The value of a credible threat

acceptance of “Palestine” as a full member, many pundits argued that Washington

would thereby undermine its international influence. But Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI),

whose party strongly supports U.S. engagement with the UN, had a

counterargument: Doing exactly what America had threatened to do would actually

bolster its influence, he said, by showing that its views could not be ignored

with impunity.

Nor did it take long for his prediction to come true: Last

Thursday – just two days after the Palestinian Authority had announced plans to

seek membership in 16 additional UN organizations – PA Foreign Minister Riyal

al-Maliki announced that these plans had been shelved. Faced with the

realization that Washington really would stop paying its 22% share of UN

agencies’ budgets, it seems the same “international community” that

overwhelmingly voted to accept “Palestine” into UNESCO began pressing the PA to

not repeat the gambit.

Israel, however, has yet to grasp the deterrent

value of a credible threat. Instead, it has virtually destroyed its deterrence

by six years of empty threats over the nonstop rocket fire from Gaza. Last week,

for instance, the entire south was shut down for days as terrorists fired some

40 rockets. On Sunday, a day after the barrage began, Prime Minister Binyamin

Netanyahu told the cabinet that Israel would defend its citizens “determinedly,

aggressively and effectively,” and that if the rocket fire continued, the

terrorist organizations would pay a “far higher” price than they had hitherto.

He and Defense Minister Ehud Barak both warned the terrorists not to “test”

Israel’s resolve and capabilities.

But when the terrorist organizations

called their bluff by continuing the rocket fire, no harsh response ensued.

Instead, the government agreed to continue doing nothing while Egypt sought to

broker a truce – even as Jerusalem publicly insisted it doesn’t do truces with

terrorist organizations.

On Tuesday, with rockets still raining down, an

army official declared that the Israel Defense Forces had been authorized to

take “all necessary steps” to halt the rocket fire, including a ground

operation. But he promptly vitiated this threat by explaining that actually, the

army wasn’t authorized to do whatever was needed to stop the attacks; it was

only authorized to take steps commensurate with the attacks’ “severity.” In

other words, it was authorized to make pinpoint strikes on launching-rocket

crews, which would be every bit as ineffective at stopping the rocket fire as

thousands of similar strikes over the last six years have been.

Needless

to say, all these empty threats had the terrorist organizations quaking in their

boots – so much so that they held their fire for all of two days before renewing

it over the weekend. As Islamic Jihad spokesman Abu Ahmed scornfully said, the

terrorists aren’t worried that Israel will launch a full-scale war, “because it

does not have the courage and ability to do so and because its soldiers are

afraid of being taken captive like Gilad Schalit.”

Abu Ahmed has good

reasons for this confidence. In the three years after Ariel Sharon’s unilateral

withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005, Israel suffered some 6,000 rocket

strikes from the evacuated territory. Yet only in December 2008, thousands of

empty threats later, did it launch its first major incursion into the Strip –

and that war was pursued so half-heartedly that it ended not only with a

terrorist group (Hamas) still firmly in control of Gaza, but with all the

terrorist groups so undamaged that over the ensuing three years, they were able

to dramatically increase the quantity and quality of their arsenals.

Nor did the

war produce more than a brief interlude in the missile fire: From the start of

2010 through September 2011, Israel absorbed more than 900 rocket and mortar

strikes from Gaza. Yet its response was confined to still more ineffective

pinpoint strikes on smuggling tunnels and rocket-launching crews.

In an

interview with The Jerusalem Post earlier this year, former U.S. Ambassador to

Israel and avowed dove Dan Kurtzer explained the dire consequences of Israel’s

restraint: The world had become “acclimated to the idea” that rocket fire on

Israel is unexceptionable rather than unacceptable. That reality encouraged the

terrorists to escalate, since they had no need to fear a painful Israeli

response, while making the international community less understanding of even

the limited military action Israel did take – a fact proven once again last

week, when both the US and the EU issued responses that effectively blamed

Israel and Islamic Jihad equally for the violence.

Hamas, which controls

Gaza, is capable of stopping smaller groups like Islamic Jihad from launching

rockets when it so chooses. In the lead-up to last month’s ransom deal for Gilad

Schalit, for instance, it enforced a total clampdown to avoid disrupting the

deal. If it thought the ongoing rocket fire risked an Israeli response that

would threaten its rule, it would have made sure the fire stopped, even at the

price of clashes with the smaller groups.

But after six years and thousands of

empty threats from Israel, it has no so such fear, so why should it

bother?

Granted, there was one bright spot in last week’s gloomy picture: Two

prominent

supporters of the disengagement – Kadima MK Avi Dichter,

who headed the Shin Bet

security service under Sharon, and Uzi Dayan,

who was Sharon’s national security

advisor – publicly admitted that the rocket fire can only be stopped by

reoccupying part or all of Gaza and therefore urged the government to do

so.

Unfortunately, neither has any influence in the current government, and

Netanyahu appears to be just as wedded to empty threats as his

predecessors

were.

Israeli leaders talk constantly about the need to bolster Israel’s

deterrence. But as Levin pithily explained last week, there’s only one

way to

actually do so: You need to prove that your threats are credible. The

question

is when, if ever, Israel’s leaders will finally grasp that this maxim

also

applies in Gaza.