Hard Questions, Tough Answers with Yossi Alpher

Q. There are persistent reports of an Egyptian initiative, with US backing, to put together a "mega-deal" involving Israel, Hamas and Fateh and bring about a Palestinian unity government, an Israel-Hamas ceasefire and a prisoner exchange. How serious does this look?

A. Egyptian sources appear to be disseminating these reports. Egypt has set a deadline of July 7 for Hamas and Fateh to conclude their own bilateral prisoner exchange deal and appear in Cairo to finalize something broader. The Egyptian idea is to establish both a Palestinian unity government and some sort of unity commission, under the authority of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and with additional Arab participation, to oversee sensitive security and economic activities in Gaza, including monitoring the Israel-Gaza crossings, which Israel would open to commercial traffic. The European Union would resume its monitoring function at the Rafah crossing linking Gaza with Egypt. International reconstruction aid would be able to enter Gaza under proper supervision. A joint Fateh-Hamas security force would patrol Gaza.

In parallel, Fateh and Hamas would agree on new elections for next January and the first stages of an Israel-Hamas prisoner exchange would be carried out, placing IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in Egypt in exchange for a partial release of Palestinian prisoners by Israel.

Israel and Hamas both deny that a prisoner exchange is near. And Hamas has publicly registered its objections to some aspects of the work of the proposed unity commission and the disposition of Palestinian security forces under the agreement. There are additional variations on these details, all reflecting the workings of the regional rumor mill. Nothing is certain: the deal could never be consummated, might be declared and then fall apart, or could be implemented only partially.

Egypt has been trying off and on for several years now to reunite Fateh and Hamas, the West Bank and Gaza. It has good reasons to try, insofar as all the strategies for dealing with Gaza and Hamas have failed and Egypt as a territorial neighbor of Gaza has serious concerns about the ramifications of Hamas' activities so nearby. Egypt has drawn encouragement from the apparent new moderation in Syria's regional attitude, corresponding with an improvement in Syrian-US relations. Syria can be helpful by pressuring Hamas to cooperate with the Egyptian effort. Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak visited Egypt recently, apparently to coordinate Israel's input.

The current Egyptian approach also seems to be based on the problem-solving theory that an unsolvable small problem can sometimes be better addressed by enlarging it. Cairo has taken all its failed initiatives of recent years concerning prisoners, a ceasefire and a unity government and rolled them into the one big problem it is currently tackling.

Q. Can you expand on the failed strategies for Hamas in Gaza?

A. It appears to be virtually impossible for an Israeli-Palestinian peace process to succeed without the involvement or at least concurrence of Gaza-based Hamas. Any agreement that ignores Hamas is incomplete both geographically and politically from the Palestinian standpoint. It risks being disrupted by terrorism, thereby affecting Israel's willingness to offer territorial and other compromises. Hence, alongside efforts to catalyze a return to negotiations between the government of Israel and the PLO, it is imperative to consider what steps can be taken to involve Hamas in the dialogue or at least to conciliate that movement and neutralize its opposition. In order for that analytical process to begin, we--not just Israel, but the Quartet, Egypt and the PLO--have to reassess where and why the strategies for dealing with Hamas have failed.

Beginning with the current strategy, economic warfare: this is one aspect of the conflict with Hamas where not only Israel but virtually the entire relevant international community, including the Quartet (US, UN, EU and Russia), Egypt and the Palestinian Authority share the blame for failure. The economic blockade of the Gaza Strip since the Hamas takeover of June 2007 appears to be a clear case of collective punishment of 1.5 million Gazans for the undoubted sins of Hamas.
Not only is this an apparent violation of international law. Worse (from the realpolitik standpoint), it has never worked. Restricting supplies allowed into Gaza to a bare minimum of food and medicines was supposed to provoke the Gazan population into dumping Hamas, or at least into prevailing upon the leadership to behave responsibly. Instead, it has pushed Gazans into either indifference or greater support for Hamas. Moreover, it has impoverished the moderate traditional middle class that used to engage in trade with and via Israel and has empowered Hamas-linked tunnel entrepreneurs--the nouveaux riches of Gaza.

This is an example of a genuinely counterproductive strategy that is still maintained due to inertia. The prospect of the Israeli minister of defense literally counting the calories of hundreds of thousands of Gazans, prohibiting the transfer of pasta and halva and forbidding Gaza's farmers--formerly one of the most Israel-friendly sectors of the population--to export via Israel is ludicrous. Had Israel and its international and regional supporters recognized this fact and opened the crossings months ago to all but truly strategic goods, the recent war might have been avoided. After all, ending the economic blockade was and is Hamas' primary condition for observing an extended ceasefire. Today, too, with the exception of building materials whose usage should be monitored by an international mechanism, opening of the passages for free commerce would go a long way toward ensuring peace and quiet.

Notably, the "stick" of the economic blockade of Gaza has been paralleled by the "carrot" of international economic aid for the West Bank, supervised by Quartet coordinator Tony Blair. Here too the objective is to promote peace, but this time through economic benefits. In other words, the Palestinians of Gaza are supposed to support peace because they have empty stomachs while the Palestinians of the West Bank are supposed to support peace because they have full stomachs! Further, the West Bank "carrot" policy ignores the past 42 years of Israeli failure in using economic incentives to promote peace and quiet among Palestinians. That abortive approach began with Moshe Dayan's 1967 decision to integrate the Palestinian and Israeli economies--a strategy that went up in smoke with the outbreak of the first intifada in late 1987.

