More evidence is emerging that, in undertaking January 23’s mass civilian bust-out from Gaza, Gaza’s elected Hamas leadership was seeking not only to deal with the immediate humanitarian crisis brought on by Israel’s tough siege of Gaza but also to throw down a sharp political challenge to the US-Israeli plans for the region.
Up to January 23, those plans rested strongly on maintaining Fateh’s Mahmoud Abbas as the sole leader, decisionmaker, and representative for the Palestinian people. They dealt with the “inconvenient” facts of the legitimacy Hamas had gained from its victory in the 2006 elections, and its continuing popularity among large segments of the Palestinians, by waging harsh efforts to exclude Hamas from any decisionmaking role while also trying to turn the Palestinian population against it by means of the intentional collective punishment inflicted on the people of Gaza.
Now, with the bust-out, Hamas has turned the tables, and it is Abbas himself who looks besieged. At least, he looks so at the political level– though he and his followers continue to get hefty economic handouts from the US and other western powers.
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal is now on an official visit to Saudi Arabia, discussing the Kingdom’s plans to patch up Hamas-Fateh relations. It was just last February that the Saudis concluded the “Mecca Agreement” between the two sides, which led to the formation of National Unity Government. The Bush administration and its network of handsomely compensated “allies” in Fateh were very unhappy with that arrangement, and they worked hard to undermine it. In June it did fall apart, when Hamas took what Khaled Meshaal described to me as a pre-emptive, defensive action to prevent US-backed Fateh operative Muhammad Dahlan from launching an anti-Hamas coup in Gaza. (There was, in truth, plenty of blame to go all around.)
We can imagine that Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, who had invested considerable national and personal prestige in brokering the Mecca Agreement was not happy with the way it fell apart– or with those actions from both sides that hastening its unraveling. But now, Meshaal is the one in Riyadh, while Abbas remains shuttling between Ramullah and West Jerusalem, where he sits looking sad and uncomfortable in his meetings with Ehud Olmert, who is also sitting on his own political knife-edge at home this week.
Meshaal is expected to proceed from Riyadh to Cairo, where President Mubarak has invited both him and Abbas for talks aimed at (a) inter-Palestinian reconciliation and (b) reaching an Egyptian-Palestinian agreement to regulate the Gaza Egypt border. Meshaa accepted all parts oif Mubarak’s invitation. Abbas has turned down the invitation to meet with Meshaal in Cairo, though he said he might go to Cairo and hold his own parallel talks there with the Egyptians.
The immediate issue is what the regime will be for controlling the Gaza-Egypt border going forward. Hamas leaders have been frank for the past two years that their aim is to wrest Gaza out of the economic thralldom that Israel has maintained over it– and the occupied West Bank– since 1967. The latest manifestation of that thralldom was the Paris Agreement of 1994, which was an offshoot of the 1993 Oslo Agreement. Under Paris, the whole economy and society of Gaza and the West Bank were folded into a single “customs envelope” with Israel that got controlled by– guess who!– Israel. Thus, Israel explicitly retained the right to control all movement and goods and persons in and out of the two occupied territories.
Paris was supposed to apply only during the five-year “transitional period” that would follow Oslo, pending the conclusion and implementation of a final peace agreement between Israel and the PA. But guess what, that final peace agreement never got negotiated, so here we are 15 years after Oslo and there is still a “transition”….
It was the Paris Agreement, concluded between Israel and the PA, that enabled Israel to progressively tighten the screws of the siege it has maintained on Gaza in recent years. It has been Paris that has allowed Israel to maintain tight control over the movement of goods and persons not just into and out of the occupied West Bank, but also within the West Bank itself, thereby stifling the hopes for real economic development– or even a normal life– for the West Bank’s residents. Small wonder that the Hamas people have wanted to do whatever they can to take either (or both) of the occupied territories out of the Paris Agreement. Neither Hamas nor Egypt was a party to the Paris Agreement…
It remains to be seen whether Hamas can somehow succeed in its long-articulated goal of bringing about a stable escape from the thralldom of Paris and reconnecting Gaza’s 1.5 million residents to the world economy through Egypt, instead.
