Israel failed to topple Palestinian unity govt

Xinhua reported:

Israel continued its military operation to find the three Israelis who disappeared two weeks ago in southern West Bank, amid crackdown on Palestinians and homes in the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) controlled areas.

However, local observers said the Israeli offensive failed to achieve its strategic goals: weakening the PNA and creating a status of distrust between residents and the PNA security forces.

Israel accused Hamas of being involved in kidnapping three teens, but the movement denies the accusation.

Over the past two weeks, Israel recruited around 15,000 reservists, and the Israeli Cabinet decided to keep the operation going on until the three missing Israelis are found.

In spite of the large-scale security and military offensive all over the territory, which killed six Palestinians and led to the arrest of about 550 people, Israeli political, military and security officials said no progress was yet made in finding the three missing teenagers.

Hamas figures were arrested and the movement's welfare institutions and charities were raided and closed. The detention campaign befell 23 lawmakers, including speaker of the PNA parliament Aziz Dweik, and 57 ex-prisoners who were released in the 2010 Egyptian-brokered prisoners swap deal reached between Hamas and Israel.

Abdel Majeed Sweilem, political analyst from the West Bank, told Xinhua that the Israeli operation has direct and indirect goals. He said the direct goal is to find the three missing teenagers by launching a large-scale operation and recruiting large numbers of troops, "but the end result is zero."

"The indirect goal is to use the incident of the three missing Israelis to disturb and weaken the hunger striking of the prisoners under administrative detention and to topple the unity government that was formed with Hamas," said Sweilem, adding "I believe that Israel also failed in this goal."

When the unity government was formed on June 2, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Abbas put his hands with terrorist Hamas movement instead of making peace with Israel. Forming the unity government coincided with the prisoners' hunger striking in Israeli jails.

"Israel tried to invest the incident and serve its political interests mainly improving its image in the eyes of the world and launching large international media campaign against Abbas to topple unity, but I believe that Israel made a big failure," said Sweilem.

Following the damages caused by the Israeli offensive in the West Bank, PNA has to adopt a new official strategy, based on improving the broken ties with the populations, who went far and accused the PNA and President Mahmoud Abbas of being collaborators with Israel.

"The PNA has to understand and feel the anger of the people and absorb it in a wise and smart way to keep unity and be able to confront the Israeli plans. PNA has to focus on the peaceful resistance in order to embarrass Israel and show that it is not a peace partner," said Sweilem.

PNA and Fatah Party leaders know that Israel's plan is not only trying to find where the three Israelis are, but there are well- prepared plans that aim at creating a status of instability in the West Bank and put PNA in an embarrassing position.

Amin Maqbool, a senior Fatah leader in the West Bank, told Xinhua "it became clear that Israel targeted security in the West Bank to create a status of chaos and instability by killing and arresting people, after the government of Netanyahu failed to topple the unity government."

PNA tried to contact Israel either on the ground or through mediators, mainly the United States, sponsor of the peace process, but Israel turned its back to the PNA and insisted on continuing its plans.

Maqbool said that the political and security contacts with the Israeli government had declined to its lowest levels, accusing the Israeli government of ignoring the PNA and the mediations "to carry on with its plans that its goals had already failed."

Meanwhile, Wassef Erekat, the Palestinian military expert, told Xinhua that Israel achieved "a big failure."

"When the Israeli offensive started, the people were deceived and got angry on the PNA security, but when the image got clearer, the populations understood that the PNA, its security and the Palestinian people's unity were the main target of Israel to damage," said Erekat.