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| Israeli soldiers carry the coffin of Staff Sgt. Moshe Melako, 20, during his funeral at the Mount Herzel military cemetery in Jerusalem, Monday, July 21, 2014. Melako was one of 13 soldiers killed in several separate incidents in Shijaiyah on Sunday, as Israel-Hamas fighting exacted a steep price, killing scores of Palestinians and more than a dozen Israeli soldiers. In Israel, a country where military service is mandatory for most citizens, military losses are considered every bit as tragic as civilian ones. |
JERUSALEM
(AP) -- For almost two weeks, Israel practically bristled with
confidence and pride: The Iron Dome air defense system was dependably
zapping incoming Hamas rockets from the skies, the military was
successfully repelling infiltration attempts on the ground and from the
sea, and the conflict with Hamas was causing almost no casualties in
Israel.
That has changed in what seems like a
flash, after at least 25 soldiers were killed and scores injured - a
predictable yet still stunning outcome of the fateful decision,
announced late Thursday, to send troops and tanks by land into
Hamas-ruled Gaza.
In a country where military
service is mandatory for most citizens, and military losses are
considered every bit as tragic as civilian ones, the reaction to the
setbacks was electric. Newspapers and broadcasts have been dominated by
images and tales of the fallen - mostly young faces barely out of high
school - and interviews with parents concerned for offspring so clearly
now imperiled.
Angst over the highest military
toll since the 2006 Lebanon war now mixes with a cocktail of emotions:
on one hand, a strong current of determination to press on with efforts
to end the rocket fire from Gaza; on the other, the sinking feeling that
a quagmire is at hand.
"It's ugly and it's no
walk in the park," said Alon Geller, a 42-year-old legal intern from
central Israel. "But we have to finish the operation. If we stop now
before reaching our goals, the soldiers will have died in vain."
But
the Haaretz newspaper warned against mission creep and the "wholesale
killing" of Palestinian civilians.
"The soft Gaza sand ... could turn
into quicksand," it said in its editorial Monday. "There can be no
victory here. ... Israel must limit its time in the Strip."
There
was always near-consensus among Israelis for the airstrikes aimed at
ending the rocket fire, which they considered unreasonable and
outrageous. The Palestinian fatalities caused by the airstrikes - over
500 in two weeks, many of them civilians - are generally blamed here on
Hamas, for locating launchers in civilian areas and for proving to be
cynical and nihilistic, to Israeli eyes, at every turn.
But
a ground invasion of Gaza is another story, and the government had
clearly hesitated to take the risk. House-to-house fighting, tanks
exposed in fields, the danger of a soldier being kidnapped, to be traded
for thousands after years in captivity: It is an untidy and dispiriting
affair.
The government felt it necessary to
take such a risky step because despite all the damage being inflicted on
Gaza by the airstrikes, the Hamas rocket fire simply did not stop.
Israeli officials also felt world opinion would understand after Hamas
rejected a cease-fire proposal that Israel had accepted.
Complicating
the situation from Israel's perspective, Hamas does not seem to be
coming under significant pressure from the people of Gaza despite the
devastation they are enduring. While Gaza is no democracy and Hamas
rules by force, this seems to reflect genuine support for Hamas' aim of
breaking the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt on the strip.
Emboldened,
Hamas ratcheted up attempts to carry out deadly attacks against Israeli
border communities through tunnels dug underneath the fence separating
Israel from Gaza. For Israelis, that raised a terrifying specter of
families in placid farming areas on the edge of the Negev desert waking
up to find swarms of Islamic militants in their midst.
"This
brought it home that they are out to kill us and we have to stop them,"
said Yehuda Ben-Meir, a political analyst at the Institute for National
Security Studies. "No one can say he (Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu) was trigger-happy. It convinced the Israeli public that the
decision taken by Netanyahu came from a sense of `we have no other
choice.'"
Despite the absence of panic Monday,
it is clear that if soldiers continue to be killed at this rate, the
flexibility enjoyed by Netanyahu to date will likely be replaced by a
growing sense of urgency to stop the casualties. Many Israeli leftists
will demand an end to the operation. Hard-liners will demand more
radical action, up to and including a takeover of Gaza. That will add to
the already mounting pressure from an outside world horrified by the
carnage on the Palestinian side.
The prime
minister is probably mindful that the popularity tipping point for his
predecessor, Ehud Olmert, came when the public concluded too many
soldiers were being killed and that the military was not fully prepared
during the 2006 war.
Some - in the government
and on the street - are already calling for a total invasion aimed at
ousting Hamas, even if this leaves Israel again occupying a hostile and
impoverished population of 1.8 million, as it did for nearly four
uncomfortable decades until its pullout from Gaza in 2005. For the
moment the ground operation is mostly limited to areas relatively near
the Israeli border, where Israel is shutting down tunnels and hunting
for rocket launchers; a takeover of Gaza City would probably be much
more costly still.
"I hate war. I'm pained by
every death," said Haviv Shabtai, a 61-year-old Jerusalem bus driver who
has served in several wars, has a son currently called up, and had
opposed a ground invasion because of the risk. Shabtai said he took the
losses personally and was even physically overwhelmed at the news."After recovering from that shock," he said, "I say go all the way."
