On Sunday night, an Egyptian
effort to establish a ceasefire between Israel and
the Gaza militant factions reportedly collapsed.
An Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip
loomed, after missiles landed near Tel Aviv for
four days in a row - once near Jerusalem, even
farther away.
Though nobody was hurt in
these specific attacks, they came as a slap in the
face of the stated goals of the ongoing Israeli
operation: stopping the missile fire and restoring
deterrence. Rockets had not been aimed at the
heart of Israel for over 20
years, since the former Iraqi
dictator Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles during
the First Gulf War. Therefore, as tanks and
artillery units rolled toward Gaza and reserve
soldiers were reporting for duty (75,000
initially, an increase of more than 40% of the
army's active personnel), a long and bloody
operation appeared to be in store, and only an
effective miracle of diplomacy could prevent that.
Pinning down the beginning of the crisis
is almost as difficult as forecasting its end. The
Atlantic published an elaborate timeline of its
gradual escalation, which involved the targeted
assassination of a top Gaza militant, Ahmed
al-Jabari, as well as the firing of some 150
rockets into southern Israel during the previous
weekend.
Other analysts have their own
versions: in a report dated November 16, 2012, for
example, the influential intelligence-analysis
firm Stratfor traced the beginnings of the
conflict to the bombing of the Yarmouk weapons
factory in Sudan on October 23. According to
Stratfor, the Israeli operation, whose English
codename is "Pillar of Defense", is first and
foremost directed against longer-range missiles
supplied by Iran to the Gaza militants; in this
account, both Yarmouk and Jabari were key links in
that supply chain.
Yet there are even
deeper causes of the violence, which involve
internal Palestinian and Israeli rivalries as well
as foreign interests, and which may hamper the
efforts to end it. Some analysts ask, for example,
if the timing of the escalation right after the US
presidential elections was coincidental and
whether spoilers might try to ruin any of several
major diplomatic initiatives that were expected
after Obama's re-election.
Egypt's Muslim
Brotherhood president and government are
hard-pressed to establish a truce. No less than
the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty is at stake -
Cairo already pulled its ambassador in Tel Aviv
"for consultations" - and the Brotherhood is
reportedly split between its loyalty for its
daughter organization Hamas and its need for
external stability in order to focus urgently on
its domestic program.
Rivalry between the
main Palestinian factions - Hamas and Fatah -
plays an important, if under-reported, role in
what is happening. In the past months, the
Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West
Bank, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, suffered
a series of setbacks, including the rise of the
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the recent visit
of the Emir of Qatar to the Strip. Other important
Middle Eastern leaders, such as the Turkish prime
minister, announced plans for similar visits that
would boost further the international legitimacy
and prestige of the Hamas regime.
Abbas
planned a grand comeback with his bid for implicit
recognition of Palestinian statehood at the United
Nations, which was expected to play out later this
month. In international legal discourse, for
example in the eyes of the International Criminal
Court, a vote by the General Assembly would be a
sufficient and rather official criterion for
statehood. Abbas would achieve the status of a
state leader and also win over the Arab masses as
a man whose vision for a non-violent resistance
produces results. He would acquire new diplomatic
levers to use against Israel and would cement his
relevance in Middle Eastern politics.
All
of a sudden, however, it seems that Hamas and
Israel took matters in their own hands.
Technically, they both took issue with the part of
the statehood declaration that specifies the
borders of the new Palestinian state. Neither of
them was happy with the pre-1967 war lines cited
by Abbas, each for its own reasons: Hamas insists
on liberating "all of occupied Palestine" while
Israel hopes to annex East Jerusalem and its major
settlements in the West Bank.
In addition,
both had an interest in shifting the international
focus on themselves. As the left-wing Israeli
journalist Amira Hass reported in Ha'aretz,
"opponents of Hamas in the Strip say that the
escalation suits the political aims of both Hamas
and Israel: It dwarfs the importance of the PLO
initiative to bring to a vote the Palestinian bid
for observer status in the United Nations."
Even less known - and still an important
contributing factor - is the political battle
raging inside Hamas. Internal elections were
reportedly scheduled for later this month, and its
present chief, Khaled Meshaal, had announced that
he would not run.
Meshaal, a political
rival of the Gaza leadership of Hamas, had
embarked on a reconciliation initiative with Abbas
last year and had also voiced cautious support for
the UN bid (importantly, this put him on the
moderate side of Jabari). Now that some of his
main opponents are dead and the Strip is in
distress, Meshaal may choose to reconsider his
retirement.
Much more public is the
election campaign in Israel, but allegations that
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu provoked
the clash intentionally in order to gain
popularity must be taken with a grain of salt. It
is true that in the first few days of the
operation, most of the media attention shifted to
the prime minister, while his rivals from the
opposition rallied behind him. However, he was
leading in polls even before the violence, and a
prolonged campaign without a clear outcome could
destroy this advantage. Most analysts seem to
agree that a calm would have been more beneficial
to Netanyahu in the run-up to the election.
The Israeli leaders' dilemma can best be
summarized as a need to find a response to the
continued rocket fire - particularly to the fire
on central Israel - that is simultaneously harsh
enough to satisfy their primarily right-wing
constituency and soft enough not to cause a
diplomatic disaster with Egypt and the
international community. Netanyahu and his
coalition partners would certainly not like to go
down in history as the people who let the peace
treaty with Egypt collapse - even less so right
before the election.
Military experts
caution that an air war usually becomes less
effective after a few days because the air force
exhausts most of its target bank. We may be seeing
a reflection of that in the increased number of
civilian casualties in the last day - 24 died on
Sunday, at least 13 of whom were civilians. But
while ground war usually increases rather than
decreases what the military terms "collateral
damage", if the rocket fire from Gaza does not
stop and a ceasefire is not established soon, an
invasion may become a tactical necessity for the
Israeli army.
Amid a decisive push by
Cairo to establish a ceasefire and no signs of a
let-up in the violence, time may be running
dangerously short.
Victor Kotsev
is a journalist and political analyst.
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