None of the stated justifications for the Israeli attacks on Gaza are the actual reasons. And israeli ceasefire proposals have nothing to do with ceasefires, but are rather about creating a rationale for not having a ceasefire.
It makes it difficult to tell what to expect when you don’t know the real motives are.
Clearly Israel is not trying to annihilate Hamas completely, they envision a future with Hamas present. ” At the end of this operation, Hamas will think carefully whether it was worth it to provoke us and whether it should provoke us in the future,” said the Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon yesterday.
And the presence of Hamas in Gaza serves the Israelis narrative of perpetual existential threat, while being of very little or no actual danger to Israel at all.
Hamas’ anti-Israeli activities were all but neutralized as soon as they became the government, because they have been utterly occupied with consolidating power and helping the population survive the blockade.
If the real motive is to gain complete control over Gaza’s natural gas reserves (which is the most plausible reason), what is the endgame? How much devastation is enough for them to achieve this goal?
As always, truce and ceasefire negotiations, peace talks, public rationales, and so on, are nothing to the Israelis but tactical weapons used to pursue their aggressive aims.
Perhaps we should not be addressing our protests to the UN or to any government, but to the UK energy company BG Group. Whatever the israelis are up to, they will surely listen to them.
External Context سياق خارجي
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4550021,00.html