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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

June 22, 2007

Does Hamas takeover mean new hope for kidnapped Israeli soldier?

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Hamas’ takeover of the Gaza Strip is spurring hope for the safe return of an Israeli soldier kidnapped nearly a year ago by the fundamentalist Islamic group, even as it issued a terse warning to Israel not to harm its leaders “or forget about Gilad Shalit.”

Shalit, then a 19-year-old army corporal, was captured last June 25 during a cross-border raid and smuggled into Gaza. He has been held by Hamas and two other organizations involved in the attack in which two other Israelis were killed.

Israeli officials and family members are hoping that with Hamas now in control of Gaza, having prompted their rivals in Fatah to flee to the West Bank following a bloody conflict last week, Hamas alone will be able to decide Shalit’s fate.

“There is a new situation and I hope Prime Minister Olmert will know how to take advantage of it,” Noam Shalit told journalists at a graveside ceremony Sunday marking a year since his son was captured and his son’s comrades were killed.

It would be in Hamas’ interest, experts argue, to make a deal now.

“I think it’s a great opportunity for Gilad Shalit and for Alan Johnston for sure,” said Lt. Col. (Res.) Anat Berko, a research fellow at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, referring to the BBC reporter who was abducted in Gaza in March. “I think Hamas wants to show that they are the boss, that they can make things happen and they are the ones with the key.”

Analysts say that Hamas first must prove to nervous Gazans that it can deliver on a practical level by providing basic items such as gasoline, food, electricity and water. This would mean securing even a minimum level of cooperation with Israel, which could be bolstered significantly by the release of Shalit.

Second, making a prisoner swap with Israel would boost Hamas’ popularity in Gaza as well as the West Bank. The issue of Palestinian prisoners is a hugely emotional one on the Palestinian street, where almost every family has a relative or friend in an Israeli jail.

Hamas is likely to want to make a deal on prisoners before Israel makes one with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a move that would strengthen Abbas and Fatah’s standing instead of that of Hamas.

Hamas, said Yaron Ezrahi, a political science professor at Hebrew University, “is in the process of being maligned and criticized in an unprecedented way because the picture that dominates the international press is of the Hamas member with a mask, in a terrorist uniform, with a gun in his hand. On the other hand, they have never been in a position of having full responsibility for the daily lives of 1.5 million people.”

Ezrahi said that “the rewards of releasing Shalit would not be higher in the future. I think Hamas right now after its military victory is definitely in the mood to try to cut political losses and public image losses they are suffering. I think they should have a very compelling motivation to release Shalit now.”

In the West Bank, Fatah spokesman Samir Nayfa suggested to the Palestinian media that a deal between Hamas and Israel could happen, even in unexpected ways.

“Hamas might announce that Shalit disappeared amidst the state of chaos in Gaza Strip, or they might announce that he ran away,” he said. “Hamas might go to the extreme of announcing that Fatah people helped Shalit run away.”

At the same time, Hamas issued a terse warning on Saturday about Shalit.

“If any of Hamas’ leaders are harmed, Israel can forget about Gilad Shalit,” a spokesman for Hamas’ armed wing, the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades, told reporters.

The daily Ha’aretz cited security sources reporting that the Egyptians, who had been mediating with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to broker a deal for Shalit, might resume efforts soon if the situation in Gaza does continue to wind down. They had stopped in recent weeks as the fighting between Fatah and Hamas intensified, the sources said.

David Baker, an Israeli government spokesman, said that Shalit’s release is still very much at the top of the Israeli agenda.

“Israel will not relent in its efforts to allow for the safe return for our soldier Gilad Shalit.” he said. “These efforts continue unabated.”

Observers say that if Hamas does strike a deal to swap prisoners with Israel, it also would break Israel’s self-imposed taboo on talking to Hamas, even if it is through the Egyptians. This would also be to Hamas’ advantage.

Berko, the Herzliya center researcher who recently published the book, “The Path to Paradise: The Inner World of Suicide Bombers and Their Dispatchers,” said that despite Israel’s desires to strengthen the secular Fatah movement over Hamas, the time may have come to realize it can influence things only so far.

