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Operation Protective Edge continues cycle of violence

The high price paid by Gaza residents over the IDF operation will not erode their support of Hamas and only a diplomatic solution will dissuade them from pinning their hopes on violent resistance.
An Israeli soldier launches a Skylark unmanned aerial vehicle near the border with Gaza July 21, 2014. Israeli forces killed 10 Palestinian militants who slipped across the border from Gaza through hidden tunnels on Monday, the military said, as the death toll from the two-week conflict passed 500 amid growing international calls for an end. Non-stop attacks lifted the Palestinian death toll to 496, including almost 100 children, since fighting started on July 8, Gaza health officials said. Israel says 18 o
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Even now, as an extensive Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operation is bombing the Hamas tunnels in the Gaza Strip, one could risk concluding that Operation Protective Edge will not go down in the history books as one of Israel’s strategic achievements.

This assessment is based on a gauge developed by none other than Minister of Defense Moshe Ya’alon. As the chief of staff during the second intifada, Ya’alon coined the term “etched in their consciousness.” In an interview with Ari Shavit, which appeared in Haaretz in August 2002, Ya’alon described the main objective in the conflict with the Palestinians as “the very deep internalization by the Palestinians that terrorism and violence will not defeat us, will not make us fold.” If, he continued, that is not etched into the Palestinian consciousness by the end of that conflict, “we will have a strategic problem with an existential threat to Israel.” In his opinion, Israel had not faced a more important confrontation “since the War of Independence.”

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