Awful truths about Gaza
Helping the Palestinian Authority would be the best way to undermine Hamas
Here’s the awful truth about the Gaza war in which Israeli airstrikes are matching Hamas rockets number for number. This kind of violence is likely to become the new normal now that Israelis and Palestinians believe the peace process is over. Israelis have enjoyed a relative calmfor the past several years, with West Bank Palestinians confined behind a separation fence and Gazans locked inside their wretched strip.
That calm won’t last once the idea of two states is buried for good.
Under such conditions, extremists on both sides will flourish — like the Palestinians who kidnapped and killed three Israeli youths and the Israelis who retaliated by burning a Palestinian teen to death. Growing frustrations on both sides will ignite violence that will become harder and harder to control.
Neither Israel nor Hamas political leaders in Gaza sought the current confrontation, according to Israeli journalists: The Hamas cell on the West Bank that seized the Israeli teens may have acted without orders from Gaza. Suffering from a lack of cash, and having lost its patrons in Iran and Cairo, Hamas hadn’t fired a rocket from Gaza since Israel’s last punitive attack in November 2012 and had suppressed fire from smaller jihadi groups since then.
Still, the group’s military wing decided to resume fire, with little concern for trapped Gazan civilians; perhaps the group hoped to drag Israel into a bloody war that will outrage global opinion against Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears eager to avoid another Operation Cast Lead — the 2008 invasion of Gaza that killed at least 1,200 Palestinians and caused a public relations disaster for his country.
But the pressure from Israel’s potent far right and its public — fueled by the belief that the peace process is dead — shows how easily things could spiral out of control.
Last week, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, backed by other militant ministers, called for Israel’s military to “go all the way” and reoccupy Gaza. He insisted that another cease-fire would only give Hamas time to “prepare for the next round,” so the Israeli military must destroy Hamas once and for all.
This is a dangerous fantasy that gained strength because of Israeli frustration.
After 10 days of aerial bombardment, Israel invaded Gaza on July 17. It will cause untold civilian deaths and has enmeshed Israel troops once more in a full-scale Gaza occupation.
Short of flattening the Gaza Strip (does the Russian-born Lieberman envision an operation comparable to Moscow’s destruction of Chechnya?), there’s no physical way to eliminate Hamas.
The best way to undermine Hamas would be to help President Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority, which administers the West Bank, reassert control over Gaza. A credible June poll shows that88percentofGazanspreferthe Palestinian Authority to Hamas.
But rather than strengthen Abbas’ hand, the Netanyahu government has continually undermined him, most notably by its massive expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank during last year’s peace talks. Martin Indyk, former chief U.S. envoy for Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, says settlement activity effectively killed the talks, undercutting Abbas by making it look as if he accepted the expansion.
The ever-growing settlement network that crisscrosses the West Bank has convinced Palestinians that Israel will never accept a Palestinian state.
Ofcourse,therocketsfromGaza and the growing Mideast turmoil have also convinced most Israelis that a Palestinian state would be too dangerous. Two weeks ago, Netanyahu said the lesson of the Gaza escalation was that Israel could never relinquish security control of the West Bank. (Actually, he has been saying similar things for the past two decades.)
Yet even if the regional situation looks grim, and despite the Gaza turmoil, it is extremely risky for Israel to extinguish Palestinian hopes for a better future.
Yuval Diskin, director of Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security service from 2005-11, warned in December of the dangers inherent in “the enormous frustration of the Palestinians in the West Bank who feel their land is being stolen from them, who gather that the state they yearn for is slipping away from them.”
Israelis have been lulled into believing the status quo can last. In part, this is because Palestinian Authority security forces have helped Israel keep the West Bank quiet for seven years. They have helped to control Hamas on the WestBankandofferedtohelppatrol the Gaza-Egypt border if a ceasefirewithHamascanbereached.
Such cooperation won’t last if settlement activity continues to devour the West Bank. Abbas could dissolve the Palestinian Authority, compelling Israel to reoccupy the West Bank.
In other words, a status quo where Palestinians are irrevocably bound together with Israelis is untenable. As Diskin also warned, “the combustible fumes in the air have reached a level (where) even a small spark can ignite a huge explosion.” His predictions are already coming true.