Commentators in Israel have been trying to understand why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has opted out of an all-out war with Hamas this time. Gazan people recently sent almost 500 projectiles in 24 hours. According to the Israeli reports, one of them hit a bus and 60 Israelis were wounded. One civilian was killed. Numerous homes were destroyed. Yet Israel’s security Cabinet accepted the Egypt-brokered cease-fire plan instead of responding with greater force.
Netanyahu’s accepting the cease-fire was so unexpected that Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman hastily resigned his post. He left the Cabinet with a damaging announcement that Netanyahu’s appointment of Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot to the post had weakened the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Liberman’s party Yisrael Beitenu claims that the new commanders of the IDF are now ordering their officers that they should not use “excessive force” as defined by the U.N. agencies because thousands of court cases by the Palestinians against the Israeli government are making life practically miserable for the army. This explanation seems flimsy given Israel’s track record of inhuman and arrogant attitudes during the decades of Palestinian resistance.
Conservative commentators blame the Netanyahu governments failing to find “innovative ways” to kill the Hamas leaders. It is a matter of fact that Israel’s most ruthless and atrocious special forces looked like they have lost what those conservative writers affectionately call “operational competence.” Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post bitterly complains that “the special forces operating in Gaza… were ambushed. Their cover was blown. And the IDF permitted a bus carrying 50 soldiers to enter a border area where it was entirely exposed to enemy fire.”
It is well-known fact that Netanyahu and his special forces would have killed Hamas commanders Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh a long time ago if they could.
Last week they did not move to destroy the rocket launchers and the crews that operate them. Why, as Glick asks, didn’t the IDF enter Gaza yet again meanwhile killing tens of innocent civilians and children?
I think we owe this and many future developments to Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian journalist, author, and a former general manager and editor-in-chief of Al-Arab News Channel. Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner’s beloved prince, their point man for what they call Arab-Israeli peace plan, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) made a stupid mistake when he set out to murder Jamal Khashoggi.
Jamal served as editor for the Saudi Arabian newspaper Al Watan, turning it into a platform for Saudi Arabian progressives. He devoted his life to the peace the Arab people have desperately needed since the end of the World War I. Then, people like Netanyahu, Trump and Kushner had planned to end the Ottoman Empire and dismember the Arab people from the last of the empires that they had proudly been part of. The areas of influence in the traditional Arab homelands were carved off and the seeds of animosity among the Arabs and Jews were sowed. They were about to finish off Palestine completely.
Jamal Khashoggi was the main roadblock to Netanyahu’s so-called peace plan that MBS has been marketing throughout the Middle East and Islamic countries. The young and ambitious prince saw the plan Kushner pushed him into as a sure way to cement his permanent leadership of the Islamic world. The only impediment was Khashoggi’s opposition in the U.S. press and on the Arab television networks.
Turkey’s investigation shows that MBS may have ordered the killing of Khashoggi. The CIA also believes that is the case, as the U.S. media reported last week. Now divine justice is being served and MBS is on the way to getting what he deserves. If he goes down and ends up in the defendant’s chair, so does their so-called peace plan, that includes the annexation of occupied Jerusalem to Israel.
It would be Jamal’s ultimate service to peace and his beloved people.
Source: Daily Sabah
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