Indeed, the first and second intifadas and even the Arab Revolt of 1936-39 against the British illustrate how Palestinian violence usually erupts at times of economic prosperity. Certainly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is political and ideological in nature, does not lend itself to economic solutions.

Nor to military solutions. Israel's Operation Cast Lead of January 2009 may have bought a relative respite from rocket, mortar and other attacks emanating from Gaza, but it certainly did not solve anything, while it embroiled Israel in heavy international criticism. Today, there remains a temptation on both the right and left in Israel to exploit the first serious Hamas provocation, try again and "go all the way", destroying the Hamas infrastructure in Gaza and reoccupying the Strip. Some on the Israeli left who support a negotiated two-state solution with the PLO  believe that Israel could reinstall the PLO in power in Gaza that way, perhaps with the help of an intermediary international force.
But advocates of a military strategy for Hamas in Gaza have to contend with the prospect of open-ended reoccupation--there is absolutely no assurance that the international community, much less the PLO, would take Gaza off our hands--and urban combat against Islamist guerillas who would probably be more extreme even than Hamas. The Israeli public, which learned the hard way in Gaza and South Lebanon to recognize the evils of occupation, is not prepared for that. Indeed, it is not prepared for the level of civilian and military casualties that would be incurred by a military reoccupation of the Strip.

Israel has also failed when it comes to the integration of its military and economic strategies for Gaza. After the unilateral withdrawal from the Strip in the summer of 2005, PM Ariel Sharon vowed to respond to any new Hamas attacks with disproportional military punishment. Instead, and despite the extensive preparations made for Gaza to function and even flourish economically once the settlements and the IDF were removed, he and his successors responded by closing passages and tightening the economic siege. Perhaps a military response would not have worked, but the economic response certainly failed. On the other hand, half a year of real ceasefire was achieved in 2004 when Israel assassinated the Gaza-based Hamas leadership--though this has proven to be a controversial policy both internationally and domestically.

Not only do Israel and its supporters in the economic siege of Gaza need to recognize that they have relied on failed strategies. Egypt seemed to believe until recently that it could manage with a strategy that may be described as "making sure that Gaza is Israel's problem, not Egypt's problem". Smuggling of weapons was not seriously prevented as long as the traffic was one way, from Sinai into Gaza. Hamas in the Strip seemed to be effectively quarantined from reinforcing its parent organization, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Terrorist acts in southern Sinai were infrequent enough not to disturb tourism.
But a few months ago, this strategy blew up in Egypt's face with the revelations of Hizballah infiltration and sabotage on Egyptian soil and Iranian smuggling of weapons with seeming impunity the length of the country, from Sudan to Gaza. Egypt may have long ceased to be the preeminent Arab and African power, but these affronts were too much even for its relatively weak leadership. This explains at least in part Cairo's current "mega-initiative".

Strikingly, Israel has preferred to ignore Egypt's policy priorities regarding Hamas, which after all are intended quite logically to serve Egypt's perceived interests and not necessarily those of Israel. Hence yet another ongoing and failed Israeli strategy regarding Hamas that seemingly has the blessing of the international community is to negotiate both a ceasefire and a prisoner exchange through Cairo's good offices. True, Israel has derived some bilateral security benefits through its reliance on General Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian mediator. But it has achieved neither a ceasefire nor the return of Hamas' Israeli prisoner, Gilad Shalit. Nor has Egypt succeeded in mediating between Hamas and the PLO in order to reestablish some sort of unity government and facilitate elections.

Meanwhile, precisely because these strategies have failed and it has no workable "solutions", Israel is witnessing a slow attrition in the policy of isolating Hamas in Gaza. Not physically--the overall arms blockade of Gaza has undoubtedly become more efficient since Cast Lead. But politically: the Hamas leadership in Damascus and Gaza is increasingly sought out by emissaries, official and unofficial, from the West. Recent American visitors include Senator John Kerry and former president Jimmy Carter.

To conclude, it's time for Israel and its friends and neighbors, and particularly the United States, to recognize the failure of these strategies for dealing with Hamas in Gaza. Recognition of failure is a first and necessary step in the process of determining new and more effective strategies. Of course, if the current Egyptian "mega-initiative" succeeds Israel has every reason to seek to make the best of it, return Gilad Shalit to Israeli soil, institutionalize a ceasefire and hope that Fateh defeats Hamas in elections in half a year. But assuming Egypt fails, some Israeli strategic thinkers advocate seeking direct contact with Hamas on issues such as a prisoner exchange and a ceasefire, in view of recent evidence that some Hamas leaders are modifying their overall approach to the conflict. On the other hand, Israel-Hamas contacts, if mishandled, could weaken the standing of the PLO, Israel's negotiating partner for peace, in the West Bank.

Still, recognizing Hamas as a fact of life and an undeniable part of the Israeli-Palestinian equation, especially if it again joins a Palestinian unity government, appears to be the most obvious conclusion from any analysis of the failure of strategies adopted in recent years for dealing with the Gaza-based militant Islamist movement.