So, What Next?
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak wants “war to the bitter end.” Hamas is on the run, its terrorist infrastructure and personnel being blown to bits as we speak. All good, but at the end of the day, all that gets you is a pile of rubble and a bunch of dead terrorists, international condemnation, and you start all over again.
So, what next?
There’s been a fair amount handwringing about how this all goes nowhere, it’s a zero-sum game just leaves Palestinians more angry, prospects for peace in a shambles, shocked international community alienated, and then the cycle starts again.
What if the exact opposite is true, and the destruction of Hamas is the best thing that ever happened to the Palestinians? Their game of murderous harrassing fire, after all, was the real go-nowhere game that kept the people of Gaza isolated, under the Israeli boot, suffering, wishing for another border fence holiday to cross into Egypt and buy stuff, because in a Gaza run by terrorists, that’s as good as it gets.
The doom’n'gloom handwringing about zero-sum games — no point in fighting Hamas, Israel should give up and make concessions to the small-scale irritant of a gang of Islamist thugs that can mount nothing more than deadly harrassment campaigns — that zero-sum scenario presumes Hama still exists and still has power when this is over. It would assume that some other Palestinian entity, one that has recognized its people’s interest and has begun exploring the possibilities of behaving like a reasonable modern state, can not step in and bring with it the international community … or such responsible elements as can be found.
The Palestinian people elected a terrorist organization to lead them and so far, in the territory it controls, Hamas has behaved like a pack of terrorists. But another branch of government, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, and based in Fatah-controlled West Bank, has indicated it is willing to work with Israel and with the world for peace. In fact, they’ve indicated they are ready to take over Gaza. Jerusalem Post:
Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah said Saturday that they were prepared to assume control over the Gaza Strip if Israel succeeds in overthrowing the Hamas government.
“Yes, we are fully prepared to return to the Gaza Strip,” a top PA official told The Jerusalem Post. “We believe the people there are fed up with Hamas and want to see a new government.”
Another PA official said Fatah had instructed all its members in the Gaza Strip to be prepared for the possibility of returning to power.
“We have enough men in the Gaza Strip who are ready to fill the vacuum,” he said. “But of course all this depends on whether Israel manages to get rid of the Hamas regime.”
The two officials voiced hope that the current IDF operation would end Hamas rule in Gaza. They said that the PA was also prepared to dispatch security forces from the West Bank to replace the Hamas militiamen.
However, they denied Hamas allegations that the PA had urged Israel to launch a massive attack to overthrow the Hamas government.
Here’s Abbas, via MEMRI, denouncing the Hamas rocket campaign and reporting that he warned Hamas leaders not to break the ceasefire.
In his visit to Egypt, PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) placed the responsibility for the Israeli attack on Hamas, saying, “We called the leaders of Hamas, and told them both directly and directly, through Arab parties and non-Arab parties. We talked with them on the phone. We told them, ‘Please, do not end the tahdiah.’”
Nimr Hammad, an advisor to Mahmoud Abbas, said: “The one responsible for the massacres is Hamas, and not the Zionist entity, which in its own view reacted to the firing of Palestinian missiles. Hamas needs to stop treating the blood of Palestinians lightly. They should not give the Israelis a pretext.” He called upon the leaders of Hamas to stop carrying out “operations which reflect recklessness, such as the firing of missiles.”
There’s more at the MEMRI link. Even this commentator, who advocates underground Palestinian “resistance,” points out how stupid Hamas has been, trying to be both a terrorist group and a government at the same time. (Their Iranian pals, in offering technical assistance and advice, at least try to keep a figleaf over their activities, after all).
