A Suicide Israeli Commando Mission

Its difficult to imagine how the Israeli decision to send a commando team to board an aid ship at night time in International waters could possibly result in a positive outcome for Israel.Considering the highly charged emotion of this humanitarian mission, an Israeli commando team armed with weapons abseiling onto a humanitarian ship at night was always going to result in a negative outcome and the high possibility of the loss of life.Imagine the scene that must have gripped the crew on board the ship as commandos abseiled onto the deck of the ship. I wonder what the commandos orders were once onboard. What was the commando teams mission ? Before these commandos left their base they would have received a complete analysis of who was on board and what to expect. Surely they did not expect the passengers to do absolutely nothing when the commandos boarded. The type of person that travels on these humanatarian ships are usually of hardy stuff and are not the type to take orders from an Israeli soldier whom they all most likely hate as the Isaeli soldier represents what they see as Israeli repression of Palestinians in Gaza. Confrontation was always a certainty. A video here shows the soldiers been attacked as they abseiled onto the ship and a descripton from an Israeli soldier of what happened.
This was the last thing the Israelis needed.It now puts further pressure on the U.S government in dealing with Israel and raises the simmering tensions in the region.
According to Marc Lynch this is a crisis-read his article here
This episode highlights the ongoing problem of blockading Gaza and Israel's policy towards Hamas.Israel is shooting itself in the foot with its Gaza policy against Hamas. Bradley Burston writing for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz sums it up nicely when he says "Here in Israel, we have still yet to learn the lesson: We are no longer defending Israel. We are now defending the siege. The siege itself is becoming Israel's Vietnam" Read his article here The paradox is that Hamas needs to do nothing to gain from Israel's policy in Gaza. Hamas has learned the ways of Hizbullah in Lebanon. Similar to the Lebanon War in 2006 where Israel tried to turn the Lebanese against Hizbullah, Israel is now trying to turn the Palestinians in Gaza and the International Community against Hamas. It has'nt worked in Lebanon and it won't work in Gaza either. If anything Israel has turned the International Community against itself indicated by demonstrations against Israel already underway and likely to continue. There is an increase in Jewish dissagreement in Israel and in the Jewish communinity in the U.S. such as J Street which is opposed to the blockade against Israeli policy and actions against the Palestinians and settlements.The blockade has likely contributed to the rise of more radical groups than Hamas in Gaza and an increased Islamization of Palestinian society within Gaza. Hamas is stronger as a result of the Israeli blockade-as Yossi Yelman an analyst writing for Haaretz believes.Read his analysis here.The commando attack will be seen by the International community as a reckless and dissproportianate level of Israel military behaviour even if the commandos had to defend themselves on boarding the ship. It also may not reflect well in justifying Israel's defence in not using dissproportionate force in the Gaza war. While those on board the ship possibly did attack the Israeli commandos with weapons and may have been prepared for such an attack the assault was always going to end badly for Israel.
Much of the Arabic media is refering to the incident as Israeli state terrorism and similar to piracy.