Israel-Hamas scale down conflict averting another full-blown war . . . for now
The stage was set for another spasm of violence between Hamas and Israel.
A provocative march was planned by far-right Israelis through Palestinian areas of Jerusalem, as it had been before the 11-day war last month. And Hamas threatened to respond with violence if the march took place.
But by yesterday, the likelihood of another full-blown air war had ebbed, at least for now.
The march went ahead, with dozens chanting “Death to Arabs”, but it was scaled down and rerouted to avoid some of the most volatile parts of the city. Hamas responded, not with rockets this time but with incendiary balloons, causing dozens of fires in the countryside of southern Israel.
When Israel fired back, it struck several small targets. No casualties were reported on either side.
“Co-ordinated restraint,” summarised Nimrod Novik, an analyst for the Israel Policy Forum, a New Yorkbased research group.
“Both sides really cannot help but do something,” Novik said. But both “must have calculated that it may not be worth it, so let’s do the least necessary,” he added.
The limited exchange suited both sides, allowing them to save face and project strength, while avoiding an escalation that would benefit neither the new Israeli government, less than a week into its term, nor Hamas, which has barely begun a billiondollar reconstruction effort in Gaza.
By firing incendiary balloons, Hamas could still project itself as a defender of Jerusalem, without eliciting a major military assault from Israel. A Hamas spokesman said that forcing Israel to reroute the march constituted a “success in imposing new rules of engagement with the enemy”.
And by firing back, albeit in a limited way, the new Israeli government could still present itself as a stronger bulwark against Hamas than the one it had replaced. The former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, tended to ignore incendiary balloons.
“We are bringing back deterrence,” tweeted Nir Orbach, a government lawmaker. “We are not surrendering to terror.”
Hamas also tried to project strength yesterday. Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior member of Hamas’ political wing based in Qatar, said the group’s military leadership could still choose to escalate further.
“The issue of responding to the bombardment is on the table, but this decision is with the resistance,” Abu Marzouk said, referring to the group’s armed wing.
But behind the scenes, diplomats and analysts reported a different dynamic. International mediators had received indications from both Israel and Hamas that neither was seeking to escalate the conflict further, a diplomat involved in the talks said.
The bravado from both sides was, for now, largely for show, said Ghaith al-Omari, a former Palestinian official who is now an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research group.
“The new Israeli government has no interest in starting its term with a war, and Hamas has been damaged enough,” he said.
A deeper truce nevertheless remains more elusive, with Israel, Hamas, the Palestinian leadership in the occupied West Bank and international donors yet to agree on a mechanism to deliver aid, money and reconstruction materials to rebuild Gaza, which was heavily damaged in the recent conflict.
The conflict in May killed more than 250 Palestinians and 13 Israeli residents, according to the United
Nations. In Israel, Palestinian rockets wrecked several apartments, cars and buses, damaged a gas pipeline and briefly shut down two major airports.
In Gaza, Israeli strikes damaged thousands of homes and dozens of clinics, hospitals and schools, as well as power lines, sewage works and three major desalination plants, the United Nations said. Up to 8500 Gaza residents remain homeless.
But while diplomats say some reconstruction material has begun to enter Gaza through Egypt, Israel has limited imports through its crossing points to humanitarian goods such as medicine, fuel and food. It has also blocked financial aid from Qatar, which sent about US$30 million ($42m) a month to help stabilise Gaza’s economy.
Israel and Egypt control what comes in and out of Gaza as well as most of its electricity and fuel. Israel has the biggest say, since the main supply routes to Gaza are routed through Israeli ports.
Israeli officials increasingly acknowledge these restrictions need to be eased, said Novik, a former adviser to Shimon Peres, a former Israeli prime minister.
“There is almost a consensus that the previous strategy failed, and there is a growing consensus about what are the basic principles of the alternative,” Novik said. “But there is no detailed plan of how to make it happen.”