Abdallah Awwad, columnist for the PA daily Al-Ayyam, argued against Hamas’ attempt to be both a government as well as a fighting resistance: “The Israeli incursions after 2000 [during the Al-Aqsa Intifada] and the destruction of the PLO headquarters were enough [for the PLO] to see the incompatibility of being a government at the same time as fighting the resistance… We are paying the price of stupidity, and the maniacal love of being rulers, that has nothing in it except for hollow slogans. [A choice must be made to be] either a government or a resistance. When the two are combined, it gives the occupying power easy targets… The example of the destruction of the PLO headquarters in the West Bank during the Intifada should have sufficed… What happened in Gaza demonstrates that the lesson was not learned. Instead of disappearing under the ground, which is the basis for any resistance, Hamas personnel remained exposed in the open… This destructive formula contained within it a premise that the occupation will not dare to carry out a bloody attack on Gaza.”
Last week, before this started, Abbas was urging Hamas leaders to end the Fatah-Hamas feud. But the Israelis may be solving that problem for them. There may be no Hamas, or Hamas leaders, left to feud with when this is done.
Gaza’s not a big place, as the commentator above noted, and Hamas is not a big organization. Those leaders who do not find themselves dead shortly are unquestionably guilty of murder and other illegal actions in the summer 2007 campaign against Fatah … not to mention their purposeful campaign against non-military targets in Sderot … and perhaps should be handed to the legitimate elements of Palestinian government for justice.
Gaza will still be there, and most Gazans probably will be, too. Then, their legitimate government, such as it still exists under Abbas in the West Bank, can govern them. It’s not like Abbas asked the Israelis to do this for him, or that they asked his permission, or that he colluded with them, at least that we know of.
Is Abbas’ PA up to the task? Maybe, maybe not. There is certainly no shortage of nations and international organizations that are capable of assisting them with peacekeepers, cash, advice and assistance. Maybe, and perhaps ideally, even earnest, responsible Arab nations that have yearned to end heavy-handed Israeli control and occupation of Palestinian territories, and yearned to see a Palestinian state.
That’s if earnest Arab nations that are willing to behave responsibily can be found. God knows it’s hard enough to find nations like that in the supposedly civilized, concerned parts of the world. You have to work with what you have in this world. But it is possible that at the end of this thing, the missile barrages and suicide bombs will be done; the Israelis and those Palestinians who are inclined to talk free and able to negotiate a settlement of remaining issues that recognizes reality; the Palestinians may actually get a state; and then everyone moves on with their lives, everyone gets richer, every kid gets to go to school, and it’s over.
But what do I know? The Middle East is a complicated place, hard to follow from afar. There are problems with Syria, problems with Iran, problems with Hezbollah, problems with other Arab states, problems with the international community. Abbas and Fatah have their own problems, and so, politically, does Israel, every bit as domestically divided as the United States and the Palestinians for that matter have proven to be. There are probably a lot of good reasons why the Arabs can’t handle Gaza once Israel does their dirty work for them, or short of that, why Israel might fail to finish the job. But here’s Yossi Klein Halevi at the New Republic, mentioning every possibility, but stopping short of the above scenario. Also mentioning that some Arabs want Israel to do this:
Israel’s Options: There are three possible scenarios for how this operation will evolve. The first is that the government will opt for a limited attack whose goal isn’t the overthrow of the Hamas regime but merely the attainment of better terms in the next round of ceasefire–such as supervision over tunnels linking Gaza with Egypt and through which Hamas has smuggled in missiles. The argument for a limited operation is that Mahmud Abbas’s men aren’t ready to secure the Strip from Hamas–and even if they were, they would bear the mark of collaborators if they took control of Gaza courtesy of Israel.
The second scenario is the overthrow of Hamas and turning the Strip over to a foreign power–ideally Egypt, as the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, has suggested. It’s doubtful, though, that Egypt will agree to relieve Israel of its Gaza burden. And NATO is on record as refusing to commit peacekeeping troops in the Palestinian territories.
The third option is to begin with the first option of a limited operation but, as fighting intensifies, find ourselves reluctantly implementing the second option of all-out war against Hamas. That may well be the least desirable option of all, leaving Israel vulnerable to events beyond its control. But given previous Israeli experience, that could be the most likely scenario.
