Israel and Hamas

Diplomacy can stop the Gaza shooting | The Australian

EVERY now and then, the clouds of conflict part in the Middle East and both sides see a world where continual conflict is not the norm. It happened this week when Israel and Hamas stopped fighting for three hours, barely long enough for aid convoys to enter the benighted enclave. But then time was up and the shooting started again. It was a metaphor in miniature for the perpetual crisis in the Middle East. Israel will not withdraw from Gaza until the Hamas terrorists promise to stop firing rockets at Israeli towns; Hamas says it will do no such thing until Israel withdraws. And so, apart from the humanitarian ceasefire, which was little more than a tea break for the troops, it's business as usual. It is impossible to overestimate how appalling the resulting situation is for the 1.4 million people in Gaza who are living without secure supplies of food and fuel and in permanent peril of being killed as the Israeli army methodically destroys Hamas's firepower. While the number of civilian casualties is obscured by the fog of war, aid agencies in Gaza put non-combatant deaths at 700.

This cannot, and must not, go on. But for Israel to unilaterally withdraw without an undertaking from Hamas would secure only a longer version of the three-hour cessation in the shooting. It is up to Hamas to accept that it cannot achieve its official objective of destroying Israel, and that to pursue it only imperils the Palestinian people. The contrast with the West Bank, run by the Fatah faction, is instructive. Fatah also abhors Israel, but not enough to subject its people to hunger and the risk of death by taking the Israelis on in a pointless war. To give Hamas a reason to follow Fatah, Israel could agree to allow ordinary civilian traffic into Gaza. Even before this campaign, Gaza was a vast welfare ghetto, and for it to have any hope of developing a functioning economy, Israel must open the borders. This will be easier said than done. Hamas and its civilian supporters have responded to Israel's long-established blockade by digging tunnels under the frontier with Egypt and using them to smuggle consumer goods as well as weaponry. It is up to Egypt to underwrite a lasting ceasefire by convincing Israel that it will stop Hamas importing armaments over its border. In the first instance, Egypt should force Hamas to surrender control of the border crossings to Fatah, which is loyal to the official, if not especially effective, leader of all the Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas.