Experts say limited chances of long-term truce between Hamas and Israel
Palestinian observers believe that there is still little chance to reach a long-term truce between the Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip and Israel.
International calls have increased recently for the need to find solutions to the worsening humanitarian crisis on the Gaza Strip, which has been under Israel blockade since mid2007.
The calls came amid growing tension on the borders of the Gaza Strip and Israel where the Palestinians have launched ongoing anti-Israel protests that have so far left 127 Palestinians dead and tens of thousands wounded.
Recent reports said international and regional efforts had reached a truce between Israel and Hamas, which has been in control of the Gaza Strip since 2007. According to the reports, the supposed four-year agreement will include Israeli humanitarian help to improve the economic and humanitarian situation in the seaside territory.
On Sunday, the Israeli minicabinet held a meeting to discuss the growing humanitarian crisis on the Gaza Strip and ways possible to ease the conditions there.
However, observers believe an agreement between Israel and Hamas to cool tensions and avoid a possible military confrontation is still out of reach.
“Such an agreement is not easy to reach,” Gaza-based writer and political analyst Adnan Abu Amer told Xinhua.
The gaps between Israel and Hamas are wide and difficult to bridge, he said. “This means that the situation will not change.”
Abu Amer added that reports about a solution to Gaza’s crisis are nothing more than trial balloons. “The Israelis do not see themselves forced to end the humanitarian crisis on the Gaza Strip... the most likely option is to continue formal steps to manage the crisis, not solve it fully,” he pointed out.
Gaza has been placed under a tight Israeli blockade since the Islamic Hamas movement seized the territory by force after routing forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007.
In the past six years, Israel and Hamas have been engaged in three major wars that have claimed the lives of thousands of Palestinians and Israelis.
The blockade has pushed Gaza’s populations deeper into poverty as economists in Gaza point out that extreme poverty hit 53 percent in 2017 compared with 37 percent in 2011.
The coastal enclave has also been suffering from a political division that was caused by Hamas violent takeover of Gaza.
Political analyst Hani Habib from Gaza believes that holding a meeting of the Israeli cabinet to discuss the situation in Gaza means there has been some action to set a plan to solve the crisis of Gaza. But Habib said that there is no internal Israeli consensus on the plan, pointing out that Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman opposes such a plan.
“Lieberman believes that the idea that giving help to Gaza would help cool the security situation in Israel is a completely wrong bet,” Habib told Xinhua.
He said that Israel has monitored the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza for one year without providing any solution, adding that Tel Aviv has seriously started to search for solutions after the “Great March of Return” along the Gaza-Israel borders, which demands the return of Palestinian refugees who were forced to leave their cities during the Arab-Israeli war in 1948 as well as lifting the blockade.
Habib linked the talk of a solution to the crisis in Gaza and the possibility of announcing the US administration’s peace plan as part of the deal of the century “which will focus on the Gaza Strip specifically to promote the internal Palestinian division.”
In March, the White House hosted an international meeting that was attended by 19 countries, including Israel and Arab Gulf states, to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The meeting was boycotted by the Palestinian Authority, which said it is meant to undermine the “national Palestinian project” by creating a state in Gaza.