And from now on Israel's response; I'm joined by Robert Amin, he is a former US State Department official. He's now the counsel on foreign relations. Eh, Robert, thank you very much for coming in. Clearly, today Israel focused on the funeral. But even today is the Cabinet gathering to talk about what the military response should be. What do you think Israel's gonna do in response to this?
Well, Israel is divided among itself about what to do. There seem to be three basic options that they are considering, you know. One is going into the West Bank, trying to uproot Hamas even further than they have already. The second is to going into Gaza, and trying to uproot Hamas there. And the third, obviously, is searching for the perpetrators of the kidnapping. They'll definitely go for the third option. The question is what of the other two, will they choose …
And if they do go into Gaza, what are you talking about? Are we talking about air strikes against the militants or militant positions in Gaza, or would you think it could actually be a significant ground operation for example?
That's to debate; I mean, well, the real question is what is, what is the objective, what are they going to try to do. Uh, because if they push too hard, and let's say, bring about Hamas' demise, there is even more radical forces in Gaza, who would lead to greater chaos, so is that they wanna do that. They'd had a certain understand with the Hamas, so they are gonna wanna punish Hamas and punish them quite hard; uh, which I think it means it probably weren't going on the ground, although there are people arguing for it. So I think they will seek significant air strikes against the Hamas infrastructure within Gaza for sure.
Ok, what of the indications that for Mahmoud Abbas this might mean that he has to split with Hamas if he doesn't want to feel the ferocity of the Israeli fire power against him too by extension?
Well, I don't think that's where he's heading. I mean right now, the Palestinian security forces have been cooperating with the Israelis on the West Bank trying to find the perpetrators, trying to keep the security of the West Bank. But this has produced a backlash among the Palestinian people. They are not happy. That's not so much as they are so happy about the kidnapping, but they don't like the fact that the Palestinians are cooperating with the Israelis while Palestinians were getting killed by Israelis searching for the perpetrators of this crime. Uh, so, I think at this point, Abbas, Mahmoud Abbas has very difficult choices. To break with the Hamas right now, I think completely, would be unpopular because unity is popular amongst all Palestinians regardless of their political strike. Even though they may side with one side or the other, what they want more than anything is for the Palestinian factions to come together for the West Bank and Gaza to be reunified for Palestine to be one political entity, and not to have this infighting.
OK, Robert. So how does it play out, I mean it's obviously the short-term retaliation and retribution for what happened to these teenagers, but there's bound to be longer-term fallouts from this, isn't it?
Absolutely. I think the first casualty of this in a longer term is going to be the national unity government that Mahmoud Abbas is overseeing. That government came together in order to form and hold elections for Palestinian institutions. I think it grew now much further from the elections than that, there were beforehand. And if we don't have elections that means there is no real legitimacy for the leadership, it means that the ongoing political stagnation that's taking place in Palestinian institutions will continue. There is no prospect of a renewed peace process. I think the only way out potentially for Mahmoud Abbas in this is for him not to amuse the Westerners, that he would will return to international fora in which he'll challenge Israel for greater legitimacy and recognition for a Palestinian statehood.
OK, wish we could there, have a more optimistic, one day I'll give you in there a more optimistic forum in this process 'cause there has not been very many as in recently. Robert Amin, thank you very much.