Making opinion about :

Israel Invasion to Gaza

The people need a government that can help them to tackle their problems, not a government
that expects from its people to solve its problems.

The violence today between Israel and Gaza is the worst that theres been since Operation Cast
Lead four years ago. Israel right now is in an election season and the government is running on a
platform of security and stability. It makes them look completely impotent if they cant stop
hundreds of rockets from raining down on their citizenry. The citizenry has a real demand for
safety and security.

Also, from the perspective of the Israeli government, they want to change the rules of the game.
They want to reestablish deterrence with Hamas the kind of deterrence that has not existed in a
number of years now. So they want to force Hamas to do things differently.

And I think on the Palestinian side, its the same, its the adverse calculation: that Hamas wants
to show that despite the fact that it gets hit hard by Israel, it can continue to send rockets and they
will not bow to the pressure being exerted on them from the other side.

If this goes on and Israel gets pulled into a ground invasion into Gaza, that can really change the
political dynamic completely. What will Israel do if it does end up incurring into and potentially
re-occupying parts of the strip? Thats a very important question. Thats an especially important
question within the changing regional framework. Were in a new Middle East, with new actors,
and we have both Israel and the Palestinians and Hamas trying to calculate what this violence
will mean for each of them vis--vis their relationship with Egypt. They have to calculate what
this might mean in terms of consequences in the West Bank for a weakened Palestinian Authority
that now has a people watching Israel repress Palestinians in Gaza even as the authorities in the
West Bank are shutting down demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza.

The current round of violence ends most sustainably by a regional agreement to respond to the
regional challenges that I was just talking about. What weve seen over the past couple years is a
succession of bilateral agreements, or indirect bilateral agreements, between Israel and Hamas
that obviously have not gotten to the root causes.

In order to get to the root causes youre going to have to normalize life in Gaza, both on the
border with Egypt as well as the border with Israel. That should go along with a normalization of
Hamass political position. It has done so to an extent regionally, but thats going to have to be
broader if we want to sustainably end this violence.

There needs to be real cessation of rocket attacks and violence for Israel, because hundreds of
rockets landing on Israeli territory and terrorizing Israeli citizens is obviously not acceptable
either for the Israeli public or for its government.

Finally, there needs to be a resolution or an agreement for what role the Ramallah-based PA in
the West Bank plays in this Gaza equation. If we were to have a resolution of the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, there needs to be a Palestinian entity to implement that agreement. Until all
of these pieces are included, the situation is Gaza, the violence for Israel, the West Bank piece,
and the regional piece, how these three actors are going to interact with their regional neighbors
and partners, youre not going to have a sustainable resolution. What weve learned is that until
there is a regional solution, the bilateral violence cannot stop.

By : We Sagara Dewi / 20120310052