“I think this is not the time to deal with strengthening or weakening sides. We saw Israel cannot predict or create all the processes in the Middle East. We saw it in Lebanon and we are seeing it all over the world,” she said, referring to the surge of Islamic fundamentalism of which Hamas is a part.

“As time passes it will become harder to secure Shalit’s release. Now something has changed and we have to take the opportunity and speak with the devil,” she said. l

Does Hamas takeover mean new hope for kidnapped Israeli soldier? Read More »

If it’s racist, it ain’t anti-Semitic

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

Remember that “Seinfeld” episode where George’s phone line gets crossed with a woman who goes by Donna Chang? Having called George, Jerry ends up spending a while on the phone with Donna Chang and decides to ask out this mystery woman. But when he shows up to the Chinese restaurant she suggested, he’s startled to see a plain Long Island blonde.

  DONNA

Did you think I was Chinese?..

  JERRY

Oh. No. Oh, you mean because of the “Chang”?

  DONNA

Actually, the family name wasn’t originally Chang.

  JERRY

I didn’t think so.

  DONNA

It used to be “Changstein.”

 

Well, I imagined a similar scenario just now as I leafed through the LA Times and saw an article about embattled San Francisco Supervisor Ed Jew. Jew, who is no yid, represents Frisco’s Chinatown. He is the board’s only Asian American.

I wonder if he dines out-of-towners at the House of Bagels.

If it’s racist, it ain’t anti-Semitic Read More »

Ferrari: Not a sin to need the speed

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

Well, Ferrari, the other Italian pipeline to the divine, didn’t care too much for the Vatican’s Ten Commandments for drivers.

Turns out, according to Ferrari, that owners of the ultra-expensive, lust-driven sports cars simply spend more than a quarter million American because they like high-performance cars and don’t use them “as a means for outshining other people and arousing a feeling of envy,” which would violate the Fifth Commandment.

“Unless having fun has become a sin, I don’t believe it (to be wrong),” Amedeo Felisa told Reuters this week at an event celebrating Ferrari’s 60th anniversary in its hometown southeast of Milan.

I simply find it comical that his warranted a news story, no matter how short the story, not the car drivers—yes, I’m envious of their Enzo.

Ferrari: Not a sin to need the speed Read More »

Banking on web wisdom and webbish geography

Leave a Comment / Up Front /

You may remember Dan Jacobs from his “A Sensitive Guy on the Road: Fifty Dates Across the States” project in 2004. The L.A. native and son of a rabbi is back again with a new whimsical idea: Avanoo.com (pronounced avenue). It’s what he calls the world’s first “community wisdom bank.”

Developed with his friend, a 33-year-old Web maven known as Wilford Sage, Jacobs is attempting to provide people with answers — 100 million of them. And the start-up is hoping to gather that number within 100 days of its May 23 launch.

The site works by allowing people to ask questions of people who fit into specific demographics. If you want to know what fat men over 40 think about Twinkies, this is your site.

With Avanoo, Jacobs and Wilford are creating a community forum of advice, content, information and, of course, “wisdom.” Users either deposit wisdom by answering questions that interest them, access wisdom by getting answers from the site’s diverse communities, spread wisdom by sharing comments with others or seek wisdom by posting questions.

Avanoo.com’s version of wisdom is the knowledge of specific communities rather than individual experts. The idea for the site came from James Surowiecki’s book, “The Wisdom of Crowds,” which argues that under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent and often smarter than the smartest people in them.

“What’s exciting about Avanoo’s community wisdom bank, in contrast to banks that store money, is that the accumulated wisdom can be accessed by anyone and can never be depleted. Thus, in return for a single wisdom deposit, people get access to a vast wealth of wisdom,” Jacobs said.

— Merissa Nathan Gerson, Contributing Writer

Web site taps ‘Jewish geography’

First there was Internet dating. Then there was JDate and a whole other slew of Web sites just for Jews.Now comes ChosenNet.com, a MySpace-style site just for the self-described “chosen people.”

