Israel’s siege of Gaza, having failed to achieve its primary objective of toppling the Hamas regime, may be drawing to a close. In the wake of last week’s aid-flotilla debacle, the Israelis have been told by the U.S. and its allies that it is untenable for Israel to continue blocking a wide range of basic economic commodities from entering Gaza. Instead, the policy discussion is shifting toward finding ways to open the border crossings into Gaza while keeping out weapons. On Monday, Vice President Joe Biden met with Egypt’s President, Hosni Mubarak, in search of new solutions “to address the humanitarian, economic, security and political aspects of the situation.” Egypt last week reopened the Rafah crossing into Gaza, with a security official telling the Associated Press that it would remain open indefinitely because the blockade had failed.
The Gaza blockade’s purpose, of course, was never simply to prevent Hamas from rearming; it was designed to topple the movement from power. From the moment Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006, Israel — with the support of the U.S. and other Western powers — began to restrict Gaza’s economic lifeline to the outside world. And after Hamas expelled security forces loyal to Fatah in a violent power struggle in 2007, Israel adopted a siege strategy. The plan was to deprive Gazans of many basic commodities — “putting the Palestinians on a diet” while stopping short of starving them, as a top Israeli official explained it at the time — in hopes that imposing a twilight existence on the territory would turn the civilian population against Hamas. That’s why the list of banned items included not only the cement, steel and glass that would be essential to reconstruct the thousands of buildings that were destroyed in the 2008-09 war but also coriander, sage, ginger, A4 paper, notebooks, toys, pens and pencils, seeds and nuts, livestock, fishing nets and a host of other commodities with no plausible military use.
(See pictures of Israeli commandos storming the Turkish aid ships.)
The political strategy underpinning the blockade — to marginalize the more radical Hamas and restore the centrality of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party in Palestinian political life — was endorsed by the same Western powers that are now backing away from the siege. After Hamas won the 2006 elections, the Bush Administration persuaded its European allies to boycott Hamas until it agreed to formally renounce violence, recognize the state of Israel and accept previous peace agreements. But Hamas was not elected to mimic Fatah, and it was never likely to declare what it would deem a symbolic surrender.
(See more about the diplomatic fallout from the Gaza flotilla fiasco.)
While Israel implemented the blockade with the cooperation of Egypt and (tacitly) Fatah, the Western powers looked away, hoping that Hamas would be weakened by the malign neglect of Gaza as well as the propping up of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. While the collapse of Gaza’s economy certainly put pressure on Hamas, it didn’t stop the organization from rearming through smuggling tunnels — and the collapse of the regular economy made the population more dependent on Hamas than ever.
See pictures of life under Hamas in Gaza.
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But if the flotilla showdown has prompted Western powers to call time on a policy of collective punishment that has clearly failed, it will require a rethink of the underlying boycott of Hamas. A number of diplomats long engaged in the Middle East have urged such a rethink over the past week. Sir Jeremy Greenstock, formerly Tony Blair’s U.N. ambassador and then No. 2 man at the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, urged Western governments to engage with the organization. “Hamas are the enemy of Israel, but they do not have to be,” he wrote in Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “They preach violent resistance too readily, yet over the past 17 months they have been trying to control the militant groups intent on threatening Israel with rockets … They are also the implacable opponents of [al-Qaeda]. They won a fair election in 2006 and claim to respect democracy … I am convinced from my own direct experience that Hamas is prepared to establish and respect a long-term ceasefire so that the talking can start without the threat of violence, and that they would enter in good faith, if that were reciprocated, into negotiations to establish two states in the disputed territories, Israel and Palestine, with their own rights and responsibilities under international law.”
While U.S. officials have said the flotilla debacle underscores the importance of progress in the peace talks Washington has initiated between the Israel government and Abbas, Greenstock warns that this process is doomed to fail on its present terms. “U.S. policy, based on a West Bank–only approach, is locked in a cul-de-sac if Gaza is left out of the equation, because majority Palestinian support will be lacking.”
Greenstock’s comments may reflect a growing consensus among some U.S. allies. More than a year ago, then British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that talking to Hamas was “the right thing to do,” but that Egypt was best-placed for the job. Russia and Turkey have talked openly with the organization, and its Damascus-based leader, Khaled Meshal, claims that the U.S. is reaching out through back channels.
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Even some Israelis with impeccable security credentials have called for a new approach to Hamas in the wake of the flotilla episode. Giora Eiland, who headed Israel’s National Security Council under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and who was on Monday tapped by the current government to lead its inquiry into the flotilla clash, argued last week that Israel had — as a result of its antipathy to Hamas, as well as that of its allies, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority — missed an opportunity at the end of its military operation last year to conclude agreements with the organization on a cease-fire, a prisoner swap (to free captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit) and opening the border crossings with safeguards against arms smuggling. Instead of insisting that others refrain from talking to Hamas, Eiland said, Israel should encourage such dialogue aimed at drawing the organization into more stable security arrangements. “The way to press Hamas on various fronts (including the Gilad Shalit issue),” Eiland wrote, “is to talk to it, not to boycott it.”
While Hamas has clearly demonstrated a readiness to cooperate on cease-fire arrangements and has been negotiating with Israel via German mediators on a prisoner exchange, any move toward greater engagement will require the organization to do more than sit back and watch its opponents squirm. There are clearly different, and sometimes contradictory, impulses at work in Hamas, with key leaders inching toward some form of acceptance of a two-state solution, but resistance remaining very much part of the movement’s strategy. Nothing would do more to restore the Western-Israeli consensus on the blockade than a resumption of terrorism attacks from Gaza. On the other hand, if Hamas is willing, as some reports have suggested, to cooperate on a mechanism to reopen the border crossings while preventing weapons smuggling, it could hasten the onset of a new era of pragmatic engagement. Because what Greenstock, Eiland and others are arguing is that the West and Israel may make more progress by responding to Hamas’ actions and readiness to keep the peace, rather than relying on its willingness to meet the three conditions demanded by the Bush Administration in 2006.
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