How to recover Gilad Shalit alive
Israel is preparing to invade the Gaza Strip this morning and 'moderate Palestinian President'The problem, as I pointed out yesterday, is that neither Abu Mazen nor Haniyeh is in control of Shalit. Khaled Mashaal, the Damascus-based head of Hamas, controls Shalit. And as I pointed out yesterday, Mashaal has an interest in the collapse of the 'Palestinian Authority,' which could come quite quickly in the event of an Israeli invasion of Gaza and mass targeting of the 'Palestinian leadership.' If Israel invades Gaza, the odds of finding Shalit and recovering him alive are not great. It would require an Entebbe-like operation but with a local population that is prepared for just that. But Abu Mazen likely knows where Shalit is and Haniyeh certainly knows where Shalit is. The problem is that they are afraid to do anything in defiance of Mashaal. How can we 'help' them overcome their fear?
I would do a couple of things before invading:
1. Any resource that Israel supplies to Gaza should be cut off immediately. Water, electricity - shut it all off. That will get the local population (which actually wants Shalit kept alive to be used in a 'prisoner exchange') off the idea that they are going to get something for Shalit, and would make them less likely to resist a rescue effort, assuming Shalit can be located.
2. Instead of targeting Haniyeh, I would target someone else first: Meshaal. Sure it's a much harder target, especially because he's in Syria. But the Syrians would not (and probably cannot - except through Hezbullah) retaliate, and with Meshaal out of the picture, Haniyeh and Abu Mazen would become more pliable - and they could still be targeted later if need be.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:23 AM
3 Comments:
Targetting him in Syria would be an act of war, you know. But oh wait, Syria and Israel don't have a peace treaty, and are thus technically already in a state of war. So lets see how well those new F-16is work.
Sadly I do not think he is alive.
The offer for information in return for his release is an indication of this.
Good news though. A significat part of Gaza is without electricity. This will make night operations easier and life for the Stupidstinians harder.
Who knew when they elected HarmUs that they were voting to do without electricity?
With Israel out of Gaza it is possible to lay siege to it. The pull out has advantages.
To Final Historian: I'm not sure if Israel killed Khaled Mashaal in Damascus it'd be an act of war. With F-16s it may. Not necessarily if done like the two Mossad agents tried to do to Mashaal in 1997 in Jordan. That was an "international incident" but fell short of an act of war. Less an act of war still if it could be carried out on the sly successfully as was done to Black September terrorists (guilty of the 1972 Olympic killings) in France. France wasn't happy about it, but didn't consider the killing of a terrorist on its soil by a foreign government an act of war
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