ChosenNet’s site functions much like MySpace, with pictures, profiles, testimonials and links to friends, friends’ friends, friends’ friends and friends (whew!). For example: If Benbo has 37 friends, and one of them is Aaron, you can look up Aaron’s 317 friends and connect to them. You can e-mail them, instant message them or add them to your own connection. ChosenNet currently has some 6,000 members, many of whom seem to be on the West Coast.

The site was founded in 2004 by WhoNew LLC, which also operates a Mormon and Christian social networking site.

Not that this is the first social networking Web site for Jews. Other burgeoning Web sites include Shmooze.com (“Jewish Social Network”) and FrumHere.com (“Connect, re-connect, stay connected”), but ChosenNet seems to tap into the zeitgeist of Jewish geography — that informal “game” where two Jews who meet each other question every detail about each other’s life until they find they know someone in common. In addition to listing schools and jobs, favorite music, TV and hobbies, it has a slot for summer camps, youth groups and year in Israel.

Like MySpace, ChosenNet hosts forums, but ones such as “Jews of the Right/Left,” “Aliyah Now,” “Black Jews Unite” and “Vegetarian Jews.” Discussion board threads include everything from people starting social groups to searching for a nail salon to “Favorite Hebrew Hammer Lines,” referring to the Adam Goldberg blaxploitation spoof well known in Jewish circles.

Do Jews need yet another forum to connect them to more Jews? Or will they be happier in more open and diverse forums like MySpace? Like all things on the Web, only time will tell.

— Amy Klein, Religion Editor

Banking on web wisdom and webbish geography Read More »

I heart Hollywood endings

Leave a Comment / Singles /

I met “Mr. Nice Guy” more than three years ago, and I cherish our special connection — he’s affectionate, understanding, a good listener, open-minded, practical …

I could go on and on. I felt fortunate that we found each other, and he indicated the same. We both want the best things life has to offer. At this time in my life he’s the kind of partner I’m looking for. With his work schedule and other commitments, I knew from the get-go I would have to be kind and very flexible. That’s not an issue for me.

“Mr. Nice Guy” said more than once, “I’ll always be your friend.” Now I’m puzzled and confused because I’ve received an e-mail from him saying, “I met someone.” What does that mean? Does it mean what I think it means? He seems to have an odd definition of friendship. I thought I misinterpreted the message, so I asked him to meet me for a face-to-face conversation. I received a reply that he had no problem with that idea and would e-mail me when he got back from his business trip. Well, I’m still waiting.

Our friendship has been somewhat nontraditional and had a life of its own. I’m guessing that this could be the end of “Mr. Nice Guy.” I cannot tell a lie; I’m very hurt — devastated. I feel as if I have been pushed off a cliff (while he was proclaiming friendship), landed on jagged rocks and broken glass and got bruised from head to toe. I lost 10 pounds (not from dieting). You may be asking what his issues are. I really don’t know. I feel I had a secret trial, was found guilty, convicted and sentenced.

In hindsight, I feel I was used and discarded like an old Costco catalogue. Apparently, I’m still naive and too trusting of people when they act sincere. I take people at their word. I don’t take friendship lightly; it’s serious to me. Friendship is a long-term commitment that has meaning; it’s being loyal and accepting the other person as is, the good parts along with the blemishes. Occasionally he mentioned our differences, but when I asked for specifics, I never got a direct response. I pointed out that differences add spice to a friendship.

The other side of it is, we both know we have many things in common. I suggested we focus on the things in common. Over the years, we have shared many things about ourselves and our families. We have traditional values, and family is important to both of us. However, I now have learned a lot about “Mr. Nice Guy’s” character. He’s good at hiding behind e-mail.

I believe our paths crossed for a reason — to bring both of us joy and happiness, not to bring me heartbreak and grief. Like everyone else, we both need to be needed and want to be wanted. Yet I think now it may be time for me to take the advice of a close friend: “Walk away. He’s not worth it.” However, my emotional side is a little slow at catching up with my intellectual side.

