Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff - 19/06/2008

Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, (Haaretz)

"The cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas, the very same organization that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said once again on Wednesday that we are not talking to, has one thing in common with the Oslo Accords. Just like Oslo, for the tahadiyeh Israel is paying in hard currency for general future commitments.

This is not a case of "quiet for quiet," a formula proposed many months ago.

Israel will remove, within days, a significant portion of its economic blockade of the Gaza Strip. Hamas, in return, has promised to renew contacts on the release of Gilad Shalit. The Egyptians in response are promising to work harder to prevent arms smuggling.

But how do you measure honest efforts to advance the Shalit deal? Will intensive talks without a deal meet the conditions? It is not at all clear.

While Israel has announced that it will evaluate the quality of the counter-smuggling efforts, it is unlikely that Israel will want to endanger the agreement because of criticism of Egyptian efforts. Egypt is a mediator as well as a partner, and Military Intelligence in any case has forecasts that smuggling will decrease, since Hamas already has more rifles in Gaza than it has trained gunmen.

The man behind the cease-fire, Major General Amos Gilad (res.), was not a great fan of Oslo. When Ariel Sharon pressed in the fall of 2005 to include the 'Philadelphi route' that separates the Gaza Strip from Egyptian Sinai in the disengagement, Gilad voiced loud objections. But now Gilad needs to speak out in support of the deal he reached - without any great enthusiasm - under orders from the political echelon. In this case, it seems the politicians find it more comfortable to hide behind the broad backs of their retainers.

Gilad's direct boss, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, was busy on Wednesday with a lightening visit to an armaments show in Paris. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made do with a few general comments.

When Gilad is called upon to explain the tahadiyeh, under conditions far from those Israel hoped for, he will say that it is a choice between a bad option and an even worse one.

A large military operation would not have immediately ended the firing of Qassam rockets or solved the problem of arms smuggling. At the same time, there was the need to quickly end the suffering of Israelis living near Gaza. Like Barak, Gilad believes that in the long run a confrontation with Hamas is almost inevitable, but then the cabinet can come to the nation with clean hands and say "we tried everything, now it is the IDF's turn."

What Gilad cannot say is that the choice of tahadiyeh was first and foremost a political one. From the moment Olmert and Barak reached the conclusion that they did not have public support or political breathing room for a large ground offensive in Gaza, the die was cast.

Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi understands the coalition picture, but there are quite a number of senior officers below him who see the agreement as a big mistake. In their eyes, Israel has not even attempted to try a long list of measured operations that are less than an conquest of the Gaza Strip, but if tried, might have forced Hamas to accept a cease-fire from a competely different postion. Brigade-level operations in the strip were halted a long time ago, and no attempt has been made in recent times to threaten the lives of senior Hamas officials.

Last month the IDF initiated seven operations in Gaza, two of them at the battalion level and five at the company level. This is not really putting military pressure on Hamas, even if Olmert and Barak claim otherwise.

It is hard to ignore the influence of the Second Lebanon War on Israel's operations in Gaza. The pain of Lebanon is still clearly felt. Such pain adds to the limited political dialogue and dictates the choice of a cease-fire.

In Olmert's present situation, any agreement will be presented as an achievement: not just the tahadiyeh, not just the return of the abducted soldiers in the hands of Hezbollah. Even the swift and surprising willingness in Jerusalem to discuss the return of the Shaba Farms to Lebanon with a Lebanese government in Beirut which is completely dependent on a Hezbollah veto.

The present strategic goal is not peace, but quiet, even if only for a short time - until the elections.

It is also hard to buy the smokescreen surrounding the deal for Gilad Shalit laid down by the government and its spokesmen. The deal does not tie the cease-fire to Shalit's release. The best evidence for this is the Shalit family's intention to petition the High Court of Justice against the opening of the Gaza crossings."

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