Author: Helena

The Hamas-Israel ceasefire (tahdi’eh) went into operation today, thank God. But not without– as I forecast yesterday– some last-minute salvoes from each side.
The tahdi’eh is scheduled to last in the first instance for six months. According to the agreement, which was mediated by Egypt, the reciprocal cessation of attacks between Gaza and Israel will be followed in short order by Israel taking significant steps to ease and then lift the economic siege it has maintained on Gaza for two years; by steps to open the Rafah personal-transit crossing between Gaza and Egypt; and by completion of the negotiation on a prisoner exchange.
Until very recently, Israel’s leaders were adamant that they would not deal with Hamas, and Hamas’s leaders– who still do not grant Israel any of the legitimacy it craves as a Jewish state– remained very wary indeed of having any dealings with it. Since the leaders on both sides have promulgated these views very widely among their own people for many years, they have now necessarily had to accompany the release of the news about the ceasefire with their own efforts to explain to their respective followers how and why this ceasefire is acceptable.
This work of psychological leadership, or “message management”, is a necessary concomitant of all moves that leaders anywhere make from hostility to de-escalation or peacemaking. But studying it in this case is particularly interesting.
One perception the leaders on both sides have to combat is the idea that in reaching this de-escalation step they are displaying the “weakness” of their side vis-a-vis the other. In Hamas’s case, the movement addressed that concern directly yesterday. The pro-Hamas PIC website reported that,

The Hamas Movement on Wednesday affirmed that it signed the calm agreement out of strength and not out of weakness and that it would abide by all articles of the agreement as mediated by Egypt.

PIC also reported the (not completely unjustified) attempt by a Hamas spokesman to frame the conclusion of the ceasefire as a positive achievement for the movement:

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said … that both parties are committed to the agreement after approving it, adding that three days after the ceasefire goes into effect Israel would gradually open the commercial crossings and within two weeks they would be completely open.
The spokesman said that Egyptian sponsorship of the agreement was an important element in stabilizing it, adding that Hamas considers the agreement one of the fruits of resistance.

Note, in that statement, too, how Abu Zuhri, whose statements until recently would drip with scorn or skepticism regarding the credibility and trustworthiness of Israel’s leaders, is now also assuring his Palestinian listeners that “both parties are committed to the agreement.”
For the vast majority of the Gazans listening to him, the promise that the commercial crossings between Gaza and Israel will be “completely open” within two weeks will obviously come as a huge relief, and– like the cessation of Israeli armed attacks that the ceasefire also involves– a real benefit of the ceasefire. So from that point of view, the challenge that Hamas has faced in “selling” the tahdi’eh to its public has been relatively easy.
In Israel, where only a small proportion of the public has been adversely affected by the long-continuing (and highly asymmetrical) exchanges of fire with Gaza, the leaders’ selling job has been considerably harder. Israel’s leaders have therefore been trying to sell the tahdi’eh to their people in a different, much more convoluted way and, I would say, with notably less enthusiasm than the Hamas leaders.
Haaretz tells us this:

Continue reading “Selling the tahdi’eh”

On the day that Israel announces it’s agreed to participate in a reciprocal ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza, Ziad Asali, the head of the “American Task for Palestine” (more rightwing American than Palestinian, as a task force) has an anti-Hamas op-ed in the rightwing Washington Times.
It’s titled “Miscalculation: How Hamas wastes Palestinian lives.”
Asali and others associated with the ATFP have been working hard in Washington DC in recent months, urging the US (and Israel) to take even tougher measures to try to “punish”, exclude, and crush Hamas.
Oops, who miscalculated now?