These days I’m getting my accolades from doing stand-up comedy. All my tears and pain provide lots of comic material. I’m definitely unique and have a niche. If someone had told me a few years ago that I would be doing stand-up, writing my own material and enjoying it, I never would have believed it. I’m starting to pinch myself occasionally — just to be sure this is really happening. I’m enjoying my new-found skin; however, inside I’m still the same down-to-earth, sensitive, friendly and generous person I’ve always been. I’m playful, fun to be with and funny — that’s all part of my charm and likeability.

And I’m an equal-opportunity offender: people I meet never know when they might become a one-liner in my routine. My friends think this is great — spunky and gutsy of me. They admit they couldn’t do it, and they are supportive.

I love the attention that the laughs and the applause bring. All friends (new and old) are welcome to come along on my journey — it’s an E-ticket ride, an unpredictable adventure, and I know my sons, their families, and my other relatives are proud of me and my many accomplishments. But in private I’m still a romantic, a daydreamer — and I still believe in the old notion of boy chases girl, boy catches girl. I guess that, despite the fact that I’m making my way in the modern world, I still want the old-fashioned, happy Hollywood ending.

Esther W. Hersh can be reached at EWH1121@aol.com

I heart Hollywood endings Read More »

Am I Left?

Leave a Comment / Rob Eshman /

It’s a bright Thursday morning, and I’m having breakfast at Toast with an Israeli diplomat.

After a few minutes, the subject turns to my editorials, and,suddenly, he’s not so diplomatic.

“Rob,” he tells me, “people think you hate Israel. And people think you love Iran.”

I’m not flabbergasted — I do read our Letters to the Editor, and you should see the ones we don’t print — but neither am I flattered. Because here’s the truth: I love Israel; I hate the Iranian regime; I’m not a fan of Hamas; and I’m very, very fond of Judaism and the Jewish people.

I gather this will all come as breaking news to many readers who have reacted so negatively to recent editorials. Those columns the diplomat ticked off were the ones in which I questioned whether divestment from Iranian companies would be enough to deter Iran’s nuclear weapons development; whether Israel could exist as a Jewish state without making hard choices regarding its negotiating partners and its territories; whether any diplomatic overtures to Iran would be fruitless; whether American Jews weren’t too quick to dismiss dialogue with American Muslims.

People out there think you’re three clicks left of Noam Chomsky, the diplomat said.

I’m well aware, I told him. It’s not just the letters, it’s Kiddush. After Shabbat services, when the congregation races for the wine, challah and sprinkle cookies, it’s easy to sense how deeply offended people are by what I wrote that week. “Hey Rob,” an acquaintance will say as we shake hands. Then there’s an uncomfortable beat. “I was going to say something about your editorial — but never mind, it’s Shabbat.”

If studios have focus groups and politicians have tracking polls, Jewish editors have Kiddush.

“Am I left?” I asked the diplomat. I don’t even know what left or right means anymore. At a moment in history when Israel’s prime minister, from the center-right, ran on a ticket of unilateral withdrawal from the territories, something even the left opposed a few years back, and when the left in Israel advocates for a separation fence that its leaders once fought against, and when right and left are united in their disgust with the current government, these labels mean bubkes in Israel.

And they mean less and less here in the States. We have a Republican president whose policies many conservatives find abhorrent and a Republican governor who stands for green energy, stem-cell research and the end of Rush Limbaugh. I would vote for Arnold over any Democrat on the near or far horizon. Am I right?

These labels really turn worthless when we try to apply them to our foreign policy choices.

Take Iran.

As bad as what’s happening in Gaza — a.k.a. Hamastan — is, Israel’s true existential threat is the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran led by the mullahs and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The reality of Hamas fed with Iranian arms in the south, Iranian-supported Hezbollah to the north and Iran filling the vacuum left by America’s invasion of Iraq only amplifies Iran’s danger in the region.

Israel’s new defense minister, Ehud Barak, has spoken of a “Shiite banana” of Iranian influence in the Middle East. Think of how much worse it would be to confront a nuclear-armed Shiite banana.

