Israel’s ‘True War’ In Gaza Played
To The Hamas-Fatah EquationBy Dr Marwan Asmar
28 December, 2007
Countercurrents.orgIsrael is fighting a “true war” in Gaza according to its Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Such a chilling term emphasizes the point Gaza has indeed become Israel’s military backyard to do what it will with this piece of Palestinian geography that is at the butt end of daily missiles and aerial bombardment.
Israel is out to get what it calls Palestinian military groups rocketing nearby Israeli towns and settlements. But such retaliation is out of proportion because the missile strikes are hitting civilian targets and ranging in the deaths of between from four, and 10 to14 persons daily, of men, women, children run.
These have become common occurrences as the Israeli military and government plead the dangers of the armed groups from Hamas and Al Jihad Al Islami. Israeli phantom jets fly over as near possible euphemistically using technology aimed at neat surgical strikes and taking whole parts, ramshackled, civilian structures in the process.
It’s like Israel has never left Gaza in 2005; today, Israel maintains total control over its air space and border points creating a hostage population that can’t move in or out of the Strip without the army knowing of it.
Today Gaza has become a killing field, it is here where Islamic supporters are picked off one by one opposed to Israel and its dominance in the Palestinian territories. For Israel however Gaza has become a valuable opportunity in other ways for it has become the stronghold for other groups like Hamas.
Hamas has reverted to Gaza as a traditional basis of support after Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas dismissed it in mid-2007 after failing to produce a workable government based on coalition with the other Palestinian factions and ending the economic sanctions and the cutting of aid imposed on the Palestinians by the international community after it won the Legislative Elections of January 2006.
Such sanctions tightened the screws on the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza because it brought the economic situation to a standstill and hilted any economic activity signified by the fact that the 165,000 civil servants working under the National Authority stopped being paid, and therefore ceased spending, a situation that lasted for 18 months and created much recession.
It was the 1.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip that took some of the worst blows where average daily wages was no more than $2 according to World Bank statistics. The situation has been worsened by an Israeli blockade of Palestinian migrant workers into Israel and the interplay of inter-Palestinian factional violence and rivalry between Hamas and Fatah. The Strip become the ground for settling political disputes and political murder by members of opposing forces, Islamists and nationalists who pointed their guns at each other while Israeli and the international community watched on.
The background to this was simple enough. Fatah felt particularly sour at Hamas after it won 74 of the 132-seat Parliamentary elections in the January 2006 while Fatah only received 45 seats. It was a humiliating defeat particularly since the Fatah movement controlled the previous 80-member legislative chamber of which 68 seats were held by Fatah and had agreed to expand the Council on the understanding that it would continue to be the key player in Palestinian politics.
Clearly it was a mistake. Fatah received a sobering shock and that’s why it took months of haggling and recriminations over joining a government-led by Hamas. While they continued to talk to the Islamic movement over the possibility of forming a coalition after January 2006, it never actually materialized with the sticking points being over who gets what in the ministerial posts and portfolios. Negotiations between the politicians were paralleled with frequent fightings between the military wings of Hamas and Fatah bloodily spelt out on the streets of Gaza.
It became a source of delight for the Israelis who refused and still refuses to deal with Hamas, regarding them as a terrorist group that should continually be flushed out as in the near past it targeted and assassinated a large number of its leaders because the Islamist organization does not recognize the state of Israel and call for its toppling.
Israel also has always recognized, rather cynically, if different Palestinian factions keep at each others throats, the prospects of them annihilating each other would be that much greater and would be to its best advantage regardless of the doddering peace process and despite the fact that one party maybe more amenable to negotiations rather than another. Come what may and in the final analysis Israel wants to be in a strong position to impose a political settlement on the Palestinians.
Being the stronger party in the region and certainly the Palestinians, Israel can already impose deals as quickly as it can undo them, it can play one faction against another, and can dictate how much it wants to give if any and can play off one against each other and can alternate as was the case in the 1980s and 1990s when Israel was reportedly adopting strategies, tactics and point of views with regard to turning a blind eye to the armory of one group as opposed another, and attempting to create divisions and schisms within the Palestinian national and religious movements.
Instead of continually fighting, and being involved in recriminatory stances as they are doing now on the streets if Gaza, the Palestinian factions and their leaderships must recognize Israel has short-, medium and long-term aims to split the different factions and movement that are certainly not only Fatah and Hamas but Al Jihad Al Islami which also have a strong presence in Gaza, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and many others.
Israel continually wants to develop and change new thought out perspectives, rules, regulations and horizons to add to Palestinian weakness and fragmentation of what can be called cold war tactics and divide-and-rule strategies imposed to deal with an already tense situation in the West Bank and Gaza in a powder-keg state of eruption;
It is never afraid of using the army when their leaders talk about “true war” on Gaza; what today might be a source of war is that Israel might re-occupy the territory as it did in the past. However, analysts argue that Israel’s military is already doing what it will to Gaza, and occupation will only lead to its further embroilment and a military quagmire that it does not want to do at the present time, since the military job is being done.
