Michael Jansen: Peace-stalling tactics
After bombarding Gaza from land, sea and air for 40 hours after one of its soldiers was said to have been captured by Hamas, Israel admitted that the soldier Hadar Goldin, was dead. During this onslaught on Rafah and northern areas of the narrow strip, more than 160 Palestinians were slain, 85 per cent civilians. Three Israeli soldiers died. The alleged capture of Goldin was simply a false pretext for committing another massacre.
While stating that an Israeli unit operating near the Egyptian border town of Rafah had clashed with its fighters, Hamas declared it had no news of him and no contact with its men. Hamas suggested that the Israeli had been killed along with the Hamas squad involved in the firefight as well as the two other Israeli soldiers counted as dead. But there was another possibility now mentioned in the Israeli press. By blanketing the area with heavy fire, Israel may well have killed its own soldier (“friendly fire”) if he had survived the clash in the tunnel with Hamas fighters.
For Israel, a dead soldier is preferable to one captured by Hamas or any of its affiliates. An Israeli conscript, Gilad Shalit, was captured Palstinian fighters in 2006 and exchanged after five years for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Israel wants no repeat of the Shalit affair, particularly since his family had castigated the government for failing to secure his release much earlier and other critics had complained that Israel had endangered his life by attacking Gaza in 2008-09.
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