The limits of power

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Israel has reacted hysterically to the Palestinian operation at Kafr Salem in which three Israeli soldiers were killed, four wounded and one captured. The reason it did so is that this operation exposed how fragile Israel's security plans are. Israel has built a wall and yet the wall has been breached. Israel has tried to silence the Palestinians, and yet the Palestinians have once again made it clear that they're not going to be silenced.

Israel was hoping to have peace on its own terms. Its withdrawal from Gaza, 10 months ago, was supposed to be part one of a unilateral plan to have secure borders without needing to talk to the Palestinians. For a while, it seemed that the plan might work after all. For the past 10 months, there has been no infiltration by Palestinian fighters into Israeli areas from Gaza. The separation wall seemed to have done the trick. And Israel was growing so confident that Olmert started speaking of a convergence plan -- another unilateral withdrawal scheme -- for the West Bank. Suddenly, it all fell apart. The Palestinians began once again firing rockets at Israel with "unbearable regularity", in the words of one Israeli commander.

Then came the Kafr Salem attack, which made it clear that Israel's military preparations were not as perfect as once thought. The Palestinian fighters disabled an Israeli tank, but the political damage was even greater. The operation may not have changed much in the obviously lop-sided balance of brute force, but it has shaken Israeli policies to the core. Israel may be able to destroy Gaza, but that's not what it wants. What Israel aimed at was peace on its terms. The Kafr Salem operation makes clear that this is not going to be.

Now that the Gaza plan is falling apart, Olmert has no way of arguing in favour of extending it to the West Bank. In Israel, 70 per cent of the population was reportedly against the convergence plan according to polls taken before recent incidents. Now, the percentage is likely to be higher. The unilateral withdrawal scheme cannot now be justified, neither domestically nor abroad. The Palestinians have no desire to live in prisons guarded by the Israelis, and they're not interested in having Israel decide their future. Even Israeli analysts now agree that Olmert's convergence plan has been the first victim of the Qassam attacks and the subsequent capture of Corporal Gilad Shalit. Domestically, most Israelis are reluctant to pull out of the West Bank in a move that would bring Hamas even closer to home.

The Kafr Salem operation proves that Israel's unilateral solutions are useless. Israel may be able to go on one rampage after another, but it cannot tell the Palestinians what to do. Israel has military might, but it doesn't have deterrence. It doesn't have a way of making the Palestinians change their mind. Israel is acting hysterically in Gaza because it knows it has failed. It knows that its military and political tactics no longer work. The Kafr Salem operation may have been small, but its moral and political implications have been immense.