Operation Cast Lead demonstrated two points. The first is that at present, at least, Hamas is far weaker than was previously thought, and that from the classical military point of view, there is no obstacle to destroying Hamas and retaking Gaza if that is what Israel decides to do. Three Israeli divisions with air support could achieve strategic control in a day or two and full deployment in a week. The cost however would probably be well over 100 Israeli dead and perhaps 5,000 - 10,000 Palestinian dead. From the international reaction to Operation Cast Lead we know that this huge casualty rate among Palestinians would be totally unacceptable to the international community. As in Operation Cast Lead, the entire world will be convinced that every one of the Palestinian victims was a small child deliberately executed by Israeli soldiers, precisely as related in absurd atrocity propaganda disseminated in major media outlets such as Time magazine and the New York Times. The world is fully prepared to believe, it seems, that the rockets coming out of Gaza operate themselves, and that Gaza contains only civilians. This presents an insurmountable obstacle to elimination of Hamas by military means.

A government headed by the late Yitzhak Rabin or by Shimon Peres might conceivably have been able to carry out the reconquest of Gaza. These leaders, and the tradition they represented, had sufficient credit in the west as men of peace and moderation. Benjamin Netanyahu however, is ineradicably identified with the occupation and with Israeli inflexibility in peace negotiations. Even Tzipi Livni is tarred at least lightly with the lack of progress in the Annapolis negotiations, the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead. Avigdor Lieberman doesn't need others to vilify him. He deliberately pains himself as a monster and racist, making outrageous statements in order to attract attention and win support among his right wing followers. He might really believe only half the things he says, though even that would be bad enough. He is a ready-made Zionist bogie man. Like Ariel Sharon before them, they would inevitably appear in European cartoons cast as baby-eating Jews. The United Nations would force a quick Israeli withdrawal. Iran would quickly make good the losses of the Hamas, and Israel would have sacrificed a large number of soldiers for absolutely no reason.

Until recently, it was far more probable that an Israeli incursion into Gaza would result in a scenario similar to the above, but with replacement of the Hamas by the Fatah and the Palestinian Authority. That would have paved the way to a return of the peace process. But that option is receding. The Bush administration is gone, and in its waning days it was doing even less than it had done previously in the Middle East. The Obama administration, for all its fanfare about foreign policy changes, has yet to show much movement in any direction regarding the Israeli-Palestinian issue. By design or through neglect, and partly through its own actions, the regime of Mahmoud Abbas has become very nearly irrelevant.

That brings us to the other reason why Benjamin Netanyahu is not going to out the Hamas. The only way to get international support for ousting Hamas by either diplomatic or military means, is to agree that the goal of the ouster is to restore the Hamas by the Fatah rule in Gaza. With the Hamas out of the way, Netanyahu would be faced with enormous international pressure to conclude a peace agreement with the Fatah and allow creation of a Palestinian state. Israel would have to agree to the peace solution that all the conventional wisdom holds is so obvious - something along the lines of the Geneva Accord or the Clinton Bridging Proposals or Israel's own Taba proposals. This would mean that Israel would have to declare readiness to withdraw from most of the West Bank and to compromise on Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority would not agree to these proposals, because Mahmoud Abbas continues to insist on Right of Return for Palestinian refugees in every statement made on the issue, and continues to deny that Israel has any national rights in the old city of Jerusalem. However, that does not matter. Netanyahu cannot propose Israeli withdrawal from Hebron or, for example, giving up the Har Homa settlement that his previous government initiated. Recall that the Shas party vetoed any mention at all of Jerusalem in the Annapolis negotiations with the Palestinians. If Netanyahu made any such concessions, even in principle, not only would his coalition fall apart, but the Likud party itself, would split. Netanyahu would find himself, like his predecessor Sharon, in a new party - the "in between Likud and Kadima party." Unlike Sharon, Bibi would not be able to must a majority to support his new position. The continuation of the Hamas government and its legitimation, the goal for which so many "progressive" groups in the United States are working as well, is the best guarantee for Netanyahu that the peace process will remain dead and that he will never have to face the problem of "painful concessions."

Hamas is consequently protected from extinction not by Israeli weakness, but by the nature of the right wing coalition that is going to govern Israel for at least the near future.

Ami Isseroff