Its attempt to do this poses, as noted above, a sharp political challenge to Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak is sitting on his own potential political volcano at home, given that: (a) he is getting old, and the question of political succession in Egypt’s ossified, one-party-dominated political system is a huge one; (b) the best-organized political movement in Egypt is the Muslim Brotherhood, which is also the mother-organization for Palestine’s Hamas; and (c) popular sentiment in Egypt is extremely hostile to the pro-western stance Mubarak has maintained throughout his political life, and extremely sympathetic to the Palestinians in general, and Hamas in particular.
Hence, the decision Mubarak’s security people evidently made back on Wednesday and Thursday that they could not re-seal the border with Gaza by brute force.
Since then, Egyptian officials have tried to cast their repeated decisions to continue keeping the border somewhat open in purely humanitarian terms, though it very evidently has strong political underpinnings, too. As we can see from Mubarak’s decision to invite Meshaal, as well as Fateh, to visit Cairo for talks.
Meshaal is not the only regional actor now eager to make a splash in Cairo. Hamas’s longtime allies in Iran now say they are close to restoring diplomatic relations that have been broken since, I think, late 1980. (That was the year when Egyptian Islamist Khaled Islambouli assassinated Egypt’s previous pro-western president, Anwar al-Sadat. The new revolutionary regime in Iran immediately started glorifying Islambouli, including naming a street after him in Tehran. That has been a sticking point in relations ever since… )
I see that the Iranian official news agency is also describing the currently accelerating Cairo-Tehran contacts in largely “humanitarian” terms. I am not fooled.
Over the days ahead, the diplomacy around the Gaza-Egypt issue will be significant and very intense. And these days will also, in Israel, be seeing the long-delayed publication of the Winograd report. So it’ll be an interesting week.
As of now, it looks as if the two clear losers of the currtent swirl of events are (a) Mahmoud Abbas, and (b) the Bush administration’s ability to sustain its agenda in the region. The only clear winner, for now, is Hamas– though we cannot know the extent of its “victory” yet; and there will almost certainly be further surprises ahead, for everyone.
The outcomes for all the other actors involved– Mubarak, the Saudis, Olmert, Israel’s further-right parties, the Iranians– remain in play. Interesting days ahead.
6 thoughts on “Hamas transforms the regional map”
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Thanks for staying on this issue, in particular the domestic effects in Egypt.
Quite a coincidence that elements of Iran’s foreign ministry were on hand in Cairo, during this situation.
The Yahoo News Mideast Conflict slideshow contains a number of pics, which provide clues and suggestions as to what is going on at the Rafah border crossing. Depicted are Egyptian border police as well as regular army troops. Hamas paramilitary troops can be seen wearing elements of 3-color blue camo BDU’s. There is even a photo of what appears to be a high ranking Gaza political figure presenting a gift to what appears to be the Chief of the Egyptian border police. The border police riot helmets now sport Egyptian flag roundel stickers, which didn’t seem to appear earlier.
yes, I’ve also been interested in following the Yahoo News Photo feed from time to time. Today what I saw of particular interest were a number of pix showing Hamas people on the border working with the Egyptian forces to restore order to it and also Hamas people doing systematic outreach to the Egyptian forces there at a number of different levels. E.g., some green-capped young Hamas men giving a special Koran to a rank-and-file Egyptian soldier, and elder-statesmen-looking older Hamas supporters in suits giving a picture of Jeruslaem’s iconic Dome of the Rock mosque to a visiting Egyptian officer.
The Hamas website has had references to calls made by Hamas leaders to the Gaza Palestinians to treat the Egyptian police people respectfully and well.
All this, while in Cairo the diplomatic discussions seem to proceed on a somewhat different plane…
Thank you so much for your dedication and great analyses !
GISHA on Gaza-
Israel’s “Relief”:
Fuel Cuts of Up to 81%
New Electricity Cuts Beginning
February 7
Monday, January 28, 2008: After more than a week of near-total ban on fuel supplies, Israel said yesterday that it would resume permitting Gaza residents to purchase fuel – but would limit the amount they could buy by as much as 81% and would cut the electricity supplied directly to Gaza beginning February 7.
The state made the announcement in advance of yesterday’s hearing in Israel’s Supreme Court, as part of its response to a court petition filed by 10 Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups challenging punitive cuts in fuel and electricity supplies to Gaza residents. The court has yet to issue a decision.
