August 8, 2014
All three players must take radical—but feasible—steps to settle the unending conflict.
On August 5, after twenty-nine days of fighting, Israel and Hamas accepted the Egyptian proposal for a seventy-two-hour unconditional cease-fire. The cease-fire was meant to provide a calmer environment for direct and indirect talks on stabilizing the relations between Israel and Gaza. At this writing, fire has been renewed—and indeed might even escalate—but the efforts to restore the ceasefire and to then establish the terms of a broader and more enduring understanding also continue. This fluid phase in the process might continue for some time before such an understanding is reached. The following is an attempt to sketch the basic requirements for transforming any cease-fire the parties may agree on to more stable relations between Gaza and Israel, and between Israelis and Palestinians more broadly.
The Strategic Environment
Any attempt to establish a more stable relationship between Israel and Gaza must begin with ascertaining the causes of these relations’ current instability and the circumstances that caused the most recent eruption of violence. In the broadest sense the failure of U.S.-led efforts—most recently, the attempts by Secretary of State John Kerry to broker a permanent status agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority—provided the environment in which the eruption of violence could be expected.
Regionally, during the past year Hamas has found itself in unprecedented isolation. This was partly self-induced—resulting from Hamas’ decision in 2011 to support the Syrian rebels and to relocate its headquarters away from Damascus. The decision alienated some of the movement’s most important regional supporters: Iran and Syria. But in part the isolation resulted from developments over which Hamas had no control, most important among them was the counter-revolution in Egypt in early July 2013 which ousted the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’s natural allies. The latter development led to very tough Egyptian measures to isolate Gaza by closing the Rafah crossing even more hermetically than before and, even more important, by destroying the network of tunnels that Hamas had built under the Gaza-Egyptian border. The tunnels were designed to circumvent the restrictions imposed by Egypt and Israel in the aftermath of Hamas’ take-over of Gaza in June 2007 by allowing the smuggling of weapons and goods to the Gaza Strip. The cumulative effect of these developments was to leave Hamas physically isolated and without regional allies. Not surprisingly, Hamas leaders were desperate to find a way to escape this growing isolation.
Internally, some members of Hamas’ military wing may have also turned to violence in order to thwart the April 2014 reconciliation agreement which they saw as enabled by excessive Hamas concessions. Thus, the abduction and killing of the three Israeli teenagers on June 12—a development that spurred the recent escalation—may have reflected the desire of some among the military wing to thwart the reconciliation efforts.
Another important development was the Israeli government’s negative reaction to the Palestinian national reconciliation agreement. The reaction was propelled by the perception that given Hamas’ ideological commitment to Israel’s destruction, such a move cannot but imply a PLO retreat from its commitment to peace. The battle against the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation may have also induced Israel to view the aforementioned abduction and killing as a Hamas operation and to assert that in reconciling with Hamas, PA President Mahmoud Abbas had entered into a partnership with a murderous organization. In turn, such framing led the Israeli government to take another series of measures against Hamas, notably the re-arresting of tens of Hamas operatives who were previously released from Israeli jails in the framework of the Gilad Shalit deal. Hamas responded with escalating rocket fire against Israeli towns and agricultural settlements in the south, later reaching even north of Tel Aviv.
The cumulative effect of the different components of this strategic environment amounted to an incentive structure that favored escalation over stability. Israel felt that the newly created Palestinian national reconciliation government was legitimizing a movement committed to its destruction and Hamas felt increasingly isolated, if not strangled, and thus with little to lose.
Stabilizing Israel-Gaza relations would therefore require transforming this environment in at least two ways: first, affecting the intra-Palestinian balance by strengthening the Fatah-led PA while weakening Hamas; and second, altering the parties’ cost-benefit calculus in a fashion favoring peace and stability over war and destruction. Accomplishing this, in turn, would require that the parties involved make significant if not paradigmatic changes in their approach—changes that will then be translated into specific policy moves.
Changes in Israel’s Approach
To contribute its share to stabilizing Israel-Gaza relations, the Israeli government would need to change its approach in the following ways: First, it would need to accept that Hamas is a permanent feature of the Palestinian scene—that while its military capacity can be degraded by recurring violent confrontations, it is a popular movement that cannot be destroyed—at least not at a cost acceptable to Israel.
Second, the Israeli government would need to finally resolve that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is its primary partner for stabilizing Palestinian-Israeli relations and for ultimately ending the two peoples’ conflict. In turn, translating this perceptual change to policy would require that Israel take meaningful measures to strengthen Abbas and weaken Hamas. Thus, it would need to completely reverse Israel’s long track record of doing exactly the opposite—rewarding Hamas violence as was the case with the Gilad Shalit deal while punishing Abbas as it did following the latter’s turn to gaining UN recognition of independent Palestinian statehood.
Third, Israel would need to radically change its approach to Palestinian national reconciliation: from viewing such efforts as a threat due to the implied legitimization of Hamas, to seeing it as an opportunity to obtain one Palestinian address for negotiations and deterrence.
Fourth, Israel should recognize that Hamas must be given something to lose—that Hamas’ inability “to deliver” on the population’s basic requirements because of restrictions imposed by Egypt and Israel makes it desperate to take any measure in the hope of escaping its present predicaments.
