Gaza: on the brink of a bloodbath?

Hashem Zakout was meant to be volunteering at his local hospital in Gaza last weekend, said Donald Macintyre in The Observer. Instead, the 24-year-old ended up in casualty himself, after being shot in the knee while throwing stones at Israeli troops across the border. He is one of hundreds of Gazans to have been wounded since the launch last month of a six-week border protest known as the “Great Return March”. The protests are designed to raise awareness of the harshness of life in the coastal enclave, and to support Gazans’ demands to return to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel. Zakout is among the luckier protesters. More than 30 others have been killed by Israeli snipers, among them a 14-year-old boy and a Palestinian video journalist.

The fact that the crowds of Gazan protesters are “largely if not entirely” unarmed cuts little ice with Israel, said Hussein Ibish in Foreign Policy (Washington DC). What it fears – and what Hamas, the increasingly unpopular militant group that has controlled Gaza since 2007, hopes – is that “the border is somehow breached and large numbers of young men cross over into what used to be their country”. Israeli officials warn that such an event could precipitate a “bloodbath”. But even if the border isn’t breached, Hamas stands to gain from these protests, as they’re distracting attention from its own mismanagement of Gaza, which has contributed to the wretched conditions of the enclave. “Unemployment is chronic. Hunger is rampant. Water is undrinkable. Electricity is available for only two to four hours per day.”

Hamas appears to have “changed its tactics, if not its ideology”, said The Economist. After a decade of building up its “military muscle”, it has recognised the limitations of this approach. Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defence system intercepts cross-border missiles, and it regularly destroys Hamas’s tunnels. Rather than launching a full-blown conflict with Israel, and risk being blamed by Gazans for further worsening their plight, Hamas is hoping to advance its interests through mass demonstrations. Hamas may be orchestrating the current protests, said Patrick Cockburn in The Independent, but it didn’t instigate them. The original impetus came from ordinary Gazans who are fed up with the impossibility of living under an Israeli and Egyptian blockade, and with their own “selfseeking” leaders. “The most dangerous aspect of the situation in terms of its potential for violence may be that nobody is really in charge.”