There will be no handshakes and back-patting on the White House lawn, and no turn-on-a-dime lionizing of this Palestinian leadership by the pillars of the world Jewish community. But the tahdi’eh (ceasefire) agreement that Israel has now confirmed it has agreed to with Hamas may well bring a long-needed degree of calm to both Gaza and southern Israel. And if it holds, it could serve as a foundation stone for an entirely new kind of Israeli-Palestinian relationship over the years ahead.
The rest of the day today, Wednesday, may yet see some fighting, perhaps even a last-minute esclation, as we saw along the Israel-Lebanon border in the 40 hours before the August 2006 ceasefire there went into effect. The Hamas-Israel tahdi’eh is scheduled to go into force at 6 a.m. local time Thursday, 15 hours from now, so hopefully not too many more lives will be uselessly lost before then.
Here’s the deal. Ever since Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006, the government of Israel– with considerable support from the US-led portions of the “international community”– has maintained and progressively tightened an inhumane and illegal economic siege on Hamas-dominated Gaza, while government leaders have said they would lift the siege only if Hamas and its allies stopped the sporadic rocket attacks they’ve been launching against southern Israel.
But the economic siege and the Hamas rocketings were not the only thing that was going on there. The Israeli military has also, until now, clung hard to a claimed “right” to exercise full freedom of military action in Gaza, and has undertaken many forms of very destructive military actions against militants and others in the Strip. (Remember that the sheer weight and lethality of the ordnance it has used there has far outweighed anything Hamas or anyone else had access to.) In recent years, Israel has also assassinated more than 120 alleged “terror leaders” in the Strip, many of them political leaders, and in the process killed a far greater number of innocent passers-by or family members.
So Hamas, not unreasonably, has demanded that any ceasefire it agree to should be equally binding on Israel.
In 2005 and early 2006, Hamas, like Fateh but unlike some of the smaller Palestinian groups in the Strip, largely complied with a Fateh-Hamas agreement unilaterally to refrain from taking any military action against Israel. That unilateral (Palestinians-only) ceasefire allowed Israel to undertake its withdrawal of troops and settlers from Gaza without major incident. It also allowed the orderly holding of the Palestinian elections of January 2006.
But once Israel had pulled its settlers out of Gaza, it felt no hesitancy about using its military to hammer Gaza hard whenever it pleased.
For Hamas, the idea of returning to a unilateral, Palestinians-only ceasefire with Israel was quite untenable. For them, winning reciprocity in the ceasefire aspect of the deal was vital. Now, they have won it. That is a significant achievement, won after much suffering.
There remains a major potential problem in that the compliance of the two sides with this ceasefire has no monitoring mechanism that I know of. Therefore, ill-wishers either side of the line could still provoke an incident unless the two parties are both willing and able to police it very robustly. If Hamas is to be able to do that, it will probably need some upgrading of its command and control structures, though it has already shown itself fairly capable of exerting discipline throughout the Strip over the twelve months since it chased the ragtag (and US-armed) Fateh bands and hangers-on out of the Strip.
The government of Egypt, which used its longstanding diplomatic relationship with Israel to good advantage to mediate this ceasefire agreement, might well be able to also play a continuing monitoring role? Perhaps even on both sides of the Gaza-Israel border? I’m not sure if that has been discussed yet, but it still could be.
Anyway, if the ceasefire succeeds, the Gaza issue will continue to be an increasingly large issue within Egyptian politics. As it will be, of course, if the ceasefire should catastrophically fail.
If this tahdi’eh goes forward as planned, the Israeli economic siege on Gaza will be progressively lifted, started pretty soon. At some point, the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt will also be re-opened– but this time, according to the reports I’ve seen, notably without any Israeli monitoring role there at all. But with an EU role. An interesting diminution of Israel’s control over Gaza’s borders, if true.
Also, during the week ahead, if the tahdi’eh proceeds, negotiations on the prisoner exchange involving Gilad Shalit and some 350-plus Palestinian detainees will go into high gear. In Palestine as in Iraq, the mass detention of native peoples is one of the ways in which foreign occupying forces try to exert and maintain their control. Don’t think for a minute that, in a huge proportion of these cases, there is any reason for these detentions other than the drive to control the natives, subvert their understandable movements for independence from foreign rule, and use them as hostages in negotiations.
But if this tahdi’eh thereby becomes what I call a tahdi’eh-plus, it might also lead towards some form of longer-term hudna (armistice) between Israel and the Palestinians of the West Bank… that is, to some version of a two-state solution. Or, it could lead to a situation in which– as both Hamas and Israel’s Likud desire– the border between the West Bank and Israel dissolves completely and a new kind of polity arises throughout the whole of Mandate (pre-partition) Palestine.
But that’s for the future. For now, just keep hoping and praying for the success of this tahdi’eh. It will bring vitally needed relief to the 1.5 million Palestinians of Gaza, and to their neighbors in southern Israel. And it might provide enough calm inside both national communities for the members and leaders of both to start planning their future in the tiny slice of land between the sea and the Jordan River in a more rational, equitable, and sustainable way.

AP reports the following details about the tahdi’eh (ceasefire) deal that Hamas says it has now reached with Israel, with Egypt mediating:

• The truce takes effect at 6 a.m. Thursday (11 p.m. EDT Wednesday).
• All Gaza-Israel violence stops. After three days, Israel eases its blockade on Gaza, allowing more vital supplies in.
• A week later, Israel further eases restrictions at cargo crossings.
• In the final stage, talks are conducted about opening the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt and a prisoner exchange to free Cpl. Gilad Schalit, held by Hamas-affiliated groups for two years.

In Ha’aretz, Amos Harel and Jack Khoury report that

Israel has not officially confirmed the information; however, security sources said an accord is in the offing. Defense Ministry official Major General (res.) Amos Gilad left Tuesday for Cairo to conclude the final agreement.
… Gilad met Tuesday with Egyptian intelligence chief General Omar Suleiman. The Hamas delegation from Gaza, who met with Suleiman at the beginning of the week, is still in Cairo; Egypt may be shuttling between the parties to conclude the deal. Gilad is to return to Israel overnight with the final agreement and report to Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

