by Nadav Shragai
Despite the rhetoric about "occupation" and "return," the ebb and flow of the violence on the Gaza-Israel border has much more to do with intra-Palestinian power struggles between Hamas and PA President Mahmoud Abbas than it does with Israel.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas talks to former Hamas political
leader Khaled Mashaal in 2011
Photo: Getty Images
After a summer of
constant fires, southern Israel is once again covered in a sea of
anemones. But alongside the breathtaking landscapes, rocket "drizzle" is
starting to reappear. There are Color Red sirens, rockets have fallen
in Ashkelon and Sdot Negev. Even the "marches of return" along the
border, which for several weeks were on a much smaller scale, are
reverting to the same levels of violence that marked them a few months
ago. Last Friday, the number of demonstrators at the fence jumped by
some 5,500, and once again rioters threw grenades and homemade bombs at
IDF soldiers.
Today marks the 43rd such
protest since March of 2018. The IDF sees it as another test that will
indicate which way the wind is blowing. But remarkably, the gradual
collapse of the new "understandings" between Israel and Hamas, which led
to a downturn in the scale and violence of the protests, has less to do
with Hamas and Israel – who have a common interest in maintaining calm –
and more to do with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. An
intelligence official who gave cabinet ministers an overview of the
motives behind Hamas' conduct on the southern front this week put it
this way: "It's 80% Abbas and 20% us."
The ministers understood right away. Abbas
is exerting heavy economic pressure on Hamas in Gaza to disarm and hand
him control of the Gaza Strip. Hamas is choosing to respond with
supervised escalation against Israel. Both sides in the historic
intra-Palestinian power struggle expect Israel to do their work for
them. Hamas thinks that Israel, with help from Egypt, can pressure Abbas
to reinstate the flow of PA money to Gaza. Abbas, on the other hand,
would be happy if Israel would "do the work for him" and bring down the
Hamas regime in Gaza. Both sides have decided to hold a tug-of-war
precisely now, ahead of the Israeli Knesset election, and at a time when
a new IDF chief of staff is taking up the reins of the country's
military. Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi already knows, like his predecessors
did, that the southern front – which Israel ranks last in terms of
existential danger (after Iran, Hezbollah, and Judea and Samaria) – is
the most volatile.
These past few days, masks have been cast
off in the south, at least on the Palestinian side. Israel's acceptance
of the Hamas regime in Gaza, including the renewed rocket "drizzle," is
bad for Abbas. He explicitly said this to Egyptian President
Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, but was disappointed to discover that el-Sissi,
who is fighting what is left of the Islamic State group in Sinai, "owes"
Hamas for acceding to his request that it stop aiding ISIS. Abbas,
disappointed, informed el-Sissi that soon the little money the PA still
sends to Gaza, some $96 million a month, would also cease to arrive. "I
do not intend to fund anyone who works to oust me in the West Bank," he
told the Egyptian leader.
The $15 million question
In the face of the writ of divorce from
Abbas, Hamas opted to renew occasional rocket fire on southern Israel
and escalate incidents in Judea and Samaria. Hamas leaders are making it
clear to Egypt that they expect Israel to take action against the
influence of Abbas – whose continued tenure depends on Israel – in
exchange for quiet. It's not sure how long that quiet would last.
Flanked by pressure from both sides, Israel
is trying to toe a delicate line. The military response to Hamas'
well-calculated provocations remains small-scale. However, Israel is
putting off the third stage of the money transfer agreed upon as part of
the recent understandings with Hamas. It is waiting with a transfer of
$15 million in Qatari money earmarked to pay the salaries of Hamas
functionaries. Last time, Israel allowed the Qatari funds to reach
Hamas, which caused a public opinion backlash in Israel. Now, as the
country heads into a general election, it is even harder for Israel to
allow money into Gaza. Nevertheless, the government has not backtracked
on its willingness, in principle, to allow Qatar to send money to Hamas,
but it first wants to be sure the sporadic rocket fire stops and the
border protests are scaled back and don't escalate, as Hamas has openly
threatened.
"What is Abbas thinking? Why is he pushing
Hamas into a conflict with Israel?" one cabinet minister asked this
week. Abbas' great rivalry with Hamas has forced him to say things that
in any other situation could easily have come out of the mouths of
right-wing Israeli politicians Avigdor Lieberman or Naftali Bennett.
Abbas criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's soft approach
toward Hamas, telling his associates: "Netanyahu is paying Hamas in
Gaza, which is carrying out terrorist attacks in the West Bank."
Associates of Abbas have defined his mindset on Hamas in these words:
"It's all or nothing. Things have gotten so bad that Azzam al-Ahmad, the
PA official responsible for handling the reconciliation between the PA
and Hamas, stressed that given the situation in Gaza, the PA was
considering declaring Gaza an insurgent district, which would lead to
the all money for Hamas and its subsidiaries from Palestinian and Arab
banks being stopped.
