by Yoav Limor
Hamas' plan to force Israel to ease the Gaza blockade has failed, but the deadly border riots have trained the international spotlight back on the enclave while Israeli public diplomacy faltered
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Protests on the
Israel-Gaza border this week
Photo: AFP
The
tense events of the past week on the Israel-Gaza Strip border did not
go quite as planned but overall, Israel can look back at them with
relative satisfaction.
Hamas failed to meet almost all of the objectives it set for itself for the volatile week that comprised the U.S. Embassy's move to Jerusalem
and the Nakba Day march, marking the "catastrophe" of Palestinian
displacement during Israel's 1948 War of Independence. The masses
did not rush the Israeli border; no Israeli casualties were noted among
soldiers or civilians and none fell prey to the terrorist group's
abduction plots; Palestinians across the West Bank did not stage mass
riots in solidarity with Gaza; the Arab world remained mostly
indifferent to the images from the border; Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas held his ground with respect to the stalled
Fatah-Hamas talks; and nothing was accomplished with regard to
resolving the dire issues plaguing the coastal enclave.
Hamas's failure ran even deeper, because it
repeatedly failed to draw the masses into the fray on the border. On
Monday, 40,000 Palestinians arrived at the security fence to protest
the relocation of American Embassy to Jerusalem – nothing to sneeze at
and certainly a challenge for the military – but still short of the
100,000 goal the terrorist group was boasting it could deliver to the
border. Hamas' plan to stage a million-man march the next day – Nakba
Day – fizzled quickly as only a few thousand protesters showed up and
made sure to keep a reasonable distance from the border.
But the Israeli accomplishment is
incomplete, not only because Hamas has been left battered and bruised
and therefore dangerous and bloodthirsty. The IDF met its primary
objective, namely to prevent a mass breach of the border and terrorist
attacks in the Gaza sector but it failed to meet its two secondary
objectives: minimizing Palestinian casualties and preventing Gaza from
making headlines worldwide.
EPA
The military says the issue of casualties
was unavoidable: The demonstrations were violent and terrorists used
them to try to carry out attacks. The fact that, by Hamas' own admission,
50 of the 60 Palestinians who were killed were its operatives,
indicates that the Israeli troops used their discretion and operated
selectively, using standard crowd control measures such as water
cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets before resorting to live fire.
But even defense officials admit that the
high number of casualties was hard to swallow and certainly difficult
to explain – an area in which Israel repeatedly fails, even when on
paper it has a clear-cut case.
It is unclear why Israeli public diplomacy
fell asleep at the wheel. Hamas made no secret of the nature and
objectives of its "March of Return" campaign and Israel had weeks of
weekly riots to prepare an organized campaign that would explain that
no other country in the world would tolerate such an attempt to breach
its territory.
On the ground, as always, the system was
reactive instead of proactive and methodical, and found it difficult to
present an alternative to the international community's natural
instinct of supporting the weaker party, certainly given the images
coming out of Gaza. As usual, only U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki
Haley came to Israel's defense, while our own leaders expressed their frustration in the form of a diplomatic squabble with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Until the next news cycle
It is doubtful that the global interest in
Gaza will last very long. Between Saturday's royal wedding in London
and the fast-paced dynamics of the international news cycle, by next
week public opinion will be focused elsewhere. But Gaza will remain
where it is, stuck in Israel's throat, with no solution in sight.
The concern of a rapid escalation in the
south saw senior political and defense officials lock horns over how
close Gaza really is to imploding.
The defense establishment has been warning about this scenario for a
long time, claiming that total chaos is merely "a few months, maybe a
year" away. The enclave's dilapidated infrastructure cannot hold out
for much longer, its 2 million residents have been pushed to the brink
too many times and no one knows what will happen when their rage boils
over.
Hamas, which is well aware of the fact that
it is running out of time, had hoped the border riots would help it
force gestures out of someone – Israel, Abbas, the Arab world or the
international community – that could help it save the day, but that did
not happen.
This has left Gaza's rulers with five
options: The first is that Abbas drops one of his conditions for the
Fatah-Hamas reconciliation, preferably the demand that Hamas disarms;
the second is that Hamas decides to compromise and disarm, ostensibly
or otherwise; the third is that Hamas and Israel reach some sort of
long-term agreement that would allow the rehabilitation of Gaza in
exchange for a cessation of terrorist activity; the forth is that the
weekly border riots continue, and the fifth is that Hamas, despite
statements to the contrary, will provoke a war with Israel to take the
target off its own back.
As things stand, Hamas is likely to opt for
a prolonged riot campaign, but in a more restraint manner. Egypt, and
to some extent Qatar, which shuttled between Israel and the terrorist
group this week in an effort to defuse tensions, was very clear in its
demands of Hamas, especially over concerns that the violence will
eventually spread to its shared border with Gaza.
Cairo excoriated Hamas leader Ismail
Haniyeh over the senseless deaths on the border, but it was also tough
on Israel, demanding that it reopen the Kerem Shalom goods crossing
that was shuttered on Sunday after Palestinian rioters again vandalized
their side of it, causing over $9 million in damages.
Familiar dynamics, unpredictable results
The real test, as always will be on the
ground. Recent machine-gun fire at the southern city of Sderot shows
that Hamas may have released some of its restraint. His total control
over the manner in which the border riots rage attests to its iron grip
on Gaza and with it to the fact that it is responsible for all that
transpires there. That is why the IDF carried out an unusually large
strike on Hamas posts in the enclave in the early hours of Thursday
morning, signaling that Israel will not tolerate sporadic terrorist
fire, even if it means a security escalation in the south.
It is likely that Hamas got the message.
The simmering domestic unrest in Gaza has Hamas concerned for its
political survival and recent Israeli threats are cause for Hamas
leaders to fear for their lives.
But deterrence naturally erodes over time
and there is no shortage of triggers that could spark a conflagration
on the ground at almost any moment.
The holy Muslim month of Ramadan is
volatile by nature and the fiery sermons expected in the mosques this
Friday over the high number of casualties earlier this week will only
fuel the flames.
This all but guarantees security forces
will remain on high alert in the Gaza sector and in Judea and Samaria,
which may have remained calm this week, but where the constant friction
between Israelis and Palestinians, along with the proximity to Israeli
cities, creates a constant potential for terrorist attacks.
No Ramadan in the past nine years has been
terrorism-free in Judea and Samaria, and it takes a special kind of
optimism to believe this year will be any different. Palestinians in
the West Bank are not eager to riot – this year's Nakba Day in the West
Bank was the calmest in years – but all it would take is a few
frustrated youths with a knife, a car or a gun to ignite the area. This
will pose a challenge for the IDF, as it will try to provide Israel
with full security in a complex reality in all sectors.
Yoav Limor
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/05/18/sitting-on-the-fence/
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