This four-dimensional paradigmatic change should induce Israel to take the following measures to empower President Abbas and to weaken Hamas while at the same time providing Hamas’ political leadership with incentives to favor accommodation over violence: First, Israel should help improve the Gazans’ living conditions by allowing a greater flow of goods and services and greater movement of people, between the West Bank and Gaza. Second, Israel should coordinate with the PA the deployment of Palestinian National Security Forces along the Israel-Gaza border and at the border crossings. Third, Israel should facilitate the holding of Palestinian elections and should refrain from thwarting the campaigning of Hamas’ political activists—action that only increases their electoral appeal. Fourth, Israel should allow greater PA security control over area A and greater civil control over Palestinians residing in area C. It should also remove remaining checkpoints and allow West Bank Palestinians greater access to Israeli, Gazan, and international markets. Finally and most important, Israel should facilitate renewed peace negotiations and should endow these talks with greater viability by ending settlement construction, by releasing pre-Oslo Palestinian prisoners, and by abandoning positions that insure such talks’ failure —for example, the demand that the IDF should remain deployed in the entire West Bank for a long period of time.
Changes in Hamas’ Approach
The changes required in Hamas’ approach if violence is to be replaced by stability are no less paradigmatic. First, Hamas must acknowledge that while it performed impressively during the last round of fighting, it will never be in a position to defeat Israel. In the end, Israel’s superiority will allow it to thwart Hamas’ military designs, as was clearly the case in the recent round of violence.
Second, Hamas must realize that by itself, its impressive military performance will never be enough to compel Israel, let alone Egypt, to reverse the set of restrictions that surround Gaza and render Hamas unable to meet the minimal requirements of Gaza’s population. Moreover, the horrific toll that Israel’s response to Hamas’ attacks took from Gaza’s population illustrated that any Hamas attempt to use violence in an effort to lift these restrictions will only exacerbate the plight of Gaza’s residents.
Third, Hamas must finally acknowledge that as long as it continues to define its goal as Israel’s destruction, no level of costs incurred will persuade Israel to accede to Hamas’ demands. Hamas must finally realize that without replacing—de-facto if not de-jure—its unlimited purposes with limited goals, it will continue to face a “mission impossible.”
The aforementioned paradigmatic change required of Hamas—without which it cannot escape its current strategic impasse—must lead the movement to make the following measures: First, it must allow the deployment of PA security forces along the Gaza-Egypt and Gaza-Israel borders and the placing of all the borders crossings under the full control of the PA. Second, it should allow the reconciliation government to exercise full control over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Third, it must show greater commitment to the unification process, including fuller commitment to the 2011 reconciliation requirement of implementing the “one authority, one gun” principle. Finally, Hamas should reexamine the historical record of its hostility toward Israel with a view to reconciling its attitudes toward “the two state solution” with those of the PLO whose ranks it seeks to join.
Changes in the Palestinian Authority’s Approach
During the months preceding the recent round of violence, Hamas’ strategic impasse had already led it to accept Fatah’s terms for national reconciliation. However, President Abbas proved unable or unwilling to leverage this advantage to reestablish a footing in Gaza. First, he failed to utilize the newly created national reconciliation government to reestablish patronage by persuading Israel and the U.S. that it is in their interest that civil servants in Gaza be paid through funds provided by the PA and that they should allow if not encourage the utilization of the PA-centered banking system to execute such payments.
Second, President Abbas, the Fatah movement and the PA were slow to recognize that regional circumstances and the outcome of the recent round of Hamas-Israel violence provide them an unprecedented opportunity to reestablish a footing in Gaza. This is because irrespective of its impressive performance and the likely rise in its popularity, Hamas will ultimately emerge from the present confrontation weakened on two counts: First, within Gaza, coupled with pride at Hamas’ successful “resistance” there is likely to be a gradual reduction in public support as the emotional reaction to the war cools off. And second, regional forces are now uniquely arrayed to weaken Hamas. With different motivations Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates are all willing to contribute—overtly or covertly—to the weakening of Hamas.
To move Gaza-Israeli relations from repeated violent confrontations toward greater stability, President Abbas must be willing to leverage Hamas’ weakness and the unique array of regional forces by taking the following steps to gradually reestablish a footing in Gaza: First, Abbas needs to encourage his reconciliation government to take far reaching steps as needed in order to unify the West Bank and Gaza institutions and thereby take control away from Hamas. Hamas’ ability to resist change will be weakened if the reconciliation government will come to be seen as calling the shots. Conversely, Hamas will risk losing the upcoming Palestinian elections if it would come to be seen as preventing national unity.
Second, Abbas needs to consolidate relations with Egypt’s President Sisi. Only if Sisi sees Abbas as a trusted ally will he be willing to open the Rafah crossing in the immediate aftermath of the war. This step is now critical for improving Abbas’ standing among Palestinians.
Finally, Abbas must prepare Fatah for the elections stipulated in the reconciliation agreement. This is particularly important in the Gaza Strip where Fatah is currently fragmented. To this end, he must address in some fashion the challenge he faces from his principle rival, Muhammad Dahlan, whose support among Fatah ranks is Gaza remains considerable.
Conclusions
Transforming the cease-fire reached between Israel and Hamas following their twenty-nine days of intense fighting into more stable relations between Gaza and Israel will require all three principle parties—Israel, Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority—to radically change their approach toward one another. Then, each side would need to translate this paradigmatic change to specific policies aimed at facilitating the movement away from violence and destruction and toward greater accommodation. Together with Egypt, the U.S. remains indispensable in facilitating the required changes. Despite the setbacks its standing in the region has suffered and its recent diplomatic efforts have experienced there in recent years, no external actor is better positioned than the U.S. to orchestrate the complex change suggested here. Without such change, Israel and Hamas are bound to find themselves sooner or later in another round of deadly violence, to the detriment of innocent civilians on both sides.
Shai Feldman is the Judith and Sidney Swartz Director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University and is a Senior Fellow and a member of the Board of Directors of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Khalil Shikaki is the Director of the Palestinian Center for Political and Survey Research in Ramallah and is a Senior Fellow at the Crown Center. Feldman and Shikaki’s most recent book (with Abdel Monem Said Aly) is Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
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