What’s a Jew to do? The June 2007 issue of Commentary landed on my desk with the cover headline provided by editor Norman Podhoretz’s solution: “The Case for Bombing Iran.” Inside, he lays out the dangers Iran poses not just to Israel but to Europe, to the Sunni Muslim world and to the United States. By the end, I was ready to push the button. Then I remembered Podhoretz’s unwavering support for the Iraq War. Not a ringing endorsement.

So I read Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria, who arrives at a diametrically opposed solution, arguing that a combination of sanctions, divestment, military preparedness and diplomatic carrots will strengthen the realists within a weak regime with a teetering economy.

All-out nuclear war or step-by-step?

I dipped into this massive dilemma in a prior column. Evidently, many people read it as being clearly opposed to the movement afoot to divest state employee pension funds from Iranian interests. I don’t oppose it. I support it. I applaud the California Assembly for unanimously passing AB 221 last week, which requires the state’s two pension funds with $441 billion in assets to divest from companies doing business with Iran.

The nation’s public pension funds hold $1 trillion in assets, and legislators in at least 15 statehouses are considering similar bills (Florida passed its version last week, as well, and Gov. Charlie Crist signed it into law).

My concern, the shattered wine glass that tempers my wild enthusiasm for this cause, is twofold: These divestment bills take months or years to pass and once passed, offer a window of one or more years to complete the task. These efforts alone, in other words, are hardly enough. Zakaria and Middle East expert Gidi Grinstein both believe divestment needs to be joined with a credible military threat, diplomatic carrots and international sanctions.

“Divestment as part of a package of sanctions may not be successful on its own in stopping the nuclear project,” Grinstein wrote me, “but compounded with the two other legs of credible and viable military option and a political package it may work. Effective outcome is not guaranteed, but decisive action here is very important.”

By the way, as The Wall Street Journal reported last week, the Bush administration believes divestment will derail the larger diplomatic aim of isolating Iran. So the president is strongly opposed to these divestment efforts.

That George W. Bush — such a leftist!

Am I Left? Read More »

Biblical Davening

Leave a Comment / David Suissa /

It must have been quite a scene, and quite a neighborhood. Boys as young as 3 waking up at 5 a.m. with their fathers and brothers and walking to their shuls for the morning prayers. Hundreds of men — grandfathers, fathers, teenagers, little boys — going to meet God when the sun came up.

This was 40 years ago in a Tel Aviv neighborhood called Tikvah (Hope). One 3-year-old was a boy named Yaacov (“Kobi”) Hamami, the youngest of seven brothers, all of whom joined him on the morning trek.

According to Kobi, a Yemenite Jew, this scene harks back not just to the 1960s but to the time of King Solomon, in little villages and towns all over Yemen. For more than 2,500 years, Yemenite fathers have taught their sons the Yemenite traditions they learned from their own fathers.

Now, in the land of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, Kobi Hamami, father of four, is doing what he can to continue the tradition, right here in Pico-Robertson.

Good luck finding his shul. It’s got no sign and no front door. You have to go through a back alley and a high chain-link fence. It’s like those underground nightclubs downtown that have no addresses, and probably no permits. You have to know someone who knows someone.

Well, I knew someone who knew someone, and on a recent Shabbat, I checked out Kobi’s Shabazi shul, which turned out to be inside a Chabad all-girls’ school.

Now, they didn’t have musical recordings during the time of King Solomon, so we have no way of knowing if this is how Kobi’s ancestors prayed.

But if gut instinct is worth anything, I think I’ve discovered a touch of biblical-era davening right here in the hood.

The Shema prayer alone is worth the trek. It’s not a melody. It’s a tribal chant. You feel like you’re walking through the desert, exhausted, and you’re pleading with God to give you strength. The chanting seems to get louder and louder. The kids are chanting, too. It’s anything but smooth and pretty. This davening is Turkish coffee, extra thick, no sugar.

Even the Hebrew sounds different: emet is pronounced amat, kadosh is gothosh, chalom is cholem, and so on. When they read from the Torah, they do a duet with an Aramaic translation.

Imagine this: foreign on top of foreign. Their Hebrew already sounds different, and it’s layered with an ancient Aramaic lingo that has its own melody. So when I tell you I felt a biblical frisson in the Shabazi shul, I’m not exaggerating.

