Pressure by both Hamas and the Israeli right could lead Bennett to unnecessary Gaza offensive

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Somewhere between Tel Aviv and Hawaii, a new campaign was concocted on the back of Naftali Bennett. The prime minister, only partly to due to bad luck, fell straight into the trap. One can only hope that this incident, which was artfully exploited by the opposition and reported in a populist, excited manner by the media, will not lead in the end to an unnecessary escalation in the Gaza Strip.

On Saturday afternoon, Hamas initiated violent demonstrations along the Gaza border, using as an excuse the marking of the anniversary of the fire started at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969. This led to a serious mishap by the military’s Gaza Division. The army deployed teams of snipers, including a Border Police unit whose members pose as Arabs, along a wall constructed near the Karni crossing into Gaza. The snipers spread out behind the wall, pointing their weapons through slits in the barrier.

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When dozens of demonstrators stormed the wall, the snopers refrained from aiming at any of them, lest children who were in the crowd be harmed. This allowed many Palestinians to reach the wall. One of them, identified as a Hamas operative, used a slit in the wall to fire his pistol in the opposite direction, point-blank. This led to the critical wounding of sharpshooter Barel Hadarya Shmueli. Doctors at Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva are still fighting to save his life.

The tragic, unnecessary wounding of Shmueli has evoked the usual argument regarding the directives for opening fire given to soldiers and policemen in the occupied territories. The main argument is that if snipers were given sufficient backing and had been allowed to open fire sooner, the crowd would not have reached the wall and the injury could have been prevented. A TV crew that arrived at the hospital on Sunday found Yossi, the riled-up father of the sharpshooter, who was furious at the abandonment of the soldiers. At this point he was joined by journalists who suggested that the prime minister, defense minister and senior army brass come visit the wounded man and his family.

Bennett called the father that night and got a dressing down, quite legitimately, even if expressed in harsh language. The prime minister, exhausted and occupied with other burning issues related to his job, tripped up by calling the son by his father’s name, and showed unawareness of the son’s medical condition. Someone made sure to record the conversation and post it on the Facebook page of that paragon of civil engagement, the rapper calling himself The Shadow.

Also pouncing on this “revelation” was opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on a private vacation in Hawaii. Netanyahu, it turned out, had already spoken with Shmueli’s mother Nitza and was up to speed regarding all the details. According to the mother, he had even cried during their conversation. This move would have been laudable if Netanyahu’s advisers had not posted on his accounts his call to pray for the soldier’s well-being, beginning with the word: “Shame.” Readers understood that this was a reference to Bennett’s conduct when speaking with the family. This was posted again after a few minutes, without the word “Shame.” Bennett was thereby doubly hit, once by showing “defeatism” in facing the enemy, which led to the wounding of a soldier, and once by being insensitive to the family. As expected, Bennett was treated harshly by the media, which suggested he meet the family urgently and try to repair the damage he’d done.

One should probably state the following: First of all, a prime minister should not make a mistake in naming a soldier who risked his life and may lose it while defending the state. Bennett’s team should see to it that such blunders don’t recur. Secondly, a prime minister doesn’t have to visit wounded soldiers, even seriously injured ones. For this there are army and police officers. Bennett should focus on combating the coronavirus and on the preparations for his important meeting in Washington on Thursday. Moreover, the border incident was a tactical one that ended badly due to a failure at the operational level. It cannot dictate Israel’s strategy in the Gaza Strip and lead to a resounding retaliation that would drag the two sides into another round of hostilities. If Israel wishes to embark on an operation in Gaza, it should do so for reasons of security and policy, not revenge.

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Netanyahu himself, incidentally, did not particularly excel in his years as prime minister in visiting wounded soldiers or bereaved families. He and his family were sometimes caught in embarrassing situations with families of soldiers (such as in quarrels with the parents of Capt. Hadar Goldin and the demonstrations of Bibi fans outside the house of a fallen pilot in Caesarea). In one case, Netanyahu was photographed while demonstrating great insensitivity, standing by a notice of a soldier’s death while preaching to the media about the injustice of their treatment of his wife.

When Netanyahu was in power, he too chose to refrain from large-scale operations in Gaza, between not conquering it during Operation Protective Edge in 2014, through the (justified) restraint he showed when Hamas used incendiary balloons to try to drag Israel into a campaign, to the final, limited campaign at the end of his term, Operation Guardian of the Walls. In most of these instances, it was Bennett who assailed him for showing weakness in confronting terror, just like Netanyahu, while in the opposition, assailed then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the end of Operation Cast Lead in 2009.

Meanwhile, Hamas is preparing another mass demonstration along the border fence, east of Khan Yunis, to be held on Wednesday. On Sunday there was already an increase in the number of incendiary balloons launched from Gaza towards Israel.

The military believes Hamas leaders want to increase the pressure on Israel and on Egyptian and Qatari mediators, since it is dissatisfied with the arrangement that was reached around Qatari aid, with only $20 million to be transferred starting next month, instead of the $30 million transferred up to the last round of fighting. Hamas is again playing with fire on the eve of Bennett’s trip to Washington. If things escalate along the border, this may eclipse his visit, although this will depend on the price exacted by Israel in response to Hamas actions.