The deal looks just about certain to go into effect.
It is notable that the latest steps of this negotiation were completed while Secretary of State Condi Rice was still in the region. The government of Israel has now spent some time engaging in “proximity talks” with both Hamas and Syria. Rice’s proteges inside both the Lebanese and Palestinian political systems have been engaging very seriously with, respectively Hizbullah and Hamas. And her proteges in Iraq have been engaging very seriously with Iran.
So the Quarantine Wall that Rice and Pres. Bush have been working hard to maintain around Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria, and Iran now looks to be in very bad shape indeed.
We might (or by now, actually, might not) recall that just last November, Rice and Bush stage-managed a huge Mideast summit conference in Annapolis, Maryland, at which they pledged their very best efforts to try to win a final-status peace agreement between Israel and the Fateh leaders of the Palestinian Administration by the end of this year.
But the Israelis now apparently pay so little heed to Washington’s efforts that Rice’s visit to Israel this week passed almost unremarked by the Israeli media, according to the CSM’s Ilene Prusher.
If the Israeli side does indeed proceed with the tahdi’eh plan as publicized by Hamas, that is of course yet another serious setback for Fateh. Fateh is anyway, as noted above, engaged in its own effort to reconcile with Hamas. If Hamas has the tahdi’eh in its pocket, then that will strengthen its hands in those internal negotiations.
Conclusion of the tahdi’eh will also, more broadly, drive yet another political nail into the coffin of the two-state solution. Though goodness knows, thousands of other nails have already been driven into its coffin in recent months, with all the announcements from Israel of yet more contracts going out to build large numbers of new housing units in the colonial settlements in East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.
As I wrote in the Boston Review article, what you may therefore see emerging in Israel/Palestinian instead of two states is two “entities”, with one of them being the Hamas-ruled, sub-state entity in Gaza and the other being an Israel that still finds itself unable to disentangle itself from the West Bank.
Over the longer haul, this is not a stable situation. But if Israelis are unable to withdraw from the settlements they have planted deep throughout the West Bank, then they must expect Palestinian claims inside 1948 Israel to grow stronger in response; and over time, a (binational) one-state outcome will likely become increasingly compelling…

Haaretz publishes this today:

Israel has agreed in principle to an Egyptian-mediated proposal for a cease-fire and the opening of intensive talks for the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, security and government sources said yesterday.
The sources said that Defense Ministry official Major General (res.) Amos Gilad has relayed Israel’s positions to Egyptian intelligence chief General Omar Suleiman.
A delegation of Hamas leaders is to meet today in Cairo with Suleiman to hear Israel’s position. The delegation is headed by the Damascus-based deputy chief of Hamas’ political wing, Musa Abu Marzuk, and senior Hamas leaders from Gaza. According to the outlines of the deal, Egypt will announce that Hamas and the other armed groups in Gaza have decided on a cease-fire, and Israel will stop responding to fire from Gaza. Israel has not agreed to Hamas’ demand to extend the cease-fire to the West Bank but has told the Egyptians that quiet in Gaza will reflect on the chances for quiet in the West Bank as well.
Israel has also refused to agree to Hamas’ demand that the cease-fire agreement include an opening of the border crossings into Gaza, but has said it will ease the economic blockade of the Strip.
The Rafah crossing is under Palestinian-Egyptian control. However, Egypt reportedly wants to open it only as part of the agreement with Israel. Israel apparently wants to delay the opening of the Rafah crossing until significant progress is made in a prisoner swap.
Hamas spokesmen last week said Shalit would be released only in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, and not as part of the cease-fire agreement.
Yesterday the London-based Arabic daily Asharq Alawsat reported that Israel had agreed to forego a link between Shalit’s release and the cease-fire. Shalit’s father, Noam Shalit, said Israeli officials have assured him that his son’s release is an integral part of cease-fire discussions.
Israel is reportedly willing to exchange Shalit for 450 terrorists, to be released in two stages…

For background, see my my recent writings on Hamas, including my recent Boston Review article and full; text of my January interview with Hamas head Khaled Meshaal, accessible here.
More commentary later tonight, inshallah. Timing obviously interesting in view of Condi’s visit?

Time.com’s Tim McGirk reports from Jerusalem today that:

both Israeli and Palestinian sources expect that by the middle of next week, a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas brokered by Egypt may go into effect. It won’t be announced as such – Israel is squeamish about officially striking a deal with what it deems a terrorist group – but if it goes ahead, Hamas will strong-arm its own fighters and those belonging to Islamic Jihad into halting the barrage of rockets aimed at the farming communities and towns of southern Israel. In exchange, Israel is expected to refrain from targeted killings of Hamas operatives, and will hold off on mounting any major assault into Gaza. Israel will also commit itself to gradually lifting the blockade on goods reaching Gaza’s besieged inhabitants.
Israel is still pressing for the accord to include the release of Corporal Gilad Shalit, held by Hamas for almost two years now since his capture on the Israeli side of the boundary with Gaza, but Hamas sources say negotiations over Shalit’s freedom will start later. The militants are demanding that Shalit be traded for “over 400” Palestinians being held in Israeli jails. So far, Israel is refusing, saying it will only release around 70 prisoners who were not involved in deadly attacks.

Over the past three months, we have several times come close to seeing this reciprocal ceasefire (tahdi’eh) deal nailed down… but none of those earlier alerts were borne out.
Let’s hope this one is.
If you haven’t yet read my recent Boston Review article on Hamas, that gives considerable background about this negotiation, you can find it here.