An opinion article in YNet today, “Pulverizing Gaza Strip won’t help; Sderot will rest only when Gaza rests”, by Yigal Sarna, says: “How do we try to calm hell? By making it even hotter. Every year we kill hundreds of hell residents, destroy homes and vehicles, and wait for everything to quiet down. This is how it works in Gaza. This is how it fails. We kill 19 people in one day, including the son of a senior figure, and wait for quiet to prevail. And then, a Qassam barrage follows. Just like the Second Lebanon War. The routine is simple: The IDF does not rush to enter the Strip for fear of heavy casualties among our troops. So we deliver hard, non-surgical blows. We kill many from the air, and then we see a change: A sea of Qassams. And then, the brilliant idea of a ground incursion emerges again; the same thing that was carried out at the end of the Second Lebanon war – the 33 casualties of the last, needless hours. A ground incursion into Gaza is like a magic cure for baldness around here: Everyone counts on it, but nobody believes in it. There is no way to crush popular resistance to occupation or to a foreign army – I heard this message from 100 Shin Bet officials in the years I have been visiting these military training zones. There is no military way, and still, even Olmert, the sly attorney who lost his faith in the army and who even dared complain about the army’s power to drag all of us in, tries the same military moves time and again. He is being dragged by the IDF, and by Ehud Barak, who is his defense minister but also a political rival who wishes to see the PM ousted. This is such a dangerous, lethal combination…” The article in YNet is posted here.
