By Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Contributor for In Homeland Security
After the Egyptian mediated truce between Israel and Hamas broke down on Tuesday, Israel struck at Hamas leadership, killing three high ranking commanders (identified by Hamas as Mohammed Abu Shammala, Raed al-Attar and Mohammed Barhoum). Top military commander Mohammed Deif eluded the Israeli airstrike, but his wife and two children were killed. Deif’s whereabouts remain and condition remain unknown.
Hamas retaliated with more rocket fire and a search and execution operation (dubbed “strangling the necks”) against Palestinian collaborators with Israel. They are trying to plug the leaks and protect their top leadership positions. Eighteen have been executed so far. The extrajudicial killings involve Hamas militants wearing all black with black masks, tying the hands of suspects, putting a cloth over their heads and then lining them up against the wall facing a firing squad.
The killings were condemned by Palestinian Center for Human Rights and they are no doubt putting even greater fear into the Gazan population as armed men in black with masks pull people off the street after worship at the mosque and take them away to execution.
One execution was outside the Omari Mosque in Palestine Square, reported to be the first public execution in the enclave since 1990. The other kill site was near an abandoned police station in Gaza City.
Posted on the wall near the dead bodies was written: “They provided the enemy with information about the whereabouts of fighters, tunnels of resistance, bombs, houses of fighters and places of rockets, and the occupation bombarded these areas, killing a number of fighters … Therefore, the ruling of revolutionary justice was handed upon him.”
In a conference in Turkey, a senior Hamas leader named Saleh Arouri claimed responsibility for kidnapping and killing three Israeli teens: “It was an operation by your brothers from the al-Qassam Brigades.” He called it “heroic.” This marks the first time that any Hamas official has admitted to abducting and killing the Israeli adolescents in the West Bank last June which triggered Israeli military operations: Operation Brother’s Keeper and led to Operation Protective Edge.
If there is a law of cause-and-effect, then much of the blame must now be centered on Hamas with this latest admission of guilt. Moreover, while inciting the more radical elements of Palestine by such a statement, they are trying to enflame and justify a greater weapon of brutal manslaughter against Israel—the targeting of their children as combatants using similar methods. While they have employed tactics of indiscriminate killing and the direct targeting of civilians through the use of terrorism, the abduction and slaughter of teens is a new degree of war crime.
While none of this justifies Israel’s operation to displace an estimated 400,000 Gazan civilians and make 100,000 homeless, it does, however, justify a surgical precision targeting approach and the use of high-technology missile/rocket defense systems and intelligence gathering
Israel claims that its military tactics are working and that the Gazans are and will see Hamas as the true villain who caused all of this. But this remains to be seen.
First, the Palestinians, having lost so much, will never (not in the long-term) see Israel as good. Second, they are less likely to see Hamas as the ‘bad guy’ because even though Hamas has a militant wing in the al Aqsa Brigades, it also has the entire government administrating the Gaza territory, including: relief, charity and humanitarian departments so it lays both sides: using the Gazans for suicide attacks and human shields and then playing the hero with food and medical care after the casualties. That was in large part how they got started and won the population initially in the elections and is a classic Muslim Brotherhood approach: appeal to needs and supply charity to the people.
It would be difficult to picture the sole monopolistic source of aid or that of a monopolist’s filter of such aid would see lasting rebellion by the masses now; especially at the most critical need to receive it. In any case each side unrealistically believes that their methods are swaying the Gazan population around or against Hamas. Most likely, they feel even more of what they felt before the conflict started again- they hate Israel and its containment and methods, they hate the many of the tactics of the Hamas militant wing and the other violent extremists and they like the concept of Muslim solidarity and humanitarian assistance–all within a climate of extreme deprivation and intense fear and anger.
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