The Battle over Gaza

Two sounds dominate the lives of Israelis living near Gaza: the wail of a siren and, 25 seconds later, the whistling screech of an incoming rocket fired by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. That gives Israeli families just enough time to dive for cover–even as they pray the rocket will miss.

At 11:30 a.m. on Dec. 27, a new sound filled the azure Mediterranean sky: the rolling boom of Israeli bombs and missiles slamming into Gaza. Many Israelis climbed the low, green hills outside the city of Sderot and cheered while watching black pillars of smoke rise over Gaza as a wave of 64 Israeli jet fighters struck again and again. It meant that Israel’s leaders were hitting back at the Gaza militants who had rained rockets on the communities of southern Israel even weeks before Dec. 19, when an Egyptian-brokered truce between Israel and Hamas officially ended.

But underneath the black smoke, the Israeli bombs weren’t hitting just the rocket men of Hamas, but civilians too. With 1.5 million people packed tightly into Gaza’s jumble of cities, towns and refugee camps, it was inevitable that hundreds of ordinary Palestinians would become collateral victims. The Israeli bombardments pounded Hamas strongholds–the Interior Ministry, suspected caches of rockets, hideouts of top militant leaders–but they also caught five sisters asleep at home next to a targeted mosque, kids coming home from school, and a graduation ceremony for police cadets and their proud families. By Dec. 30, more than 375 Palestinians had been killed and some 1,500 injured; the U.N. said at least 62 of the dead were civilians. Hamas’ continued rocket barrage had killed four Israelis.

The lopsided toll inevitably led to accusations of Israeli overkill. While the Bush Administration blamed the escalation of violence squarely on Hamas, other world leaders, including France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, scolded Israel for its “disproportionate” response. Arguably the most important outside voice remained silent: President-elect Barack Obama would not comment on the conflict, with his spokesman citing the principle that there can be only “one President at a time.”

The chorus of condemnation will grow with the proportions of the conflict: Israeli forces are massing tanks and 6,500 troops for a possible land assault into Gaza. In anticipation, Hamas fighters are believed to be preparing Iraq-style roadside bombs and suicide bombers. Judging by Israel’s disastrous 2006 incursion into Lebanon, a ground offensive in Gaza could drag on for weeks. “It will be a war of attrition,” a senior Israeli military officer predicted to TIME.

A war for what, exactly? The first rule of launching a military campaign is to know how to end it, and Israel lacks an obvious endgame in Gaza. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, having overreached in his attempt to stamp out Hizballah in Lebanon, has announced modest goals this time: he’s not promising to eliminate Hamas or even to permanently halt the flow of rockets from Gaza. Both those options would require Israeli troops to occupy Gaza for a long time, with the potential risk of massive casualties. Instead, Olmert is hoping a large show of force will persuade Hamas to stop stockpiling long-range rockets and accept the terms of a new cease-fire, including the release of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was captured in 2006.

But even those modest goals will be hard to reach. Despite an 18-month blockade of Gaza, Hamas has shown itself to be adept at smuggling in rockets, many of them believed to be from Iran. And the very ferocity of Israel’s campaign in Gaza will complicate chances of a new cease-fire. Although reports on Dec. 30 suggested that the Israelis were mulling some form of truce, it is doubtful that either combatant will agree until it inflicts more damage on the other, even though, according to one senior Hamas official reached by TIME on the telephone from Gaza, the militants’ terms could be fairly simple: “If Israel stops its raid on Gaza and lifts its closure of the border crossings, we’ll go for a truce immediately.” But such conciliatory sentiments are not shared by those Hamas military commanders who are on the warpath. Says Shibley Telhami, a Middle East scholar at the University of Maryland: “Hamas, given the scale of the losses, isn’t going to turn and accept a cease-fire.”

No Time for Silence

Prospects for any kind of cease-fire aren’t helped by the absence of U.S. leadership. With less than three weeks remaining in his term, President Bush can hardly influence events, and his successor seems unwilling to directly engage with the problem before the Jan. 20 Inauguration. But Obama, having endorsed Israel’s right to respond to Hamas’ rockets during his election campaign, may find that his present silence will cost him friends across the Middle East. The Gaza attack has strengthened Arab radicals while silencing the voices of moderate states once willing to improve ties with Israel. Egypt is in an especially tight spot: having brokered the old cease-fire and sealed its border with Gaza to lock in Hamas, the Egyptian government of President Hosni Mubarak is now being accused–by his own people and the larger Arab world–of looking the other way while Gaza burns. (Mubarak has responded by allowing some of Gaza’s wounded to be brought to Egypt for treatment.)

Also in a bind is Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian President viewed by Israel and the U.S. as a credible partner in peace. Many Palestinians now regard him as an irrelevancy–or worse, a collaborator. Abbas “has staked his political legacy and his vision of the Palestinians finally achieving their rights on negotiation with the Israelis,” says Steven Cook, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “And it’s hard to negotiate with the Israelis as they are bombing the Gaza Strip.”

The very basis of Abbas’ negotiations with Israel may be moot. The Bush Administration’s peace plan, based on a Palestinian state and Israel’s living side by side, is moribund. For all practical purposes, there are two Palestinian states. Abbas, who rules the West Bank, has no leverage in Gaza, where Hamas reigns supreme. Neither Israel nor the U.S. has been prepared to deal directly with Hamas, which doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist. But without a seat at the negotiating table, the militants have little to lose by escalating violence. In Gaza, most Palestinians blame Israel and not Hamas–whom they view as legitimately elected representatives–for the current bloodshed. So even without the latest flare-up, Gaza was poised to be a confounding problem for Obama. But now, warns Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, the new President is “going to inherit a crisis with horrible pictures, reduced and diminished American credibility, without the capacity and the means to actually influence the situation.”

How will Obama respond? As a presidential candidate, he called for a new peace process but was short on the details. “A U.S. Administration has to put its weight behind a process, recognizing that it’s not going to happen immediately,” he said during a visit to Israel last summer. “That’s why I will not wait until a few years into my term or my second term … to get the process moving.” That was meant to be a dig at the Bush Administration, which left it too late to pursue peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Now the Obama Administration risks being too late even before it has begun.