Israel’s 22-day onslaught on Gaza at the beginning of 2009 has been successfully portrayed by its government as a security measure needed to put an end to the rockets and mortars that Palestinians had been firing into southern Israel. In fact, it is far more complex than that. The roots of the immediate issues between Hamas and Israel lie in Israel’s insistence on retaining and settling Palestinian-populated territories conquered in 1967. Hamas started as a non-political social welfare movement, actually fostered by Israel in the seventies as a counter to the secular Fatah-led PLO, its main challenger at the time. Hamas was politicized in the first intifadah of the eighties, in which it played a major role while the PLO leadership was in exile in Tunisia. When the Oslo agreement that was reached between Israel and the PLO in 1993 failed to result in Israeli evacuation of the occupied territories and a Palestinian state, and instead Fatah was used to repress terrorist challenges to Israel, Hamas began to overtake it as a political force in Palestinian politics. Hamas took to specializing in suicide bombings, largely in reaction to Israel’s continued settlement policies in the territories in violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the Oslo agreement.
Israel's
leaders had and still have no intention of allowing a viable
Palestinian state
and are determined to keep control over the territories on which
Palestinians
live in the name of a “Greater Israel.” In Israel’s thinking,
Palestinians
could not be incorporated into Israel as citizens without destroying
the Jewish
character of the state; yet expelling them to Jordan, though advocated
by
extremists, was seen as a violation going too far of international
norms.
Hence, an apartheid-like solution was hit upon: the Palestinians would
be given
limited autonomy in a handful of disconnected and economically crippled
enclaves (Bantustans), one of which is Gaza. Israel would control the
borders
around them and movement between them, erect walls cutting them off
from
Israel, dominate their airspace and access routes and even their water
resources, much of which it was appropriating for its own use. With the
failure
of the
A major watershed in the further empowerment of Hamas came in 2005 when Sharon evacuated the Gaza Strip, its stronghold. While depicted by Israel as a concession in the peace process, Sharon’s actual goal was to rid himself of the most ungovernable and least valuable part of the territories so as to relieve international pressure on Israel and allow it to continue Jewish settlement in the more desirable West Bank territories. According to Dov Weisglass, Sharon's closest adviser, disengagement from Gaza was aimed at halting the peace process, not encouraging it. Arnon Soffer, another Sharon advisor, explained:
"When 2.5
million
people live in a closed-off Gaza, it's going to be a human catastrophe.
Those
people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the
aid of an
insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful.
It's
going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will
have to
kill and kill and kill. All day, every day."
Small wonder Mearsheimer judged that Israel’s intention was the make of Gaza an open-air prison for the Palestinians and make life so miserable for them that they would submit to Israeli dictates.[1]
The
PLO leadership appeared to do little to contest Israel’s plans, but
Hamas
remained a more obdurate obstacle to them. Fatah had come to be seen by
most
Palestinians as corrupt and ready to collaborate with Israel, while
Hamas was
viewed as clean and the leader of the resistance. Hence, elections to
the
Palestinian legislature resulted in a decisive Hamas victory over
Fatah,
although Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas was elected Palestinian president.
Hamas’
victory was more a protest vote than an embrace of its Islamist
ideology by the
majority of Palestinians. It was both a challenge and an opportunity
for
Matters were further complicated by the stand of the West on this issue. Israel makes much of Hamas’ refusal to accept its right to exist and it is true that Hamas rejects Israel’s legitimacy, small wonder given Israel’s own refusal to allow a Palestinian state. However on this basis, Israel and the Bush administration managed to demonize Hamas and enforce an international diplomatic blockade on it that allowed Israel to consolidate the material blockade of Gaza. International recognition of Hamas was made contingent on its promise to abide by all agreements reached with Israel by the PLO/PA, refrain from all acts of violence and recognise Israel's right to exist. But demanding that Hamas concede its main bargaining cards before negotiations had even begun was either an attempt to stack the deck even more in Israel’s favour or ensure that no negotiations would begin. Moreover, Hamas does accept the idea of a truce with Israel, even an indefinite and extended truce, that over time could easily turn into de-facto acceptance of Israel, always provided Hamas and the Palestinians acquired a stake in a stable status quo—that is, a state of their own. Hamas has also said it would accept the 1967 borders between Israel and the occupied territories as "provisional borders" for a Palestinian state. According to Efraim Halevy, a former Israeli Mossad chief, this is tantamount to a declaration of acceptance of another state, Israel, on the other side of the 1967 divide. It is clear that Israel could have achieved—and still can reach--an agreement with Hamas under which the Palestinians would end all missile attacks on Israel if the Israelis would stop arresting and assassinating Palestinians, end their economic stranglehold and open the border crossings into Gaza. The risk for Israeli leaders was that such an agreement could snowball into the emergence of a de-facto Palestinian state in Gaza, a first step toward including the West Bank in it, jeopardizing their plans for “Greater Israel.”