After almost totally blocking fuel supply last week, Israel through the State Attorney’s Office told the court it would resume permitting Gaza residents to purchase diesel, petrol (gasoline) and industrial diesel but would only allow them a small percentage of what they need. The State Attorney’s office also told the court that it would reduce the electricity that Israel’s Electric Company sells directly to Gaza by 5% on three lines (a total of 1.5 MW), beginning February 7.
At the hearing, the human rights groups, represented by Gisha and Adalah, asked for an order preventing the state from restricting supply. The rights groups claim that the fuel and electricity cuts constitute illegal collective punishment.
The shortage of industrial diesel has crippled the functioning of Gaza’s power plant, whose reserves ran out on Jan. 5. Since then, the plant reduced production and even shut down for two days. Currently, the power plant is producing 45 MW electricity – instead of the 80 MW it could produce, were it allowed enough industrial diesel.
Gaza currently has an electricity deficit of 24%, and rolling blackouts across the Strip are as long as 12 hours per day in some areas. The electricity shortage has increased the dependence on diesel-powered generators – just as Israel cut diesel supplies. Without electricity and without diesel for back-up generators, Gaza’s sewage treatment pumps and treatment plants are pumping as much as 40 million liters untreated sewage into the sea each day, and clean water supply has fallen by 30%. Hospitals have reduced services and denied care to non-urgent cases, as the power outages continue, and their fuel supplies run dangerously low.
According to Gisha’s Director, Sari Bashi: “Israel’s ‘relief’ is just further punishment. Israel continues to deny Gaza residents the fuel and electricity they need to power hospitals, pump sewage, access clean water, and heat their homes. Israel has a right to defend itself against Qassam rocket fire targeting its civilians. But further cuts to Gaza’s electricity, as Israel plans, will only make more innocent people suffer.”
Facts about Israel’s fuel cuts to Gaza:
Israel began instituting fuel cuts to Gaza on October 28, 2007, as part of a governmental decision calling for punitive measures against Gaza’s 1.5 million residents. The new levels of fuel announced yesterday are significantly lower than the quantities being purchased by Gaza residents prior to the Oct. 28, 2007 cuts – and significantly lower than what they need now.
Before the cuts, Gaza residents were ordering approximately 1.4 million liters ordinary diesel per week – yesterday the state announced it would allow only 800,000 liters/week – a reduction of 43%. This is particularly detrimental, because the rolling power outages have increased dependency on diesel-powered generators.
Before the cuts, Gaza residents were ordering approximately 350,000-400,000 liters petrol (gasoline) per week – yesterday Israel announced it would allow only 75,400 liters per week – a reduction of 78%-81%.
Israel also announced it would allow Gaza residents to purchase 2.2 million liters industrial diesel/week, needed for Gaza’s power plant, but the plant now needs 3.5 million liters/week plus at least 2 million additional liters to replenish reserves.
Gaza needs 240 MW electricity in the current peak winter season. Israel supplies (before the planned cut) 120 MW, Egypt supplies 17 MW, and Gaza’s power plant is currently producing only 45 MW – meaning that there is a deficit of 58 MW, or 24% – even before the February 7 cuts are scheduled to take place.
The organizations who have petitioned the court are:
Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel
Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement
HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel
Gaza Community Mental Health Programme
B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
Al –Haq
Mezan Center for Human Rights
Sara Roy and the American Psychological Association’s Eyad Sarraj on Gaza:
Ending the stranglehold on Gaza
By Eyad al-Sarraj and Sara Roy | January 26, 2008
AN ISRAELI convoy of goods and peace activists will go today to Erez,
Israel’s border with Gaza, and many Palestinians will be on the other
side waiting. They will not see one another, but Palestinians will
know there are Jews who condemn the siege inflicted on the tiny
territory by Israel’s military establishment and want to see an end to
the 40-year-old occupation.
