Saturday, January 19, 2019

Hamas vs. Abbas on the southern front - Nadav Shragai


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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