fire at the country's commercial and population center, intercepted just south of the city by the Iron Dome defense system. Participants of the peace conference learned of the sirens minutes later, and crowded the basement lobby to reassure friends and family that they were okay, and oh, how ironic.
As these center communities panicked, unused to rockets like their southern neighbors are,the Israel Air Force continued its attacks on militants in the Gaza Strip, killing at least nine throughout the day.
A short hour after the first Tel Aviv siren and before the nighttime barrage, Barack Obama's special assistant on the Middle East wrapped up Haaretz's peace conference calling on Israel to defend itself but to act responsibly, recalling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's own urging the evening before.
This call by Netanyahu was made Sunday night, just hours before Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman took his Yisrael Beiteinu faction out of its alliance with Likud - a clear prompt tothe prime minister to rethink his strategy and political support, and order the IDF to prepare for a ground incursion - a move he had adamantly tried to prevent, and which he agreed to in the wake of the political splint.
Hamas claimed responsibility for the four rockets fired at Jerusalem and the two at Tel Aviv on Tuesday night, declaring them M 75 missiles, the Islamist organization's greatest weapon so far. An M 75 missile is designed to reach that many kilometers when loaded with the strongest amount of explosives (40kg) it can handle, but can go as far as 90-100 km if packed lighter. A more powerful rocket was launched later that night against Hadera, less than two kilometers from Israel's main power plant. This is M-302, originally a Chinese artillery rocket modified and upgraded by Syria sold to Iran and smuggled to Gaza. It weighs 600kg with a war head of up to 175 though unguided and inaccurate it can reach up to 200km.
Israel estimates that around 400 of these missiles existed in the Gaza arsenal, split between Hamas and the Islamic Jihad before the night's barrage: a dozen were fired over the course of Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, most of them either intercepted by the Iron Dome or left to hit open spaces. It is clear that without Iran's funding and supplies, the Islamist organization does not have a sufficient number in its cache to fire these treasures at an indiscriminate rate. With its limited supply, neither Hamas nor other militants will part quickly with these missiles. It is using these weapons as sparingly as possible.
The situation in Israel today - kidnappings, murders, and rockets rampant -is reminiscent of both October 2000, the critical moments before the second intifada, and November 2012, when Tel Aviv residents peeked out from their bubble for the first time since the intifada and realized that enemy missiles could reach their neighborhoods and force them to rethink just how relaxed to be in the midst of war on the southern front. For Tel Aviv and Haifa residents, scurrying from such far-range explosives-loaded missiles is a far-gone memory, last seen in 1991 during the Gulf War.
Hamas and its militant compatriots – jihadists which negate its rule - in the Gaza Strip know that 32 percent of the population in Jerusalem, mostly in its east and north, are Muslim. It has and will continue to aim its weapons away from this divisive community, focusing the large rockets on the Judean hills where the main Israel Defense Forces base in the region is located. Its attacks on Tel Aviv are far more indiscriminate: the residential center of this main city is as fair a target as a school in its north or a club in its south.
Israelis will continue to balk at the sound of the sirens and return to agenda immediately, as the south takes the real hits. Tel Aviv is not Sderot. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad have a limited arsenal they are unlikely to waste in a single night, and a truce between the sides is likely to be achieved before any real damage on the Israeli center can be achieved.
Israelis should be alert now, but not alarmed. They know now where to run in case of missiles – their municipalities have been told to prepare – and they know to heed the advice of local experts. They also know that just as Israel wants to avoid escalation, so does Hamas does not want an escalation – it has more to lose than Israel.
The recent days' attacks are a threat in response to threat, a mutual trade between Gaza and Israel. The Palestinian unity pact is on fragile hold and thus Hamas' security and support is waning. Both Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recognize the hubris in this latest round of war games, and Hamas on its end is well aware too.
The Gaza front opened as Israel and the Palestinian Authority were engaged in solving the crisis of the four kidnapped teens'; From the start, Netanyahu's aim was to prove to Abbas that Hamas is indeed a terrorist group unworthy of a unity pact. In this sense, he has won – Abbas cannot sanctify his unity with Hamas as long as the rockets continue. And the Israeli public will continue to refuse its ever possibility – and thus a chance of an inclusive peace agreement with the two Palestinian territories - as long as the attacks continue on both fronts.
The cycle of violence and revenge continue.
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