(Not) all is quiet on the
Israel-Palestine front By
Victor Kotsev
TEL AVIV - It is a cliche in
the Middle East to say that appearances are
deceptive. Yet there is hardly a better
demonstration of this pattern than the ongoing
pirouette between Israelis, Palestinians and
involved foreign powers.
On the surface,
things are fairly straight-forward, and last
week's narrative still holds: both sides are
entrenched in their positions, and negotiations
are impossible. The Palestinians are preparing an
extensive set of measures, mostly diplomatic and
based on non-violent strategy (though not
necessarily non-violent), to up the pressure on
Israel prior to declaring independence in
September.
Under the surface, however,
several powerful intrigues that could
significantly modify the strategic calculus are
stirring. If successful, negotiations for the
release of captive Israeli soldier
Gilad Shalit, currently being
conducted in Egypt under a media blackout, could
help trigger off a new round of
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and thus delay or
avert the Palestinian bid to seek independence at
the United Nations.
Syria is seething with
unrest, and as a consequence is quickly losing
influence over Hamas to Egypt. Its desperation and
displeasure were evident in the carefully
orchestrated clash that left a number of
Palestinians dead while trying to breach Israel's
northern border on Sunday ("Naksa" day - the day
commemorating the Arab defeat in the 1967 war).
Last Thursday, former Egyptian ambassador
to Israel Muhammad Basyuni dropped a bombshell
when he proclaimed that a deal on Shalit's release
was "within hours" of being reached. The time
frame proved inaccurate, but there had been
indications of progress for some time before, and
Palestinian sources confirmed that a deal was
"close to completion." [1]
Hamas denied,
but meanwhile information was leaked that some of
its high-ranking leaders were in Cairo in order to
negotiate, and that talks on Shalit were conducted
even at the level of Israeli Defense Minister Ehud
Barak and Egypt's de facto ruler Mohamed Tantawi.
[2]
Indirect evidence of Egyptian pressure
on Hamas, possibly to sign onto a prisoner-release
deal, was visible this weekend in the closing of
the Rafah crossing several days after Egypt opened
it, ostensibly for good. This incident shows that
Egypt is treading carefully with Hamas, and that
its intention to open up to the Gaza movement may
not be nearly as genuine as previously declared.
[3]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's comments on the Shalit deal largely
failed to stir the controversy that they merited,
but coming on top of a renewed push to restart the
peace talks, they point to a possible road ahead.
"I have made it clear to the French Foreign
Minister that Hamas must adopt the Quartet
principles," Netanyahu said on Sunday, referring
to a recent French peace initiative broadly based
on United States President Barack Obama's speech
before congress last month. "If the claim that a
new wind is blowing from Hamas, that could be
proven by freeing Gilad Shalit." [4]
Freeing Shalit, however, is not part of
the principles of the Quartet - the United
Nations, the United States, the European Union and
Russia - involved in helping negotiate a peace
process.
So far, Netanyahu had adamantly
insisted on Hamas agreeing to the latter before
any negotiations with the Palestinian unity
government-in-the-works could start. His recent
comments, however, suggest that he might be able
to compromise on this condition if the Shalit deal
goes through. If Hamas and the Palestinian
Authority could be brought on board as well - and
their domestic excuse to stop blocking the
negotiations could be, for example, that the unity
deal has changed realities on the ground
significantly - then the talks could resume.
Meanwhile, reports surfaced that Israeli
and Palestinian envoys have been conducting secret
indirect talks in Washington over the past few
days, and that the United States is actively
trying to restart the direct negotiations. [5]
Whether any negotiations would go very
far, even if such a propitious scenario
materializes, is another matter. Most analysts
doubt that a real breakthrough is within reach,
and veteran American negotiator Aaron David Miller
summarizes in an article in Foreign Policy why
this is the case. [6] However, if the peace talks
resume, this could forestall the Palestinian bid
for independence in September, and thus prevent a
diplomatic debacle for both Netanyahu and Obama.
For Israel, there is an added bonus.
Israeli journalist Ari Shavit predicts that "There
is a high risk of war breaking out in the autumn."
He argues, moreover, that peace talks and
concessions serve to consolidate domestic and
international support for the Israeli government
in anticipation of an outbreak of violence, and
that this is why it is important for Netanyahu to
conduct negotiations. [7] As I reported
previously, a deal for the release of Gilad Shalit
could also be part of Israeli preparations for a
regional conflict. [8]
This evolving
situation was further complicated on Sunday by
Syria's staging of a provocation on Israel's
northern border. Over the weekend the uprising
against the regime of Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad was rekindled, and Friday reportedly
became the deadliest day so far, with over 60
protesters killed in the city of Hama.
Predictably, Assad responded by escalating the
tension with Israel. On Naksa day, he tried to
recreate the events of three weeks earlier, when
hundreds of Palestinian refugees living in Syria
broke through the border fence and briefly entered
an Israeli Druze town.
What happened
merited a Hollywood action movie. Israeli troops,
placed on high alert and their numbers increased,
put into use a wide array of crowd control
measures ranging from obstacles to tear gas to
rubber-coated bullets. When these failed, snipers
opened fire, allegedly at the lower bodies of
protesters trying to breach the fence. Some
reports mention the use of dogs.
The
protesters made things worse for themselves, since
they reportedly violated several ceasefires to
which Israel agreed, and thus made the evacuation
of the wounded more difficult. They also threw
Molotov cocktails which started a bush fire and
set off old anti-tank land mines on the Syrian
side of the border.
Syrian TV, positioned
strategically to cover the events as fully as
possible, claimed that at least 23 died and over
300 were injured, but these figures are hard to
verify. Israel claims that the number is a "gross
overestimate". [9] Many of the wounded, according
to Israeli analysts, were probably hurt by the
land mines, and some of the dead probably died of
blood loss as the Red Cross was unable to reach
them.
On Monday, the United States
condemned Syria for the incitement and expressed
support for Israel's right to defend itself. "This
is clearly an attempt by Syria to incite these
kinds of protests," Department of State spokesman
Mark Toner told reporters. Since the Syrian army
had no trouble preventing a similar demonstration
the next day, on Monday, arguments that it could
do nothing about the Naksa day events seem
preposterous. Syrian opposition sources,
meanwhile, told reporters that the regime had in
fact paid the demonstrators, offering $1,000 to
each one alongside $10,000 to the family to each
killed.
According to a report that
surfaced on Tuesday, moreover, at least 14
Palestinian were shot dead by the security forces
of their own leaders on Monday in a refugee camp
in Syria. A crowd rioted following the funerals of
dead Naksa day protesters, and accused the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) of
putting them in the line of Israeli fire. [10]
This is a very strong indication that the
demonstrators themselves feel exploited, most
likely by some of their own corrupt strong men in
collusion with Assad.
Furthermore, the
fact that Gaza was silent on Naksa day suggests
that Hamas was not onboard the Syrian plan. It
could even be that the provocation was also
Syria's way of expressing displeasure with the
Shalit negotiations and the fact that Hamas is
drifting further into Egypt's orbit. Syria and
Egypt have long been rivals for influence over
Hamas, and since the protests in Syria started,
Egypt has scored a few important points.
Though calm has returned to Israel's
northern border, analysts fear further
escalations; the Shalit deal, although much closer
than say a week ago, has still not materialized.
Direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are still
a matter of speculation, despite that the rumors
are growing louder every day. The surface is still
deceptively calm, and it is difficult to forecast
how all of these intrigues will develop. Yet it
seems very probable that important developments
will come soon.
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