Prime Minister Ehud Olmert continues to oppose mounting a major IDF operation in the Gaza Strip or cutting off Israeli-supplied utilities to the region, despite Tuesday's Kassam attack on the Zikim army base, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
The attack wounded 69 soldiers, the highest number of casualties in a Kassam attack, including one critically, four seriously and 10 moderately. Most of the soldiers suffered shrapnel wounds. Olmert did not convene a special session of the security cabinet or any extraordinary security consultations in response to the attack, as was done last week after a Kassam rocket slammed into the courtyard of a day care center in Sderot, sending a dozen children to the hospital with trauma.
Senior government officials said that the decisions reached at last week's meeting - including preparing a plan to disrupt the fuel, electricity and water supplies to the Gaza Strip and continuing "intensive military operations against all those involved in launching rockets and in perpetrating other terrorist actions"- remained in effect and that there was no reason to meet just to reiterate them.
Olmert's position on cutting the supply of utilities is that this would not be effective in stopping the rockets, and would bring in its wake a huge international outcry and harsh condemnations. Although there was no meeting of the security cabinet on Tuesday, Olmert did hold his regular weekly meeting with Defense Minister Ehud Barak in Tel Aviv.
Government officials said a major IDF incursion into the Strip was unlikely. "By going into Gaza," one official said, "we would be playing into their hands. That is exactly what they want. It resolves a number of issues for Hamas." Among those issues are uniting the Palestinians against Israel, involving Israel in a battle that would inevitably lead to "collateral damage" for which Israel would be widely condemned, and possibly scuttling fledgling Israeli-PA negotiations.
Or it could be just like former IDF Brig.-Gen (Ret.) Amidror says in Arutz Sheva:
Former Deputy Intelligence Chief in the IDF, Brig.-Gen. (Ret.) Yaakov Amidror, says that one major reason the government is so hesitant to retaliate with a ground offensive is because it "is made up of people who carried out the ridiculous and irresponsible Disengagement; they know they are responsible, and it is hard for them to admit their mistake." Amidror said that ordering the IDF back into Gaza to retake the very region that they ordered the IDF to withdraw from in the 2005 Disengagement is tantamount to a confession that they erred.
I never thought I would live long enough to see the day when an Israeli government would be lounging around in their swimwear while sitting on their thumbs. Truly, it makes me long for the old days when the Arabs would only be able to shout about wanting to drive the Jews into the sea. Who would have thought in 2007 that the Israeli leadership was willing to jump right in on their own initiative? The only downside to Olmert et al - is how actively and collectively they are working in order to make sure every other Israeli goes in before them.
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