by Prof. Hillel Frisch
It is best for Israel to prolong the negotiations as long as possible, concede as little as possible, and wait until the sanctions against Iran come into full force.
A long-range rocket launch site owned by Hamas in the Zeitoun civilian neighborhood in Gaza, 2012, photo via IDF Flickr
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 960, September 27, 2018
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: What
should the strategy regarding Hamas be –make concessions or initiate a
fourth round of fighting? It is best for Israel to prolong the
negotiations as long as possible, concede as little as possible, and
wait until the sanctions against Iran come into full force. Then Israel
should prepare for the next big round – not to defeat Hamas, but to tame
it and keep the Palestinians divided.
Israel’s leading politicians, Minister of Defense
Avigdor Lieberman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have been
engaged in a fierce debate with Minister of Education Naftali Bennet
over how to react to Hamas’s venture since the March of Return to change
the status quo – from Hamas’s relative submission to a return to the
situation of tit-for tat attacks and counterattacks that prevailed for
most of the period between Hamas’s takeover of Gaza in 2007 and the
third large round of fighting in the summer of 2014.
Netanyahu and Lieberman want to reach
understandings with Hamas to restore the relative calm that prevailed
for nearly four years since 2014. They are willing to make humanitarian
concessions and probably acquiesce to a sizeable prisoner release of
hard-core terrorists in order to restore the calm, even temporarily.
Bennet, by contrast, is bitterly opposed to making concessions and seeks
a fourth round of confrontation that will considerably weaken the
organization.
The merits of the debate are difficult to assess
because of the wisdom of both approaches on political and military
grounds. The question, of course, is which of these strategies would be
better for Israel at this particular point in time.
Netanyahu and Lieberman have a strong case in
calling for restraint and even concessions towards Hamas. They see
Israel’s strategic concerns in hierarchical terms.
By far the most important threat to Israel is
Iran’s nuclear program. Immediately following that are Iran’s attempts
to set up a permanent military infrastructure in Syria, which would
include a sizeable pro-Iranian militia presence on the Golan front.
With the Americans on board in this endeavor, as
the statements made by John Bolton, President Trump’s chief security
advisor, on his recent trip to Israel made clear, these leaders reason
that nothing should detract from the focus on Iran or the renewal of
sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
In fact, according to both Netanyahu and
Lieberman, the decision by Hamas to heat up the Gaza front in late March
was initiated by Iran and designed to shift the focus away from Iran to
the Palestinians. Such a change of focus, Iran hoped, would embolden
key European states such as France and Germany to take countermeasures
against the US’s sanctions on Iran.
So critical was it to maintain the focus on Iran
that these leaders are willing to pay the price of changing the balance
of threat in Hamas’s favor and reward Hamas for the violence it
initiated. The assumption is that the balance of power between Israel
and Hamas is such that the restoration of the status quo to the
pre-March 2018 situation can be made after the sanctions against Iran
are enforced to their full potential.
This is not a working assumption they can apply to
Iran. Netanyahu and Lieberman reason that time is of the essence, not
only because Trump’s pro-Israel administration has only two more years
until its fate is decided by the next presidential election, but because
there is a fear, given the legal challenges the president faces at
home, that that time horizon might even be shorter.
For his part, Bennet makes a plausible argument
against acquiescing to Hamas’s exploitation of Israel’s complicated
geo-strategic environment. As far as Bennet is concerned, the focus on
Iran is guaranteed by a president resolved to roll back Iran on its
nuclear program and aggressive behavior towards its neighbors. A
supportive US Congress and the legal framework within which the
sanctions operate, which gives them a life of their own, cannot be
sidelined by other crises, such as a fourth round between Israel and
Gaza.
Based on these assumptions, Bennet argues that
buying periods of quiet through concessions comes at considerable cost,
especially if this means an increase in imports into Gaza, which would
give Hamas the wherewithal to improve its military capabilities. Any
form of ceasefire, whatever it is called, gives the organization time to
train for the next round. This means greater and more lethal firepower.
Bennet is correct that Hamas uses its time wisely
to increase its capabilities. For example, in 22 days of Operation Cast
Lead in winter 2008-09, the organization, along with others, launched
925 rockets that hit Israel. This increased to 3,852 in Operation
Protective Edge in 2014 – an almost 200% increase, even taking into
account the much longer duration of fighting in 2014 compared to six
years earlier (55 days compared to 24). Casualties were also
significantly higher: 72 versus 13 Israeli deaths. The increase was
mainly due to effective attacks from tunnels within Gaza and greater use
of mortars against Israeli troops encamped within areas adjacent to
Gaza.
Though Israel has developed technology to deal
with both these problems, Hamas has proved to be an innovative enemy
that might come up with further surprises in the next round. The longer
the respite, one might safely assume, the greater the probability that
it will do so.
Looking at how Israel secured deterrence on the
Gaza front lends support to Bennet’s line of thinking. “Understandings”
between Israel and Hamas have always been short-lived if acted upon at
all. The 2005 “lull,” marketed as an informal understanding between the
Palestinian factions and Israel, translated into a 345% increase in
missile and mortar attacks in that year compared to 2004. After the 2012
round, the “understandings” brokered by the ousted Morsi government
lasted little more than a year until the deadly trickle of missile and
mortar launchings began anew.
Still less did “humanitarian” gestures buy quiet.
From the point of view of Hamas, the greatest humanitarian move was the
release of over 1,000 hard-core terrorists in 2011 in return for the
release of one Israeli soldier. This did not prevent a second round in
October 2012.
Over time, only the three large-scale rounds of
violence created accumulated deterrence between rounds in which missile
launchings after each round appreciably decreased.
The best option, then, is for Israel is to prolong
negotiations as long as possible, concede as little as possible, and
wait until the sanctions against Iran come into full force – and then
prepare for the next big round, not to defeat Hamas, but to tame it and
keep the Palestinians divided.
An earlier version of this article was published in The Jerusalem Post on August 30, 2018.
BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family
Prof. Hillel Frisch is a professor of political studies and Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University and a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/hamas-concessions-fight/
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