Pain

Once again, Israel has chosen a line of action that rubs against the sensibilities of most everybody else.

After a series of rocket attacks across its border with Gaza, and finally, after a young Israeli soldier was abducted presumably by Palestinian militants, Israel decided to mount tremendous military pressure on her hostile neighbors. Her actions the past few days led international refugee authorities to warn of an imminent humanitarian tragedy at the Gaza.

Deciding the abduction of a young soldier was the last straw, Israel mobilized armor brigades along her southern border. Gaza was shelled from the sea by the Israeli navy and attacked from the air by her air force. A nearly continuous artillery barrage has been leveled against Gaza City.

The Israelis have attempted to take out a senior leader of the Hamas faction by attacking his convoy with a smart missile. The Hamas leader survived.

Israeli air strikes hit the offices of the Hamas at Gaza City. The office of the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, a member of the Hamas faction, was struck as well.

An Israeli commando raid resulted in the capture of several members of the Palestinian parliament, all belonging to the Hamas. Electricity and fresh water supplies were cut off. The latest reports, as I write this, indicate that the Palestinians are down to their last few gallons of diesel fuel.

It is as if pain is being applied across the board until the most militant factions of the Palestinians yield to the Israeli demand that their soldier be returned safely and that the Palestinian Authority act more decisively in preventing rocket attacks on Israeli settlements.

Over the past few decades, Israel has consistently maintained a policy of instant and massive retaliation for every hostile act committed against the country. That is justified by ancient wisdom demanding an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

They have, many times, sent commandos into Lebanon when militants nestled there and mounted attacks against Israel from across the border. They have assaulted Syrian position on the highlands when artillery was fired into Israeli territory.

Israel’s highly trained commando units have been sent abroad to liberate Israeli hostages or to assassinate enemies of the Jewish state. Her secret service, the Mossad, is one of the toughest and most ruthless in the world.

Surrounded by hostile states and constantly under the threat of terror, Israel has little choice but to be constantly vigilant. Every Israeli undergoes intense military training and the Israeli Army ranks as among the best in the world.

Israel’s western allies have rarely complained about that country’s tough policy of immediate and overwhelming retaliation. After all, she has been standing bravely against endless waves of terrorist violence committed against her people.

But the pressure now being mounted by Israel against the Palestinians is, in many ways, unprecedented.

Her retaliatory operations against rocket attacks on Jewish settlements have taken increasing collateral damage on civilians. One Palestinian family was virtually wiped out last month after Israel bombed what it thought to be a gathering of Hamas terrorists.

The past few days, the entire population of Gaza has been made to endure the pain of Israeli wrath after the Jewish soldier was abducted. That entire population has been without power and water for days now. Vital social services have been shut down for lack of fuel.

By now, refugee authorities predict, the squalor in which the entire Palestinian population of the Gaza should result in the outbreak of diseases. The misery the entire population is now forced to endure should soon result in casualties. Women and children could begin dying because of plagues bred in the squalor.

Should the entire population be punished because of the acts of a few militants?

In a way, the hardliners would argue, the people of the Gaza invited this upon themselves. They overwhelmingly voted, in the first such exercise of authentic Palestinian democracy, to hand the government over to the Hamas group – a virulent faction that has mounted numerous terrorist attacks on Israel and vowed to wipe that nation off the face of the earth.

Even when the more moderate Al Fatah faction was ascendant in the West Bank, the people of the Gaza protected the militants of the Hamas. They danced in the streets when terrorists killed ordinary Israeli citizens in suicide bombing attacks. The past few months, they stood nonchalantly as Hamas guerrillas fired missiles across the border into Israel. They are a hostile people no country would ever want to have so close to its borders.

But will this ruthless offensive against the population of the Gaza result in less terrorism and improve the chances of peace between Jews and Palestinians?

Probably not. After so many years of trying, the Israelis appear to have given up courting the population of the Gaza. The fact that they so overwhelmingly voted the Hamas to power kills whatever little optimism there might have been on the Israeli side that dialogue and humanitarian assistance will improve attitudes despite over two millennia of hostility.

Israel is betting that only the barest of human calculation – the calculation of whether anything is worth the pain that comes as consequence – will work on the Palestinian population of the Gaza. That is a dangerous calculation. It is a measure of Israel’s own disappointment that all the years of careful diplomacy has produced very little peace anyway.

And so the rest of the world watches, with controlled horror, as so much pain is systematically inflicted on so many. It is almost like torture on a large scale. It is definitely trial by fire.

Until that abducted soldier is returned and the Palestinian Authority commits itself to helping contain terrorist attacks against Israel, most of the world will likely remain silent, although uncomfortably so, while Israel does what it has decided to do at the Gaza. The equation of terror and the capacity to inflict pain is nearly balanced.