…
The Fate of a Two-State Solution: The future of the West Bank may well be resolved in Gaza. If the international community forces the IDF to end the operation before the missile threat against southern Israel is resolved, Israelis will inevitably conclude that, even when we withdraw to the 1967 borders, as we did on the Gaza front in 2005, the international community will not allow us to protect ourselves. And the likelihood then of convincing a majority of Israelis to withdraw from the West Bank–within easy rocket distance from our major population centers–will be close to non-existent. Ultimately, then, the creation of an independent Palestine depends on neutralizing Hamas.
The Moderate Arab Response: About six months ago, during a meeting with a senior Palestinian official, I was stunned when he asked me matter of factly, “So when are you Israelis going to invade Gaza already?” “You mean you want us to?” I asked. “If you want a peace agreement,” he replied, “you will have no choice.” I never expected that position to be made public. But some Arab leaders–including Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and even the feckless Abbas–have both come as close as any Arab leader can dare go in expressing support for the Israeli attack by condemning Hamas for inviting it.
In the 1990s, there was hope that a “new Middle East” would emerge through peace talks. For Israel, that turned out to be a near-fatal illusion. Now, though, a new Middle East may actually be emerging–not through peace but conflict. And in this new Middle East, moderate Arabs are siding with Israel against Iran and its proxies. That is the reason why several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, condemned Hezbollah rather than Israel in the initial phase of the Second Lebanon War. And it’s the reason why most of the Arab world failed to condemn Israel’s air strike last year against the Syrian nuclear reactor–intended, according to one intelligence report, as an eventual nuclear bomb factory for Iran.
At the Wall Street Journal, Haveli writing with Michael Oren add:
… without Hamas’s defeat, there can be no serious progress toward a treaty that both satisfies Palestinian aspirations and allays Israel’s fears. At stake in Gaza is nothing less than the future of the peace process.
Here’s another Israeli commentator, Shmuel Rosner at the New Republic, who dismisses the PA’s claim to be ready to take contorl of Gaza as “ridiculous,” but in elaboration indicates that’s only because he doesn’t believe Hamas can be knocked out, that Israel doesn’t have the will to do it. Lebanon 2006 convinced him Israel’s efforts to remake the political map of the Middle East are doomed:
… yes, eliminating Hamas’s rule in Gaza is still a (justifiably) desirable final outcome for both Israel, the U.S., and, for that matter, the Fatah-ruled Palestinian Authority. But this will be a long-term goal–”long term” in the sense that no one yet knows when and if ever it will be achieved. What is relatively clear is that Israel doesn’t aim to achieve it now. The 2008 Gaza war is the war of the possible. When Hamas is ready to strike a deal that will end both the operation and “improve the security reality of” Israel’s “southern residents,” the war will be over.
Sure. If Israel is just messing around here, seeking to prolong her own people’s anxiety and pain. In which case Israel is wasting everyone’s time.
Otherwise, it isn’t over until Israel says it is. If the Israelis keep it up, send in the ground troops, and ignore international calls for Hamas to be allowed to harrass Israeli citizens at will, it could all be over but the talking in a matter of weeks.
Who then is going to condemn Israel if it hands a Hamas-free Gaza to Abbas and a coalition of responsible Arab states, such as those George Bush gathered at the White House after Hamas’ Summer of Blood? Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, sure. The “Arab Street,” whatever that is.
One problem. It would take an American statesman to facilitate an effective follow-on effort like that, a coalition of the willing but probably more like a coalition of the reluctant who can be prodded. A month may not be enough time even for a statesman like George Bush to pull it all together. That means we can only hope Barack Obama will be the kind of president who can craft a real and lasting Mideast peace out of the opportunity we can only hope Israel plans to give him.
What … you wanted easy?
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Topics: Israel, Palestinians
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:13 pm on Monday, December 29, 2008
3 Responses to “So, What Next?”
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