Despite the Israel government’s unwillingness to contemplate such a grand bargain with Hamas, under pressure from Israelis living under the threat of rocket attacks, it agreed to a 6-month truce starting on June 19, 2008. The result would have satisfied an Israeli government whose only ambition was protecting its own people. According to Israel's own Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, Hamas was "careful to maintain the ceasefire;" the number of missile attacks was drastically reduced and only two fired in September and October, neither by Hamas; not a single Israeli was killed by Palestinian missiles between Nov. 4 and the launching of the war on Dec. 27. Indeed, according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, only 18 people in Israel had been killed between 2004-2008 compared to hundreds of Palestinians arrested and assassinated by Israel.[2] In spite of this improvement, Israel maintained its blockade and economic stranglehold on Gaza. Then, on Nov. 4, Israel attacked a tunnel inside Gaza and killed six Palestinians, the first major violation of the ceasefire, and the Palestinians responded by resuming rocket attacks. It is against this background that Hamas refused to agree to the continuation of the ceasefire, evidently hoping to force an end to the status quo which allowed Israel to keep Gaza as a giant prison; for its part, Israel, also dissatisfied with the status quo, took it as an opportunity to use massive military force to shift the balance of power in its favour and decisively smash Hamas.
Israel’s
attack on Gaza involved what Defense Minister Ehud Barak called "an
all-out war against Hamas," in which it did not confine its attacks to
military targets and bombed a university, schools, mosques, homes,
government
offices, and even ambulances. Explained an Israeli officer: "There are
many aspects of Hamas, and we are trying to hit the whole spectrum,
because everything is
connected and everything supports terrorism against
Israel claims to have killed hundreds of Hamas members, destroyed its command posts, weapons stores, and training facilities and sharply degrading its ability to fire rockets at Israel which declined from 80/day at the start of the war to 20. Hamas seemed to put up a poor fight, particularly compared to Hizbollah in 2006. Israel claims that only six soldiers were directly killed by Hamas. In fact, military casualties on both sides were limited because Israeli ground forces did not attempt to fight their way through packed urban areas, and Hamas mostly avoided open conflict with them. Israel’s blow to Hamas was not militarily decisive and neither broke the group nor weakened its control of Gaza; indeed Hamas forces retuned to the streets in the wake of the ceasefire. Insofar as the aim was to militarily incapacitate Hamas’ ability to “bargain with rockets,” the war did not solve Israel’s problem, rockets remained pointed at Israel and a re-supply of weapons from Iran continued to come in via secret tunnels and boats that sneak through Israel's naval blockade. The Israeli hope had been that President Mubarak of Egypt would collaborate with them to end smuggling, but the war makes it harder for him to do so and even if he defies his own public opinion and attempts it his orders are unlikely to be effectively implemented since Sinai locals sympathesize with the Palestinians and profit from the cross-border trade.
The
political outcome of the war is even more ambivalent. Hamas officials
emerged
from weeks in hiding declaring that Israel’s failure to destroy the
movement
meant they had won a victory. Yet, a senior Hamas official admitted that the intensity
and duration of the Israeli onslaught had been much greater than
expected, with
entire neighbourhoods in ruins. On the
streets of Gaza,
support for Hamas remains strong, but in private there are expressions
of
anger, fear, and exhaustion.[3]
Yet, Israel has undoubtedly inflamed hatred for itself and will
probably have
helped recruit many future martyrs for the Palestine cause. Hamas will have to concentrate
for many months on rebuilding its infrastructure, administrative and
social
services and paramilitary forces.
In fact, it is too early to assess the political consequences. Although Israel tried to keep the impact of the attacks from the world’s view by refusing to allow reporters into Gaza, the story has gotton out and only Israel’s most uncritical supporters will not have been troubled by the humanitarian disaster it has inflicted on innocent civilians, indeed a whole population. International efforts to rebuild Gaza, which have produced pledges of money from the Arab Gulf states, Iran and Europe, could lead to international oversight of Gaza at the expense of Israel’s blockade and strengthen Hamas by channelling money and reconstruction under its supervision. Even worse for Israel, it could translate into pressure for a diplomatic settlement. Egypt has been trying, with U.S. backing, to broker a long-term truce which would end Palestinian arms smuggling and also lead to reopening the coastal enclave’s border crossings, one of Hamas’ key demands. Negotiation of such an agreement would give Hamas the de facto international recognition it has so far been denied, break the American-Israeli diplomatic blockade, and imbue it with a sense of sovereignty.
