Updates on Israel and Gaza

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. You just heard the basic Israel-Gaza headlines on the news just now. We'll get a more detailed military analysis now for a few minutes from Fred Kaplan, military affairs columnist for Slate. He writes the column called War Stories and is author of books including his most recent, The Bomb: Presidents, Generals and the Secret History of Nuclear War. Fred, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC. Why do you think, first of all, that Hamas staged the attacks that it did on Saturday? What do you think from their perspective they thought they had to gain?

Fred Kaplan: There have been serious negotiations going on between the US and Saudi Arabia involving a possible security arrangement where Saudi Arabia recognizes Israel and the United States provides security guarantees to Saudi Arabia. I don't know whether they really had a chance or not, but it's certainly true that not just Israel, but the Sunni Arab countries have been under the impression recently that they could ignore the Palestinians, that that's not really vital to their security or their interests, that they're much more interested in forming an alliance against Shiite radicals like Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran mainly.

This is a way of Hamas asserting that, "No, we're still here and we are going to do everything we can to break up this impending alliance. At least that seems to be the only reasonable or analyzable rationale for something like this.

Brian: Is there any early indication that the politics of terror in the way that you just described it might be successful that Saudi Arabia would slow down whatever movement it was making toward normalization of relations with Israel?

Fred: We don't know yet. Hamas has said, "Yes, Iran helped us carry out this attack." Iran has denied that. The State Department has said, "No, there's no evidence of this, although they did provide weapons and so forth." Much depends on what happens next. Yesterday Hezbollah fired a few artillery shells from southern Lebanon at Israeli listening stations in northern Israel. Israel threw back a few artillery shells of its own. Hezbollah has about 100,000 rockets in Lebanon. So far, Hamas has launched hundreds of rockets.

Hezbollah has 100,000. If they wanted to unleash real hell in response to what Israel does next in Hamas, which is going to be pretty gruesome, too, in Gaza, they could. The question is, will they? Do they want to escalate this? Or do they want to step back? The real question is, how long is this war going to go on, and how wide will it go? Will the pressures of escalation and counter-escalation lead to a widening of the war which could bring in Iran and certainly would bring in Hezbollah? Or will steps be taken realizing that this is getting very serious and everybody's going to get demolished in this and steps have to be taken to calm this down?

Brian: Israel has now announced from its side a total siege of Gaza is what I think they're calling it which includes cutting off food and water as well as electricity and other energy sources. When House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was on the show last hour, he said that information was new enough that he wasn't in a position yet to evaluate whether that was a legitimate military move or something that he might eventually condemn as being an act against civilians without a justifiable military reason. Do you as a military affairs reporter understand what the strategy would be behind cutting off food, water, and energy to the civilians of Gaza?

Fred: Quite honestly, I don't get it. I think what Israel and its allies should be doing now is trying to sever Hamas from the Palestinian people. Not all Palestinians support what Hamas is doing or Hamas in general. Israel should be doing all it can to make distinctions rather than basically driving everybody in Gaza into Hamas' arms to protect them against Israeli onslaught. That said, one thing that probably has to be done and that Israel will certainly try to do is simply to crush Hamas. They've been under the impression for a while that things were calm. Something like 15,000 to 20,000 people in Gaza have work permits to go in to Israel and work every day. This has provided a lot of economic benefits to Gaza.

I think the assumption was that Hamas has been fine with this. It certainly helps explain how the ghastly strategic failure. The failure of strategic intelligence perceived this attack coming, which will be the subject of inquiries and political challenges in the weeks and months to come. They have to do something about Hamas, but then the question is what to do after that and how to take care of Hamas, how to crush Hamas in a way that doesn't completely alienate-- You've got 2.2 million people in Gaza, another 2 million people in the West Bank. You can't just accommodate or crush them or deal with them or whatever you want to do with them by putting Gaza under siege. There has to be something else going on.

Brian: Do you have any assessment of the internal politics among Palestinians in the West Bank and or Gaza and whether they support this attack given the consequences? We see the immediate response devastating to people in Gaza whom Hamas purports to represent which no matter what anyone thinks of the Israeli response was to be expected. I wonder if there's any take it on popular support among Palestinians for this even if the goal was to bring more attention to the Palestinian cause.

Fred: As a former foreign correspondent, I can tell you there's a lot of box pop out there. Talk with people on the streets. You can find people on the street to say whatever you're looking for them to say. There's a lot of sympathy for the Hamas in this, no question. That's not the end of the story. I don't really know. It is true. The Palestinian Authority, which is more moderate, has been greatly weakened. It's seen as largely ineffectual. Not just Israel, but the Sunni countries in the region have ignored Hamas and the PA for quite some time now, thinking that it wasn't necessary.

The Palestinian cause has always been a cover for-- Especially the Sunni countries. They pretend that they care about the Palestinians. They really don't. In the past couple of years as their big enemy has emerged as Iran and Shiite forces and they've formed formal or informal alliances with Israel as a common ally against Iran that they ignore the Palestinians even more. I think whatever else this war is about, they now have to realize that they can't just ignore it. Even if they're not interested, they have to at least pretend to be dealing with it, which I think is maybe what we'll see in the next phase.

Brian: Fred Kaplan, War Stories columnist for Slate. Thank you very much.

Fred: Sure.

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