Israel’s minister of justice, Haim Ramon, had pushed for cutting off
Gaza’s “infrastructural oxygen” – water, electricity, and fuel – as a
response to the firing of Qassam rockets into Israel. Last Sunday,
Ramon’s wish came true: Israel’s blockade forced Gaza’s only power
plant to shut down, plunging 800,000 people into darkness. Food and
humanitarian aid were also denied entry. Although international
pressure forced Israel to let in some supplies two days later, and the
situation further eased when Palestinians breached the border wall
with Egypt, the worst may be yet to come.
The Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, agrees with Ramon’s
strategy, saying that it is “inconceivable that life in Gaza continues
to be normal.” The rapid and deepening desperation of Gaza’s sick and
hungry is of no moral concern to her. For Livni, like Ramon, the siege
is a tactical measure, a human experiment to stop the rockets and
bring down a duly elected government.
The siege on Gaza and the West Bank began after Hamas’s 2006 electoral
victory with an international diplomatic and financial boycott of the
new Hamas-led government. Development assistance was severely reduced
with the improbable aim of bringing about a popular uprising against
the very government just elected to power. Instead, this collective
punishment resulted in a steady deterioration of Palestinian life, in
growing lawlessness, and a violent confrontation between Fatah and
Hamas, which escalated into a Hamas military takeover of Gaza in June
2007.
Since then, the siege has been tightened to an unprecedented level.
Over 80 percent of the population of 1.5 million (compared to 63
percent in 2006) is dependent on international food assistance, which
itself has been dramatically reduced.
In 2007, 87 percent of Gazans lived below the poverty line, more than
a tripling of the percentage in 2000. In a November 2007 report, the
Red Cross stated about the food allowed into Gaza that people are
getting “enough to survive, not enough to live.”
Why is this acceptable?
The reduction in fuel supplies that the Israeli government first
approved in October not only threatens the provision of health and
medical services but the stock of medicines, which is rapidly being
depleted. This has forced the critically ill to seek treatment outside
the Gaza Strip.
However, according to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, many
patients are being denied permission to leave, because of new
bureaucratic restrictions imposed on top of an already inefficient and
arbitrary system. The organization has also accused the Israeli
intelligence service of forcing some patients to inform on others in
order to be granted passage.
Since June, Israel has limited its exports to Gaza to nine basic
materials. Out of 9,000 commodities (including foodstuffs) that were
entering Gaza before the siege began two years ago, only 20
commodities have been permitted entry since. Although Gaza daily
requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut
this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent.
Not surprisingly, there has been a sharp increase in the prices of
foodstuffs.
Gaza also suffers from the ongoing destruction of its agriculture and
physical infrastructure. Between June and November 2006, $74.7 million
in damage was inflicted by the Israeli military on top of the nearly
$2 billion already incurred by Palestinians between 2002 and 2005.
Over half the damage was to agricultural land flattened by bulldozers,
with the remainder to homes, public buildings, roads, water and sewage
pipes, electricity infrastructure, and phone lines.
The psychological damage of living in a war zone may surpass the
physical. According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem,
between Sept. 1, 2005, and July 25, 2007, 668 Palestinians were killed
in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli security forces. Over half were
noncombatants and 126 were children. During the same period, Qassam
rockets and mortar shells killed eight Israelis, half of them civilians.
Gaza is no longer approaching economic collapse. It has collapsed.
Given the intensity of repression Gaza is facing, can the collapse of
its society – family, neighborhood, and community structure – be far
behind? If that happens, we shall all suffer the consequences for
generations to come.
Eyad al-Sarraj is founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program.
Sara Roy is senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard Universi
“throw down a sharp political challenge to the US-Israeli plans for the region”
Hmmm. “Palestinian sources predicted that Hamas would continue the rocket barrages, in an attempt to force Israel to agree to a cease-fire.” [Harel, Issacharoff, Azoulay, 01/18, Haartez] Its…. a little too quite at the border Gaza-Israel in recent days. Zahar 2005: “The present cease-fire is not a change of position. There were cease-fires before. … There is a difference between a change of circumstances and a change of position.” [Haaretz-Interview]
The “security first” strategy of Israel and the plans of Barak to “repair his image in front of a general election” [JPost, yesterday] do not need a change/challenge of/for positions. But changed circumstances. Olmert blocked any major ground operation and so for both, Hamas and Barak the current impulse is a great way to escape the very unpleasant situation of the last six months.