For Israel there are no long-term solutions despite the peace options that have been on the table since the 1990s which is to give the Palestinians their rightful national determination and statehood. Other than the use of violent “iron-fist” policies and practices developed by the late Yitzhak Rabin in the early 1980s to attempt to placate, it has consistently refused to deal with the Palestinians on an equal level as people who have been wronged. Even peaceniks like Shimon Peres, the current Israeli president, and a long advocate of a negotiated settlement, have been weary to give real, forceful commitments that would satisfy the Palestinians. The end result was signified by Intifada I in December 1987 and Intifada II in the year 2000.For Israel the barrel of the gun continues to serve as an objective in itself despite paying lip service to the peace process which began in Madrid in 1991 and continued hobbling forward in the 1990s. Israel’s iron fist may have directly contributed to the raise in support of the Islamic resistance movement in Gaza Strip. It has become very clear since the 1980s and 1990s and increased after the 2nd Palestinian Intifada on 29 September, 2000, the surge of Hamas support and the other Islamic movement, although to a lesser degree, vastly increased in the street because of the Islamic fever of their massage as well it programs and policies to the people of Gaza.
During those years as well Hamas leaders, politicians, activists and those that belonged to their military wings were cultivating, building and nurturing a strong body of support among the Palestinians who were living in poverty, squalor and under the constant gun-ships of the Israelis.
Being a resistance-political movement Hamas worked on the local scene, getting involved in local politics, mundane every-day issues and which made political Islam a force to be reckoned with and popular among the masses who were becoming fed up with mainstream politics and politicians who do not deliver on their promises.
It was a system based on participatory politics, and in Palestine the Hamas movement became active, reactive and answered the needs of Palestinians in Gaza. This may have been missing in the actions and literature of other Palestinian political parties like Fatah which relied on its popular strength as a nationalist movement and may have in the end underplayed the strength of lower and middle classes in their programs because they were already at the apex of political power.
Israel, always being in favor of short-term ‘iron-fist’ solutions may have also overlooked the growing social power of Hamas in the Palestinian street and continued to back, or at the very least to trade with the wrong horse despite the fact that the peace process was at an effective standstill after the year 2000.
Fatah realized what was happening only after they badly lost the 2006 Legislative Elections when it was too late and when it should have paid greater heed to the Palestinian street and should have had better ground organizations rather than continually being accused of mal-practice, graft and nepotism—the no Mr Clean administration.
With final power being in the hand of the Palestinian president Mahmood Abbass, he dismissed the Hamas government of Mr Ismael Hanya while its leadership went back to traditional base on Gaza.
As a result international sanctions on the Palestinians were lifted almost immediately, the 165,000 civil servants under the Palestinian Authority have been paid, the peace process cut off out of action since the year 2000 went back into revitalization as a result of the Annapolis meeting despite the fact nobody is quite sure what will happen on that front, and the new good news is that the donors meeting in Paris in mid-December 2007, pledged $7.5 billion to the Palestinians over the next five years.
All this is making Hamas appear in a negative limelight. Their retreat to Gaza began last June, while the Legislative Council deputies meet in Ramallah on the West Bank may yet fuel added tension between them and the present Fatah leadership which has once again taken the reigns of power in the West Bank through a Palestinian government that appears to be gain respectability in the eyes of the international community.
But in a sense also, there is a continuing stalemate as the Hamas leadership and ousted government to go back to Gaza unable to rule but yet fully in control of their stretched out province which can’t be doing any political good to the Palestinian cause, nor to itself as a movement standing in the firing line of Israeli phantom jets.
But for Fatah and Abu Mazen, now is not the time to isolate and allow them to dig their heels in one particular area, there should now be a process of healing and an attempt to bring Hamas out of their ideological shell which has always been religiously and ideological connected to its refusal to recognize the state of Israel and deal with it.
It has been said time and again if Hamas wants to play the game of politics and have a say in the democratic process, it has to submit to the new political realities which means categorically renouncing terrorism and recognizing Israel which Fatah has done through the signing of different peace agreements and treaties, beginning with Madrid and the 1993 Oslo peaces process.
At the moment Hamas refuses to give outright recognition to Israel and relies on its popular support. Is it enough to put their eggs in one basket and rely on a Palestinian street that is under effective Israeli military occupation, and shouldn’t the movement be looking to rally support from the different Palestinian institutions as well as those built since the Palestinian National Authority was established on different parts of the Palestinian territories in the early 1990s.
Hamas still has its deputies that form the majority of the Palestinian Legislative Council and it will likely try and create major in-roads since for the time being political power has fallen back in the hands of Fatah. However, this new ruling government will now have to be much more careful in the way it conducts itself in the street because it knows that it is on shaky grounds.
Israel for the time being is happy with the Fatah peace partners it can continue to negotiate with at its own pace, while the world community as represented by the international quartet of the UN, US, Russia, and Europe is in a better mood because Fatah, and Mahmood Abbas are certainly not Hamas, and realize there are international conventions they have to stick to and play along with.
While for Israel one part of its strategy in dealing with the Palestinians is starting to be fixed, another part is still at lose ends. Since their government leaders regard their military bombardment of Gaza as a “true war”, then Israel will surely continue to strike at Hamas and other groups as it sees fit.
The author is the Responsible Chief Editor of the Amman-based Jo Magazine, a monthly that deals in Jordanian affairs.
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