But none of this blew me away as much as the footstool.

Go to any small shul anywhere in the world, look under the bimah, and you’ll probably find the same kind of things: tallit, prayer books, maybe a shofar or two. One thing you probably won’t find is a footstool.

But here, in the Shabazi shul, the footstool is a big deal. It’s where little boys climb up, so their little chins can reach up and they can read directly from the Torah. When I was there, Kobi’s 6-year-old son, Ari, was the first kid to get what they call the “sixth aliyah,” the special Torah readings they reserve for the kids.

This is what Kobi did with his father when he was 3 — and it’s what Kobi’s father did with his own father back in Yemen.

Yemenite fathers don’t wait for their sons to become bar mitzvahs to teach them to read from the Torah and to pray the Yemenite way. They can’t afford to. Their ways are too singular, too complex. Since it’s rare to find a Yemenite school, fathers need to supplement what their kids learn in mainstream Hebrew schools. Kobi’s father took him to pray at 5 a.m., and arranged for daily lessons after school. Today, Kobi invites all the kids of his tiny community to his house after the Shabbat service, so he can teach them the intricate rituals he hopes they will teach their own children.

In this community of maybe 20 or 30 families, there’s another father who’s been doing a lot of teaching and helping kids stand up on footstools. His name is Eliezer, and he’s a former Christian pastor. When his soul called him to the Jewish faith many years ago, he searched for the deepest expression of that faith he could find. This led him on a long journey through the shtetls of the holy land and finally to this little Yemenite enclave in the hood. His son Yishai is a beautiful blond kid who belts out Aramaic chants with the confidence of a Chasidic kid speaking Yiddish.

As I reflected later on my Yemenite moment in time, I couldn’t help but think of all the traditions that so many Jewish communities throughout the world are fighting to maintain. There are countless variations of Ashkenazic and Sephardic traditions that have their own melodies, their own chants, their own ways. We all read the same words, but after that, we’re allowed to tweak. It’s as if God gave us the consonants, and then said: “Have fun with the vowels.”

While it’s nice to say that Jews are all one family, and we all read from the same book, it’s also true that the intense attachment to different traditions has helped fuel the passion that made the whole survive.

But lest you think that Kobi’s Shabazi shul is a little too different for your taste, you’ll be happy to know that it was born 9 months ago in a way that every Jew in the world will relate to.

It broke away from another Yemenite shul — which also had a footstool.

David Suissa, an advertising executive, is founder of OLAM magazine and Meals4Israel.com. He can be reached at dsuissa@olam.org.

Biblical Davening Read More »

A Pyrrhic victory for Hamas?

Leave a Comment / Israel, Opinion /

The Hamas coup in Gaza last week might seem like a victory for Iran and its followers, who now have a foothold on Israel’s doorstep. But if Israel plays its cards wisely, it might
turn things around.

Since the 1979 Israel-Egypt Camp David accords, Israel has been on a quest to end its responsibility over the Palestinian population. This quest is rooted in the need to preserve the delicate balance among four of Zionism’s basic values and visions: individual and collective security for Jews; humanism, liberalism and democracy; the Jewishness of the State of Israel and the Jewish majority in it; and the desire for sovereignty in the areas where Hebrew civilization was conceived.

The Six-Day War destabilized Zionism as Israel assumed responsibility for millions of Palestinians. Indeed, the Israeli-Palestinian political process may be framed as a painful journey to restore Zionist equilibrium through territorial compromise.

Many strategies to do so have been tested since 1979. They include the “Jordanian Option,” “Interim Agreements,” “Permanent-Status Agreement,” “Self-Governing Palestinian Authority” and “Unilateral Disengagement.” Every prime minister since Yitzhak Shamir has taken a significant step in this direction: Shamir’s Madrid Summit of 1991, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres’ Oslo accords of 1993-1995, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Wye River Memorandum of 1998, Ehud Barak’s Camp David of 2000 and Ariel Sharon’s Gaza Disengagement of 2005.

