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News Analysis A new era for the Palestinians
September 29th, 2005 -- On 15 September Ariel Sharon addressed the United Nations General Assembly, garlanded in tributes for his “brave and historic” decision to remove the Israeli settlers from Gaza and withdraw from four small settlements in the West Bank. In what some registered as a new tone he said Israel had “no aspirations to rule over” the Palestinians, who “are also entitled to freedom and to a national, sovereign existence in a state of their own”. One week later the “new” Sharon approved a series of military actions against Gaza and the West Bank that so far have included: the aerial assassinations of two Hamas members and an Islamic Jihad military leader; destruction by missile of four civilian buildings in Gaza, including a school run by Hamas; artillery batteries and cannon massed on Gaza’s eastern and northern borders; the arrest of 207 Palestinians, including Hamas’ West Bank spokesmen Hassan Yusuf and Muhammad Ghazzal; and a total blockade on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The spark for this ferocious ,i>blitzkrieg was the firing by Hamas and Islamic Jihad cells of 35 mortars from northern Gaza into Israel on 23-24 September, leaving five Israelis injured. But the context was Sharon’s hunger to “determine new rules of the game” for the conflict in the wake of Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Those rules are now clear: zero tolerance and the most disproportionate punishment for any Palestinian military action in or out of Gaza and the systematic pursuit of Hamas as a military and political force in Palestinian society. “The instructions are unequivocal,” Sharon told his cabinet on 25 September. “We intend to act continuously in order to strike at the terrorists and we will not spare the appropriate measures for this… This phenomenon [mortar fire on Israeli towns] must be stopped; it cannot continue under any circumstances.” On 26 September Israel unleashed a fresh round of rocket attacks on Gaza, striking at targets where “arms are stored or produced”. No casualties were reported. Two events tipped the conflict into this new round of violence, less than two weeks after the last Israeli soldier left Gaza (MEI 758). The first was a raid by an army undercover unit on 23 September into Ilar, a Palestinian village near Tulkarm in the West Bank. Three Islamic Jihad fugitives were killed in the ensuing gun battle and Jihad fired off a barrage of eight mortars from Gaza into Israel in response. Hamas The second was an explosion during a Hamas “victory” parade later the same day in Jabaliya Refugee Camp in Gaza, leaving 15 dead and 80 wounded, most of them civilians. Hamas claimed that the rally had been targeted by a missile fired from an Israeli drone. It was rigorously denied by Israel, and by the Palestinian Authority. Hamas’ charge was also refuted by several eyewitnesses who said the blast occurred while Hamas’ fighters were parading their home-made missiles through the camp. Hamas should take responsibility for the carnage, snorted Tawfiq Abu Khusa of the Palestinian Authority’s Interior Ministry, “instead of making accusations against others”. But having made the charge, Hamas felt compelled to act on it, pitching 27 mortars into Israel, 21 of them landing on the outskirts of Sederot, a small town a few north-east of the Strip. The Islamist movement probably assumed some kind of Israeli reaction. But what it and the Palestinians got was Sharon at his most belligerent, the post-Gaza withdrawal mode. Israel sealed off the West Bank and Gaza, arrested every West Bank Hamas man it could lay its hands on, especially in and around Ramallah, and brought up heavy artillery to the Gaza borders, threatening invasion. Over the next 22 hours — and for the first time in months — it also launched nine aerial attacks, killing Jihad leader Mahmud Khalil and two Hamas activists, Rawad Farhat and Nafez Hassanian, courtesy of rockets crashing into their cars on Gaza’s recently freed coastal highway. If Hamas and Jihad expected some kind of mediation after this barrage, they were to be disappointed. The PA leadership simply left town, with President Mahmud Abbas turning up in Ramallah to insist that “we must stop parading our weapons and using our guns among the people”. Nor was there any intervention on Hamas’ behalf by the Egyptians, the US or the EU, other than the anodyne advice that Israel exercise “restraint” even when it acted to defend itself.
“We declare an end to Hamas operations from the Gaza Strip against the Israeli occupation,” said Hamas political leader Mahmud Zahar on 25 September. “It is in the interests of Hamas to defend the Palestinians against Israeli aggression and preserve the atmosphere of celebration in the wake of the cessation of the occupation” in Gaza. Hamas would also call a halt to all military parades, he added, without a trace of irony. Abbas The prospect of Hamas preserving a coherent organization for the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January is one casualty from this latest confrontation. A scheduled meeting between Sharon and Abbas on 2 October is another. “There won’t be a meeting,” said Abbas on 25 September. “We said no. If we want a successful meeting, we have to prepare for it.” And Abbas is not prepared. Prior to the turmoil in Gaza — and the collapse of his police forces on the Egyptian-Rafah border (see below) — the Palestinian leader had sought the meeting to get Israeli traction on two issues: implementation of the Sharm al-Shaykh “understandings” agreed in February (MEI 744); and the fate of the several crossing-points in and out of Gaza. Eight months since the summit in the Egyptian resort, Israel has freed 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, none of them significant. Despite the formal end of its military rule in Gaza, it is also refusing to free from Israeli jails 650 prisoners from Gaza. Instead, it has redefined them as “illegitimate combatants”, a legal fiction Israel used to abduct and detain Hizbullah men in Lebanon. It was a violation of international law there. It remains so in Gaza. But Abbas needs more than prisoner releases in Gaza. He needs movement, political and real. He has spent much of the last month in Gaza rehabilitating the Rafah border crossing, wrecked by the army before it left on 7 September. On 23 September the crossing was briefly opened to allow the passage of 3,000 Palestinians stranded on either side of the border. But with the mortars raining down again it was slammed shut once more, this time indefinitely. Even before the lock-down, Israel was insisting that all traffic in and out of Gaza go through under its charge at Kerem Shalom, a parcel of territory where the Israeli, Egyptian and Gazan borders meet. It also warned that, should the PA and Egypt open Rafah independently, Israel would annul the customs union between Gaza and Israel, effectively making them separate countries; refuse to remove the rubble left behind after the demolition of its settlements; and prevent even a policed passage between Gaza and the West Bank. This would leave Gaza not only alone but also sealed off. The PA position is to be flexible over the passage of commerce through Kerem Shalom but insistent that people go through Rafah, with third-party monitors to assuage Israel’s security and trade fears. It was supported in this stance by Egypt and implicitly by the Middle East Quartet. But that was before Jabaliya went up in smoke and Israel responded with its deadliest fire. Two weeks after the withdrawal from Gaza not only Hamas is alone; so too is Abbas. |
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