WE OVERKILL BECAUSE WE CAN:

How Israel Foiled an Arms Convoy Bound for Hamas (TIME, 3/30/09)

F-16 fighter-bombers carried out two runs on the convoy, while F-15 fighter planes circled overhead in case hostile aircraft were scrambled from Khartoum or a nearby country. After the first bombing run, drones mounted with high-resolution cameras passed over the burning trucks. The video showed that the convoy had been only partially damaged, so the Israelis ordered a second pass with the F-16s. During the 1,750-mile (2,800 km) journey to Sudan and back, the Israeli aircraft refueled in midair over the Red Sea. (See pictures of violence in Sudan.)

The bombing raid came after an intelligence tip-off. In early January, at the height of Israel's assault on Gaza, Israel's foreign-intelligence agency, Mossad, was told by an informant that Iran was planning a major delivery of 120 tons of arms and explosives to Gaza, including antitank rockets and Fajir rockets with a 25-mile (40 km) range and a 99-lb. (45 kg) warhead. With little time to plan the operation, naval vessels and helicopters were rushed to the Red Sea in case Israel had to rescue a downed pilot, and the plan was hurried through. "The Israelis had less than a week to pull this all together," a source said. [...]

Even if the shipment had reached Gaza, it's doubtful that it would have changed the outcome of the battle, in which Israeli forces sliced into the heart of the Palestinian enclave, killing more than 1,300, many of them civilians. But the deadly new armaments and missiles would almost certainly have raised the Israeli death toll, among both soldiers and civilians living within range of the Fajir rockets. Eleven Israelis died during the Gaza offensive.

MORE:
At The Window (Leon Wieseltier, April 15, 2009, New Republic)

Israel's desire to find a military solution to a military problem is understandable. But the Palestinians are not a military problem; and insofar as Hamas holds sway over a large part of Palestinian life, it too cannot be regarded as just a job for the army. I expect to hear more and more calls for Israel to talk to Hamas. But about what, precisely? Surely not about peace. Hamas's view of peace is loud and plain, and only a meretricious credulity can suggest otherwise. And communications about prisoner exchanges and cease-fires and other practicalities already occur. Anyway, why should Israel do for Hamas what Hamas cannot do for itself, which is to destroy Abu Mazen? The departure of Salam Fayyad was discouraging enough. And yet this is not all that needs to be said. Perhaps the most troubling development in Israel now is the collapse of its diplomatic imagination. Its faith in itself seems almost entirely a faith in its force. This is itself a strategic failure. The most perfect representative of this hopelessness is Benjamin Netanyahu, who cannot bring himself to say a good word about a two-state solution, which is the sole solution there can be, now or ever. He is for Palestinian economic development, which is fine but evasive. He warns about Iran, which is right but also evasive. The only peace process that interests Netanyahu is the one with Washington. Otherwise he and the rest of Israel's intellectually paralyzed leadership are quite relieved to intone that there is "no partner," as if the insistence that there is no partner is not also a way of insuring that there is no partner; and soon, yet again, at a late hour, and mainly for the Americans, an Israeli government will try to shore up the weak but real partner it had all along in Ramallah. And there are significant steps that Israel can take that require no partner, and may provide some assurances to Palestinians. (The settlements are not the obstacle to peace, but they are an obstacle to peace. They defy reason. ) Without such assurances, the terrifying polarization, the ominous alienation of the communities, will continue. But can people who need assurances give assurances?

Might masks fright.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 1, 2009 12:16 PM