The capture of the Palestinian terrorists who murdered three Israelis in Elad last week has relieved perhaps some of the frustration felt by the Israeli public. But amid the ongoing wave of terror and the difficulty in bringing it to an end, a dangerous trend in the analysis of events and the emerging media discourse could lead Israel to an unnecessary and unplanned military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
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This line of punditry hangs the blame for the recent attacks on Hamas and points a finger at its leader, Yahya Sinwar, for being responsible for the security escalation. The proximity between Sinwar's public declarations encouraging terrorism and the murders of Israeli citizens in Elad by terrorists from Samaria provided the proof for those who needed it of the involvement of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in instigating terrorism from Judea and Samaria. From here, we can conclude that there will be no choice but to rid ourselves of the Hamas leader to cut short the wave of Palestinian terrorism.
However, this discourse connecting Hamas in the Gaza strip to the wave of terrorism is not based on facts and concrete evidence. And it seems to be the side effect of Israeli frustration in view of the difficulty in dousing the flames lit during the month of Ramadan. The police force is stretched to the limits of its capabilities, yet, nevertheless, terrorist attacks such as the one carried out in Elad have slipped through its net. The Shin bit is struggling to deal with this new profile of terrorists, despite its technological capabilities that do not appear to provide a response to terrorists coming through gaps in the separation fence.
The IDF is doing the best it can to plug these gaps and flush out the nests of terror in Palestinian areas in Samaria but in the absence of precise intelligence has not been able to create a hermetic security seal. in the absence of precise intelligence. Israel has been embarrassed and Hamas and Sinwar seem to be the ultimate solution. They can be easily identified, targeted, and hit; there is a guilty party and it has a name.
But while it is easy to subscribe to this thesis, its simplicity shouts out. There is no direct operative connection between Hamas and the wave of terror emanating from Judea and Samaria, even if Hamas is riding on its crest to strengthen its image as a resistance movement in a reality in which it is up to its neck in work to rehabilitate the Strip following May's Operation Guardian of the Walls, and is not interested in a direct conflict with Israel.
The wave of terrorism lacks any political affiliation, and precisely because of this Israel is struggling to repress it. Its perpetrators are not per se members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad and there is no concrete infrastructure to hit in Judea and Samaria. Thus the effort by the pundits to head south to Gaza which is so near, yet so far, to find the head of the snake. From this perspective, Israel can indeed hit Hamas, but one can assume that the terrorist attacks which do not need any direction from Gaza will continue from Judea and Samaria.
The big problem is that the temptation to identify Hamas and Sinwar as the key to achieving security calm could transpire to be a big mistake. It will exact a price that Israel's citizens and even the military echelon are not necessarily interested in – another campaign in the Gaza Strip. The paradox is that at the moment Hamas too withes to avoid another round of conflict. Even though the rival players do not wish to engage in a direct clash, they may find themselves doing so for the wrong reasons.
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