Hamas March of Return and the Reality Behind the Affair

 

Hamas hoped they could gather as many as one-hundred-thousand Gazan and have them, read as force them, to walk in a mass to the Gaza border fence and with any luck push it over and invade Israel. Why would Hamas want them to break down the border fence? Easy, Hamas hoped to force the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) to have to shoot the invaders and Hamas hoped they might receive hundreds, or better yet thousands, of Gazans shot dead. They also hoped for thousands of injured, preferably bleeding, Gazans so they could take pictures and splash them all over the world media. Hamas even had chosen what they hoped would be their first victim of their planned sacrificial massacre. They sent this special infiltrator ahead of the rest and this individual crossed into Israel and stood to defy the IDF. The IDF met this initial Hamas operative and talked with her, that is right, a female. After hearing her out, the IDF took her into custody and returned her safely to her parents. This advance Hamas operative was a seven-year-old girl whom they hoped could be killed by the IDF and be their first, and probably most advertised to the world, victim of their attempt to infiltrate Israel by forcing crossings along the Gaza border. As far as Hamas succeeding at their goals, they failed on every front. They may have surpassed twenty-thousand but probably even fell short of that figure. Under twenty Gazans died in their mass exercise and even their inflated numbers place the injured at well short of one thousand. All of these numbers have mostly come from Hamas and European media as Israeli media was unavailable during Shabbat, which made them unavailable from sundown Friday until after sundown Saturday. Israeli commentary will likely come available today and will be available to the public. In the meanwhile, we can expect the Arab and Muslim world to attempt to play this as if it were the mass casualty event Hamas had planned. Already Turkey, Jordan and Egypt have condemned the Israeli actions as the use of “disproportionate force” and, according to Jordanian spokesman, Mohammad Momani, “excessive force against peaceful protesters who were marching to commemorate the Land Day and affirm their legitimate rights in accordance with international law and norms.” One can only guess how these nations would respond to over ten-thousand Israelis marching on their borders. I believe we all are fully aware that such a situation would result in a mass casualty event, exactly the kind Hamas desired.

 

Let us look at the entire event as dispassionately as possible. When the Arab world demands that Israel, as the occupying power, provide protection for such demonstrations, we need to answer with the truth. Israel disengaged from Gaza in August of 2005 and turned the entirety of Gaza with greenhouses intact over to the Palestinian Authority (PA). At this time Gaza became the Palestinian State, which has been touted by the world as the miracle that would prove the sincerity of the PA and the Arab’s desire for peace and to build a functioning nation. There was no blockade nor was there any examination of imports to Gaza while the PA was ruling Gaza. The immediate result of the granting independence to the Gazan population under the guidance and rule of the PA was the destruction of the greenhouses and the use of the irrigation pipes to manufacture rocket launch tubes and rockets to launch into Israel. There was an ensuing struggle between the PA and Hamas interests for control of Gaza, which devolved into total civil war and in the resulting coup; Hamas took control of Gaza sending the PA retreating back to Judea and Samaria where because of shared security responsibilities they were protected by Israeli security. In the ensuing period since the 2007 takeover of Gaza, Hamas has initiated three brief wars with Israel by launching hundreds of missiles into Israel targeting civilian locations distinct and separate from any possible military targets. Hamas has also built an entire complex of tunnels throughout Gaza linking rocket launching platforms, command and control bunkers, safe bunkers, and their main command center located in the subbasement of the Gaza Al-Shifa Hospital (image below). They place this bunker tactically so as to protect their elite leadership who hunker down below the hospital cozily safe in the knowledge that Israel will not bomb a hospital full of innocents. Hamas knows that Israel will go to great lengths not to shoot innocents which was the entire hope behind this march of the border. They were hoping that with the confusion, acrid smoke and noise of tires burning, bombs thrown over the fence, rocks also thrown at the troops and people pressing the fence while selected terrorists were assigned to climb the fence probably hoping that excitable youth would copy them and also start climbing the border fence. Hamas knew that anyone climbing the fence threatened to infiltrate Israel. So, what force did Israel use, read on.

