War on Hamas influences Abbas
Operation Brother's Keeper has a long way to go before we can declare "mission accomplished." A week after three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped, there is still no light at the end of the tunnel. There are no signs of life, either. Had Israel captured the abductors, they would have led the Shin Bet to the captives, provided that special interrogation techniques would have been employed under the so-called "Ticking Bomb" protocol.
But there is a whole other dimension to this operation, one that has had Israel wage an all-out war against Hamas' ever-growing terrorist infrastructure in Judea and Samaria. The Israel Defense Forces has much to show for on that front and, if it were to run an inventory of what it found, it would show that Hamas has been unable to turn Judea and Samaria into a successful terrorist enterprise.
This is not the Hamas of 2002, when it had stockpiles of weapons and an array of arms production facilities. Operation Defensive Shield, launched that year, took care of most of that, all but depleting its lethal resources. The IDF has been able to thwart Hamas' efforts to rebound. And in the foreseeable future, a resurgent Hamas would pose more of a threat to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas than to Israel.
The Israeli effort has managed to check Hamas' multi-pronged assault on Israel. Hamas has been the driving force behind the Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike, which will likely achieve exactly the opposite of its intended result: The Hamas prisoners are going to face much harsher conditions and they will be joined by newcomers, prisoners re-arrested after being released as part of the Schalit deal. Those new-old terrorists, incarcerated again this week during the operation, will have a much harder time bidding farewell to their freedom.
The political lay of the land has also changed as a result of the operation. The conventional wisdom is that Abbas and the PA were not part of the abduction operation. That said, Abbas would have not come out against it on Wednesday, had it not been for the IDF attacks on Hamas strongholds in Judea and Samaria. The PA president knew full well that such a disavowal of terrorism would have had extremists in Ramallah and Gaza attack him for becoming Israel's lackey, but he decided to go ahead and issue the statement anyway. Why? Because Israel gave him some wiggle room that would render him more immune to criticism. On top of that, he realized that the Palestinian street did not view the massive Israeli response as a positive development, and was concerned over the potential unraveling of the delicate relations with Israel.
Perhaps the IDF operation will lead Abbas to express buyer's remorse for the recently formed unity government with Hamas. Although this operation is unlikely to prompt Hamas and the PA to cut all ties, the operation will have gone down as a major success if the two rivals revert back to their old relationship, which was defined by a lack of trust.
Leaders -- and their respective bureaucracies -- generally have a hard time figuring out the exact point at which a military operation, launched at an opportune moment, no longer serves its purpose and becomes a burden. It seems that neither the National Security Council nor other think tanks can provide the government with an reasonable answer based on game theory. There is an ever-present danger that leaders will overplay their hand, turning a successful endeavor into a losing streak.
After this whole kidnapping ordeal gets resolved -- there is no way of telling precisely when -- Hamas and its allies might decide that restraint has run its course, at which point they will choose terrorism and rocket fire over political partnership with Abbas. Anyone who presides over an operation of such magnitude against Hamas -- an entity that has won some brownie points on the world stage for joining the Palestinian government -- has to keep his or her head cool. But it is equally important to know when it is time to end this campaign, even if it means that not all objectives have been met.
טעינו? נתקן! אם מצאתם טעות בכתבה, נשמח שתשתפו אותנו