FAQ: Analyst Mouin Rabbani on the Gaza Crisis
August 5, 2014
For further reference, see our recent FAQs, Misperceptions about the Conflict in Gaza and The Assault on Gaza: Israeli Aims & US Involvement, as well as our latest fact check, Israeli Claims About the Assault on Gaza.
Mouin Rabbani, Senior Fellow with the Institute for Palestine Studies and Co-Editor of the ezine Jadaliyya. Former Senior Middle East Analyst with the International Crisis Group.
FAQ
Q — On Saturday, under intense international pressure to negotiate a ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a press conference to say that the Israeli military would "regroup," while continuing its operations in Gaza. Following the announcement, Israel began to withdraw at least some of its forces from inside Gaza.
Why is Netanyahu halting the ground invasion now, even though one of his main stated objectives for the operation, stopping rocket fire, hasn't been accomplished?
MR — “Even though Israel has announced relatively modest military objectives with respect to its current assault on the Gaza Strip (decommissioning cross-border tunnels, terminating hostile fire, dealing a significant blow to Palestinian militants), it has failed to achieve them, and has apparently concluded that the cost of doing so would be prohibitively expensive in terms of Israeli military casualties and international political support.
“Israel's only real achievement thus far has been massive Palestinian - overwhelmingly civilian - casualties (nearly 2,000 dead and more than 8,000 wounded) and massive destruction of civilian infrastructure. Its hope and expectation that this will lead to a significant public backlash against Hamas and other organizations, and force the latter to focus on reconstruction rather than confrontation, has yet to be validated.
in full: http://imeu.org/article/faq-analyst-mouin-rabbani-on-the-gaza-crisis