Against this backdrop, the current Israeli government intended to bring this process to a close by “converging” from the West Bank. However, these plans were aborted due to the election of Hamas in January 2006, the Second Lebanon War last summer and the constant firing of Qassam rockets from Gaza to Israel.

Hence, it has been nearly 18 months that Israel has been at a political impasse facing a double-headed Palestinian entity. Hamas controlled the Palestinian Legislative Council and therefore the government of the Palestinian Authority. Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas was its chairman. The Palestinian ideological and political stalemate was compounded by a constitutional and structural deadlock. No one could move.

Israel has not been able to come up with an adequate response. We were not able to fight Hamas properly because of Fatah, nor were we able to engage Fatah politically because of Hamas. We have been at a standstill with no agenda to serve our own existential interests.

Last week we were suddenly unstuck. Whereas our military dilemma has not changed, we now face a Hamas-controlled Gaza and a Fatah-dominated — or so we hope — West Bank.

On the military side, the dilemma surrounding an Israeli ground operation in Gaza has not changed. The military logic is to stop Qassams and prevent Hamas’ military buildup by seizing territory and engaging its armed forces. But Israel’s national security logic is to never again assume responsibility for the 1.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.

This is a clash of logics that has no resolution. So far the latter national security logic has been “winning” and Israel has been avoiding a large-scale military operation. At the moment, Hamas’ victory doesn’t change that fundamental equation.

But what should be the new political logic? The answer is rooted in our fundamental interest in ending our control over the Palestinians. However, in the new reality, Gaza and the West Bank merit separate approaches.

While the Hamas victory is a potential setback for this goal, in certain respects, if forced to face the Islamic fundamentalist group, Israel now has it where it wants it.

First, Hamas for the first time assumes full control and responsibility over the Palestinian population in Gaza. Finally it is fully exposed to the tensions between its ideology and the needs of the population, with no Fatah to blame for its failures, although Israel is always there to serve as a scapegoat.

Second, being associated with the Egyptian opposition movement of Islamic Brotherhood and under sponsorship of Iran, Hamas is now more clearly an adversary of Egypt and not just of Israel. Hence, incentives for Egypt to act decisively against the smuggling of weapons have dramatically increased.

Third, the slow process of international recognition of Hamas now will be frozen.

Finally, Israel now has solid political and legal ground to further disassociate itself from Gaza. The new Gaza situation calls for further decisive actions such as cutting off any formal or practical ties except for acute humanitarian needs. This should include the dismantling of the shared customs role and a freeze on the trafficking of goods to and from Israel.

At the same time, we can now re-engage Fatah in the West Bank. The new Palestinian government headed by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is the most moderate for which one could ask. Alleviating the economic and political boycott and fostering negotiations may open the way for Israel to end our responsibility over the Palestinian population in the West Bank, as well.

Concerns that the West Bank may become a platform for military activity against Israel are valid. No one and nothing can guarantee that this will not happen. But there are a few noteworthy differences from Gaza.

For one, Jordan has consistently been more aggressive than Egypt in fighting Islamic terrorism in all its forms. Also, Fatah is stronger in the West Bank. Finally, the West Bank is simply different in its demographic, economic and social makeup.

Therefore, our policy should be to empower Abbas and the new Palestinian government, to transfer to them attributes of statehood and to stabilize their economy. We now have the opportunity to engage them in a political process with the purpose of establishing a Palestinian state in provisional borders or to agree on terms of reference for a permanent status.

In this context, one should keep in mind that the infrastructure for separation between Israel and the West Bank Palestinians, i.e. the security fence, is inching its way to completion. At that point, more than 95 percent of the settlers will live west of the fence and a similar percentage of Palestinians will live on its eastern side. This is a piece of real estate that constitutes transformative politics.

Israel’s challenges have not been made easier by last week’s developments in Gaza. But its flexibility to serve its interests has increased dramatically. The Hamas victory can be turned into a Pyrrhic one.

Article courtesy Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Gidi Grinstein is founder and president of the Re’ut Institute, a Tel Aviv-based think tank.

A Pyrrhic victory for Hamas? Read More »