Jonathan Tobin is absolutely correct to warn against rewarding Hamas for its attacks on Israel by granting it any sort of diplomatic concession. After all, engrained in Hamas is an absolute refusal to abide by previous diplomacy, such as the agreements the Palestinian Authority had made with Israel as a precondition to the Authority’s 1994 formation in Gaza and the West Bank.
Israeli officials, alas, can always be counted on for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Enter on cue Dan Harel, former deputy chief of the Israeli Defense Forces General Staff and a former head of its Southern Command, who quips that Israel is running out of targets.
There are several huge targets that Israel should destroy, lest they simply kick the can down the road and set the stage for a far more bloody conflict a few months or years down the road: The smuggling tunnels from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula into Gaza. As much as Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, other Islamist leaders, and prominent leftists like Noam Chomsky and the UN’s special rapporteur Richard Falk whine about Israel’s inspection regime for the Gaza Strip, the fact remains that Hamas had no problem rearming and building its arsenal since 2009. It achieved this through the sophisticated network of smuggling tunnels.
Israel should not waste the opportunity to systematically destroy these in their entirety. To accept a ceasefire while the mechanism by which a terrorist group resupplies itself remains functional would be strategic malpractice. For diplomats in the European Union and United States to turn a blind eye to these tunnels is no less irresponsible.
maybe Israel should retake the Philadelphi Corridor along Egypt's border with Gaza. And stay there. International guarantees are worse than worthless, as we all know.
Only partially correct. Destroying tunnels that will be rebuilt with the same expediency with which they were built in the first place accomplishes next to nothing. It has been clear to me from the start that Israeli control over the Philadelphi corridor is a minimum accomplishment of this war. That requires a land invasion of what was formerly under Israeli control since 1967 and then given away in 2005 with control left to EU guards. They ran for their lives when they heard a nearby Arab sneeze. Control of this pass can be given to no one but themselves, if Israel has any sense. Only with this corridor under control, the Sea coast under control, and the rest of Gaza adjacent to Israel, will no more arms be able to enter Gaza. This must be a MINIMUM outcome of this war. What are they waiting for?