 

Gaza Al-Shifa Hospital

 

Israel initially used tear gas and stun rounds to break up the people rushing the border. The people continued towards the border. When the rocks and explosives being thrown over the fence at the troops became a threat, the Israelis used rubber bullets. This deterred the masses, but it did not prevent the more hard core from attempting to scale the fence into Israel. When such individuals, most of which were likely terrorist agents using the demonstration as the intended cover for their infiltration, reached the point of entering Israel, those few were the ones Israel shot with live rounds. These were the less than twenty people total who died as a result of IDF action. Hamas admitted that five of those killed, Jihad Farina, Mohammed Abu Amaro, Ahmad Odeh, Saari Abu Odeh, and Musaav a-Salul, were members of Hamas’ military wing. According to International Law, every nation has the right to enforce their border. Were members of a drug cartel to attempt a new way of smuggling their drugs into the United States by hiding the couriers within a mass of people and walking the entirety at the United States border, the United States would do everything in their power to coral and prevent them from entering the nation and any who would attempt to run to infiltrate, they would be shot and killed. This was no different. Those from the mass of people who attempted to enter Israel were prevented from doing so. There was an exception to shooting the Hamas operatives who attempted to infiltrate Israel, and where we do not know her name, we do know that she was treated well and returned to her parents, as Israel does not shoot people indiscriminately, Israel only shoots when they have actual cause and threat. This is why out of around fifteen to twenty-thousand actual marchers, according to initial Israeli estimates, or if you prefer the thirty to fifty-thousand reported by other counts, gathered along the Gaza border along five separate locations (see map below), there were less than twenty deaths according to any report and anywhere from three hundred injured as initial reports claimed to the later estimates of well over a thousand injured. Let us seek an answer why the later estimates were so significantly higher than the initial estimates given by the hospital and clinics data.

 

Gaza Fence Assault Areas

 

The obvious answer is that Hamas later asked that anybody who was injured, including bruises or welts caused by rubber bullets or coughing from tear gas to report their injuries. These would include all who had any injury, real or imagined. Hamas can play games with injury numbers as injuries heal and therefore, injuries cannot be investigated a month or two down the line. Injuries do not always require medical treatment as injuries come in an infinite variety of severity. We can believe that the hospitals initially reported the number of people they treated for injuries, and that is one total. We could understandably even triple that number and believe it is a realistic number. Some are trying to multiply the initial hospital numbers five fold and more and these numbers should be viewed with a great deal of skepticism. Is it an actual injury if you were bumped and slightly bruised by other marchers? And even if such is so, is that the fault of the IDF? Those treated for welts and contusions caused by rubber bullets are IDF caused injuries. These people likely reached the fence and attempted to climb the fence or push the fence over. This resulted in being shot with rubber bullets and those who persisted after such a severe warning were the few who suffered a potentially worse fate. Hamas simply collected whatever numbers they could conceivably count as injured from their efforts knowing it is the one number they could enlarge without consequences and nobody could prove them lying. Let us now explain the final point, why Hamas did not bother to exaggerate the numbers who were killed, and this you will just love.

