WHAT LOOKS LIKE A TACTICAL MISTAKE IS A GOOD STRATEGIC MOVE

Submitted by SGAN LEVI (Israel), Oct 24, 2011 at 01:08

israel is indeed wrong for exchanging such large amounts of terrorists for so few of her own. yet this was started in the 1980s and brought quickly to an absurd level in 1985 by rabin who gave up over 1000 terrorists to ahmed gibril for a handful of men and destroyed israel's more or less reassonable and unblemished tradition of fighting terror instead of negotiating with it.

to establish or reinstate a no negotiate policy is a very painful and lengthy process as the usa has learned in the 1980s in lebanon trying to get terrorists to stop kidnapping its own. and no doubt israeli goverment will have to enlist the suport of the media and public opinion in order to collectively ignore the future demands. therefore theisraeli goverment anounced that after realeasing shalit new standards will be put in place limitting the release of terrorists. given the fact that israeli public opinion got used to 30 years of releasing at any cost the only thing (short of political suicide) that remained for the israeli goverment was to bide their time and haggle for the best price when the hamas were at a weak point.

and here' in my opinion comes the well played stratigic move. hamas, has been in a very tight spot for the last few months. iran and syria have been their sponsors and finding new ones was a life or death isue for they did not want to find themselves on the wrong side of a real war fighting their sunni brothers aside the shia iranians and alawite syrians.

this made the hamas much more soft on the details that really matter to israel. on a strategic level or at least a major tactical one israel had 3 main issues and it managed to take care of all at once with this deal.

1. not releasing a mass off terrorists that will pose a threat to everyday life in israel as happened after rabins 1985 deal caused the 1987 intifada. that was done by hamas agreeing that only less than 100 will be released to judea and samarea or jerusalem and all others to gaza which is closed or abroad to foreign supervision. needless to say that they wil be closely supervised by security forces and not all of them pose a threat. the hundreds of prisoners deported to gaza realy dont make a dent in israels security. there are 1,000,000 more in gaza and tunnels that make it possible to smmugle a few hundred more if they were needed.

2. not releasing specific figures that might be turn out to be game changers because of popularity or ties or expertise, in other words the next yaser arrafat or the next engineer. this to was more or less delt with leaving behind bars (at least for now) the political leaders barguti and saadat and the kidnapping expert salame. all considered men who can inspire clarge crowds as well as organize and command a guerilla war

3. the last and the best is the blow delt to the fatah. using this specific timing israel all but pulled the rug from under fattahs attempt to assert itself as the sole ruler of palestine, reminding it that it can be replaced by hamas any minute. all of abu mazens p.r for the unilateral statehood aplication died out when the news of the shalit deal came out.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".