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Zero Tolerance

(Ha'aretz) Amos Harel - Only a decisive move by the new Hamas government against the cells launching the Kassam rockets will cause Israel to end its military campaign against them. "When it comes to terror from Gaza, we have to set a zero-tolerance threshold," said Maj.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, head of the Operations Branch in the IDF General Staff, last week. "It seems insane to me to let them thrive and flourish when they are firing rockets at us." The PA now has full physical control in the Gaza Strip, and as far as Israel is concerned, the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza deprived the Palestinians of any excuse for firing at the Negev. Israel is demanding the Hamas government accept full responsibility and maintain total quiet. And as Israel is permitted to react from its own territory to Hizballah attacks from Lebanon - and with all due force - so, too, can it react to rocket attacks from Gaza. "We shouldn't find ourselves in the situation that existed in [the Jerusalem neighborhood of] Gilo, when it took us a year and a half to understand that it was not possible to accept daily firing on civilians," Eisenkot said. "I estimate that in this round, they [Hamas] will step hard on the brakes. The heads of Hamas are capable of doing so...and they have additional obligations to uphold: providing basic security to citizens, ending the anarchy in the streets, paying salaries, when there is not yet anywhere to take the money from. They need some time and quiet right now, in order to bring about stability in the domestic arena within the Palestinian Authority and to gain control of the positions of power." Eisenkot does not believe there will be any ideological turnaround in Hamas, but does feel the organization will carry out the "requisite ideological adjustments" to survive and rescue the PA from its economic crisis. "They don't see things in our timeframe - in the here and now - but in the longer term, of decades and centuries."
2006-04-17 00:00:00
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