Do you remember the so-called Jenin Massacre? Remember the reported number of Palestinians killed started around twenty-five and within hours, they reached over one-hundred. By the next morning, the number of dead reached into the hundreds and some even reached as high as a thousand and even more. Then there was the Jenin investigation for potential war crime charges against the IDF troops and their commanders. The United Nations investigators found that the IDF numbers were the accurate estimates with a total of fifty-three dead (forty-eight militants and five civilians). Where the Palestinian and Arab estimates ran into difficulty when the audits are done by investigative agencies, they count death certificates and actual gravesites leading to hard data and realistic numbers. Hamas, and likely the entirety of the Palestinian terror groups, including the PLO, Fatah, the PA, Islamic Jihad and the rest, know that they must report actual deaths as exaggeration will not stand up to scrutiny which results in their appearing to be liars and thus making all their reported numbers suspect. Casualties can be reported in larger numbers when they are injuries, as injury can be defined to include everything from serious wounds requiring surgery to a simple scratch or bruise. So, the number of those killed will be somewhere between fifteen and twenty and the number of injured will be whatever number people decide to assign to the conflict. The problem is not over as Hamas has declared there to be extended protest until Nakba Day which comes in mid-May, with the promise of especially intense weekly demonstrations on Fridays. Expect grand protests with additional violence and threats on Israeli soil and peoples with these demonstrations as they continue and particularly those of Friday afternoon after prayers and the Imam delivery of particularly inflammatory sermons for the occasion.

 

 

The United Nations Security Council has declared a closed-door session as requested by Kuwait, as Jordan, Egypt, Arab League and Turkey accuse Israel of using disproportionate force against Palestinian demonstrators. There will be the usual denunciations of Israel for defending their sovereign territory. There is never an emergency closed-door United Nations Security Council session called by the other members when border guards shoot and kill drug and human smugglers crossing the southern or any other border. There is no emergency closed-door United Nations Security Council session called by the other members when illegal immigrants heading for the United States are shot crossing the Guatemala-Mexico border by Mexican border guards as Mexico takes their border very seriously. China is never investigated for shooting North Koreans escaping the totalitarian oppressions under Kim Jong-un in a closed-door session by the United Nations Security Council called by the other nations. There is only one nation which is investigated for protecting the inviolability of their sovereign border. It is only Israel who is placed under the microscope of international scrutiny, where even the most mundane acts are made out to be crimes against all of humanity and cause for continuous investigations. When Israel defends her border, investigations are demanded, when Israel imprisons terrorists who use vehicles to intentionally run-down civilians, the world demands investigations for Israel treating simple vehicular accidents as criminal events, when Israel responds to thousands of rockets by defeating the terror armies who launched the projectiles into her civilian areas she is investigated. One could almost believe that Israel would be investigated for holding election should the world dislike the resulting coalition seeking to replace the government with one more pliable and easily persuaded to take steps which might endanger the existence of the Jewish State. Perhaps even stating such is dangerous as it might give the world another idea on how to manipulate and strangle Israel leading to her final defeat and destruction. Europe would support such an end, the Arab and Muslim World would largely celebrate such an end and work to bring such about while the American people and the few nations who remember the great and timely assistances received from the tiny little Jewish enclave when natural disasters struck or the agricultural technologies and medical technologies provided by IsraAID and Save a Child’s Heart (SACH) asking only that these receiving the Israeli provided aid take the knowledge and use it to advance their nations and its health. There is no charges and no payment demanded as the smiles of those assisted is sufficient payment. The result of the United Nations Security Council closed-door session on Gaza will ignore the one truth which appears to have escaped the world, Gaza is actually the real Palestinian nation as Israel no longer occupies any of that land and had surrendered all claim to Gaza. Israel gave Gaza to the PA and Hamas took it in a coup and now rules in partnership with Islamic Jihad. Perhaps the United Nations Security Council will discuss the responsibility of Hamas to allow the reconstruction rather than use the concrete to build tunnels infiltrating Israel. Perhaps the United Nations Security Council will investigate why there is no economic development in Gaza and the numerous other oppressions executed on the people of Gaza by their rulers who spend every amount of aid they can take to destroy their neighboring country of Israel. Israel would love to be able to ignore much of what occurs in Gaza but when the government of Gaza spends well over three-quarters of their available resources for Israeli destruction and swears they will murder every Jew on the planet, is it any wonder that Israel is nervous when thousands of Gazans approach her border. Perhaps the United Nations Security Council can investigate these little truths and do something positive for a change instead of trying to fault Israel at every turn.

 

Beyond the Cusp