This week, Abbas' conduct sparked a sigh
from a senior U.S. official. The official said that if the elderly PA
leader, who in his final days is so worried about how his name will go
down in history, would invest half the energy he puts into his battle
against Hamas to trying to revive the peace process with Israel, the
reality in the region might change. But Abbas is thinking differently.
He is angry at Israel for indirectly recognizing Hamas, protecting its
status, and giving it money. "You are setting up a state for Hamas in
Gaza and leaving us autonomy in the West Bank," he has thundered again
and again in talks with Israelis. In unofficial meetings, he says
directly that he would be happy if Israel would contain the Hamas
regime, and in his last visit to Egypt, he even told his hosts that the
Hamas rule in Gaza must come to an end.
Abbas himself is in serious economic
trouble because of his refusal to take part in U.S. President Donald
Trump's "deal of the century." He rebuffs the American envoys when they
try and talk with him. When a proposal was recently brought to him to
agree to a Palestinian capital in the east Jerusalem neighborhoods of
Abu Dis, Qalandiya, and Shuafat, he spat out, "They're laughing at us.
Not Abu Dis or Qalandiya. Only occupied east Jerusalem, every last
centimeter. No to a [Palestinian] state without all of east Jerusalem,
and no to a state without Gaza…"
U.S. aid cuts to the U.N. Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) aren't making his life any easier.
In response, Abbas keeps slamming the door in Hamas' face.
Effective leverage
About a week ago, Abbas removed PA
personnel from the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, the only exit from
Gaza available to residents of the strip. PA functionaries had been
stationed there as part of what was called, until recently, the
"reconciliation" between Hamas and the PA. Hamas rushed to put its own
people on duty, but because Egypt was unwilling to have Hamas staff the
border crossing, traffic through Rafah now goes in only one direction:
from Egypt into the Gaza Strip.
At the same time, the PA security
establishment has launched an operation to arrest Hamas operatives in
the West Bank, and the PA Supreme Court decided to dissolve the
Palestinian Legislative Council, where Hamas holds a majority. Elections
for the PLC were last held 13 years ago, and it hasn't been active for
several years.
Hamas isn't sitting idly by. Its officials
have arrested about 400 Fatah activists in Gaza, and this week unknown
individuals vandalized the PA television station's offices in Gaza.
Hamas leaders are characterizing the closure of the Rafah crossing, the
organization's biggest coup after the violent marches of return on the
Gaza-Israel border, as "the point of no return." They are making it
clear it's a step backwards that will demand it step up the "popular"
protests at the Israeli border.
In effect, Hamas is blackmailing Israel to
create a counterbalance against Abbas. Israel's limited military
responses – airstrikes on unmanned Hamas targets – haven't impressed
Hamas. Middle East scholar Yoni Ben-Menachem of the Jerusalem Center for
Public Affairs, explained this week that the PA declaring Gaza an
insurgent district, which Abbas' people are threatening to do, could
have widespread ramifications.
"The PA declaring Gaza an insurgent district would bring all types of aid to the Gaza Strip to an end," Ben-Menachem explains.
According to Ben-Menachem, if the PA
submitted a request to the Arab League and the U.N. to treat Hamas as an
illegal organization, the movement's money in Palestinian and Arab
banks would be frozen; the PA would demand that financial institutions
and banks operating in the Gaza Strip pull out immediately; and salaries
to government workers would be stopped, not to mention economic aid to
Gaza for electricity and water. Hamas' institutions in the West Bank
would be closed, and the PA would arrest Hamas operatives and confiscate
[Hamas] property there.
If indeed the scenario Ben-Menachem
describes comes to pass, we are talking about nothing less than a
full-blown war – Abbas and the PA against Hamas.
Hamas responded to first steps in that
direction by escalating the situation with Israel. If Abbas adheres to
this path, more escalation could follow. Hamas has already proven that
it won't hesitate to use Israel as leverage against Abbas.
The "march of return headquarters" has even
called on Abbas to reverse his decision to staff the Rafah crossing and
reopen it for the sake of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, and
threatened that if he doesn't, it will reinstate the violent aspects of
the protest and the situation will explode. Meanwhile, Hamas has
presented Egypt with a proposal for a compromise: The Rafah crossing
would be administered by a committee comprised of all the Palestinian
factions. For now, Abbas is rejecting the idea and demanding that all
government authority in the Gaza Strip be transferred to Ramallah.
Israel's upcoming election is also
affecting the various players. Netanyahu and his government do not want a
security escalation on the southern front, but are emphasizing that if
there is no choice, they will not stand another humiliation as the 460
rockets fired at Israel last November. Hamas would prefer to
rehabilitate itself, so it needs to maintain the calm. Abbas is trying
to push both sides into another conflict to hoist himself into a
position of strength. And Trump's contribution to keeping things quiet
depends on his shelving his "deal of the century" until after the April 9
elections, so as not to harm Netanyahu and his chances of being
reelected.
Nadav Shragai
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2019/01/18/hamas-vs-abbas-on-the-southern-front/
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