NOVANEWS
by Ali Abunimah
Israel appears to have backed away from an even more massive assault on Gaza – for now – largely because of protests in Egypt and the broader sense that Israel “lacks legitimacy” to carry out more aggression despite assured diplomatic cover from the United States. This is an enormous victory for people power, and as a result lives have undoubtedly been saved.
In recent days Palestinians in Gaza, hearing the sounds of Israeli warplanes, explosions and drones all around them at all hours, worried that Israel was preparing to launch a massive assault on Gaza similar to “Operation Cast Lead” in 2008 which killed more than 1,400 people, injured thousands and laid waste to civilian infrastructure.
Israel’s unprovoked attack on Gaza following Eilat operation
Beginning on 18 August, Israel launched an unprovoked series of air raids and extrajudicial executions in Gaza, as reprisals for the Eilat attack earlier that day in which unknown assailants killed 8 Israelis including two soldiers, according to official Israeli accounts.
Despite its initial accusations, Israel has provided absolutely no evidence that the Eilat attack had anything to do with Gaza. Nonetheless, Israel went on a killing spree which took 14 lives in Gaza, including a 2-year old child, a 13-year-old boy, a doctor and several members of resistance factions.
Prior even to the Eilat operation, Israel had continued its wanton-killing-as-usual in Gaza, with the execution-style murder of Sa’d al-Majdalawi, a mentally disabled teenager, who was shot ten times in the head by Israeli occupation forces on 16 August.
Yet despite the horrifying toll, Israel has backed away from an even bigger assault as itagreed on a truce with Palestinian factions who had been firing rockets back at Israel in response to the Israeli air raids on Gaza.
One Israeli civilian was killed in the city of Bir al-Saba (“Beersheva”) as a result of a Palestinian retaliatory strike.
So far the truce appears to be holding.
Israel “lacks legitimacy”
Israel’s cabinet “voted yesterday to refrain from any action that could lead to an escalation in the south and to cooperate indirectly with the truce Hamas declared on Sunday,” Haaretzreports today.
The newspaper adds:
What emerged most clearly from Netanyahu’s and Barak’s statements to the cabinet was that Israel lacks the international legitimacy needed for a large-scale operation in Gaza. The diplomatic crisis with Egypt further constrains Israel’s freedom of action.
“The prime minister thinks it would be wrong to race into a total war in Gaza right now,” one of Netanyahu’s advisors said. “We are preparing to respond if the fire continues, but Israel will not be dragged into places it doesn’t want to be.”
Several Netanyahu aides detailed the constraints on Israeli military action, most of which are diplomatic.
“There’s a sensitive situation in the Middle East, which is one big boiling pot; there’s the international arena; there’s the Palestinian move in the Untied Nations in September,” when the Palestinians hope to obtain UN recognition as a state, one advisor enumerated. “We have to pick our way carefully.”