Meanwhile, the Israel-Hamas conflict had become embroiled in a regionwide conflict between pro-US powers, led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt and the anti-US Syria-Iran coalition that first crystallized during the 2006 Lebanon war. The Iranian-Saudi conflict is at the heart of the cleavage, rooted in their competition for regional hegemony and leadership of the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia has been on the defensive as Iran's military capacity, including long-range missiles, has increased and as its influence spread in post-Saddam Shia-governed Iraq. Saudi Arabia responded by increasing its support for the Sunni minority in Iraq and for anti-hizbollah Lebanese factions. Egypt, too, was alarmed at the spread of Iranian influence in the Arab world and accused Iran of using it to serve Iranian, not Arab interests: "Iran... seeks to grab as many Arab bargaining chips as possible, in order to tell the next U.S. administration: If you wish to discuss any subject – especially the security of the Gulf or Iran's nuclear dossier – you will have to speak with us..."[4] The region-wide legitimacy won by Hizbullah during the 2006 Lebanon war and the power it achieved in Lebanon though the 2008 Doha agreement were likewise perceived as part of Iran's bid for regional hegemony. Its apparent drive to attain nuclear weapons would further shift the psychological balance of power in Iran’s favour.
The Hamas war exacerbated the split between the two sides. Syria and Qatar (which had joined the anti-Saudi camp) attempted to convene an emergency Arab League summit but was blocked by Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Qatar therefore unilaterally called a January 16, 2009 Doha summit inviting Iranian President Ahmadinejad and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Syria and Iran accused Saudi Arabia and Egypt of pursuing a pro-Israel and pro-American policy and of sabotaging the efforts of the resistance. They demanded an end to all initiatives for peace with Israel and of normalization of relations with it. Erdogan sharply condemned Israel’s behaviour in Gaza at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The Egypt-Saudi camp called a counter-summit in Abu Dhabi to support Fatah, Hamas’ Palestinian rival, attended by the UAE, Morocco, Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain and the PA. To reinforce its stand with international support, it summoned European leaders to a meeting at Sharm Al-Sheikh. It accused Hamas of serving Iranian and Syrian interests rather than those of the Palestinians. Iran’s aim was “to set the entire region ablaze, and to kill as many Palestinian and Lebanese martyrs as possible, in order to expose the helplessness of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the [entire] moderate Arab axis..." Egypt used its role in brokering arrangements between Gaza and Israel to weaken Hamas or at least Iran’s influence over it. Mubarak was quoted as saying that "Hamas must not be allowed to emerge triumphant from the present confrontation," apparently welcoming an Israeli victory over an Arab-Muslim opponent.
A
Syrian paper correctly observed that the region was split between the
camps of
the US and its allies which included Israel, and that of the resistance
and its
allies and that in the former there was a deep abyss between the rulers
and
their people who supported the resistance.[5]
With satellite TV beaming images of the carnage in Gaza into Arab homes
across
the region, disturbances swept Arab capitals. In Egypt, the Muslim
Brotherhood
used the issue to mobilize support, with thousands of Egyptians
marching in
downtown Cairo, chanting, “We all belong to Hamas.” and “Where is the
Egyptian
army?” In
Jordan, Yemen and elsewhere demonstrators
targeted Egyptian embassies and consulates. In Saudi Arabia police fired rubber bullets to
break up rare protests involving hundreds of pro-Palestinian
demonstrators
while Jordanians also took to the streets in
support of
Hamas. In Morocco, traditionally
seen as the Arab state least swayed by
Arab-Islamic issues and causes, one of the
biggest
demonstrations took place, part of a “tidal
wave, shaking society to the core,
mobilizing school and university students, women, social movements and
political groups at the grassroots” across the political spectrum.[6]
In the West the issue of Gaza was largely framed as one of Islamic terrorism. At the level of Middle East public opinion, the issue is seen as Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and denial of Palestinian national rights; the Western dependent regimes of the region are caught between their people and their American patron. The West’s failure to restrain or call Israel to account for its “state terrorism” in Gaza is seen as yet another example of the double standards under which Westcentric global governance is conducted.
[1] John
J. Mearsheimer. “Another War, Another Defeat,” The
American Conservative, 26 January 2009
[2] ibid
[3] B.
Y. Saab, “Hamas at
the
Crossroads,” Jane’s Foreign Report, January 30, 2009
[4] http://www.alarabiya.net, January 1, 2009.
[5] Al-Ba’th, January 19, 2009.
[6] Abdullah
Saaf, Director
of Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches en Sciences Sociales, Rabat
JIME Center.All rights reserved.