MIDEAST UPDATE: 3.30.19 - Will This Weekend Reignite Israel-Gaza Conflict?

Palestinian Leaders Punish Gaza, Blame Israel - by Khaled Abu Toameh - https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13963/palestinians-punish-gaza

 

Until a few days ago, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its leaders were strongly denouncing Hamas for its brutal crackdown on Palestinians protesting economic hardship in the Gaza Strip.

 

Now, the PA is condemning Israel for launching military strikes on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli strikes, however, were provoked; they came hours after a long-range rocket fired from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip hit a house in the Kfar Saba region of Israel, and injured seven people.

 

The PA and its leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas, have yet to condemn the launching of rockets at Israel. Instead of condemning those responsible for firing the first rocket, which miraculously did not result in any deaths when it hit a home in the early hours of the morning, the PA leaders are lashing out at Israel for launching a "new aggression" against the Gaza Strip.

 

According to the logic of the PA, the conflict started when Israel fired back. The leaders of the PA seem especially careful not to blame Hamas or any other Palestinian group for the latest tensions in the Gaza Strip. In a series of statements in the past few days, PA officials sought, as usual, to put all the blame on Israel. These are the same officials who, until a few days ago, were attacking Hamas for breaking the bones of Palestinian protesters who took to the streets of the Gaza Strip to demand improved living conditions and a solution to the soaring unemployment there.

 

Abbas and his officials have apparently not heard of the arson kites and booby-trapped balloons that have been launched from the Gaza Strip towards Israeli towns on nearly a daily basis over the past few months. They also apparently have not heard of the rockets and mortars that are fired from the Gaza Strip at Israel almost every day.

 

The PA further appears unaware that Hamas has been sending thousands of Palestinians, including women and children, to demonstrate near the border with Israel and attack Israeli soldiers with explosive devices, firebombs and rocks. These demonstrations, which began exactly a year ago under the banner of the "March of Return," have resulted in the deaths and injury of thousands of Palestinians.

 

Rather than demanding that Hamas cease and desist from endangering the lives of Palestinians by sending them to clash with Israeli soldiers and breach the Gaza-Israel border, the PA and its leaders are condemning Israel for perpetrating "crimes" against Palestinians.

 

The PA envoy to the United Nations, Riad Mansour, said this week that the current tensions in the Gaza Strip were the result of the "silence of the international community towards Israeli crimes." Another reason for the escalation, he claimed, was the "blockade" -- which Israel established at its border of the Gaza Strip to prevent weapons being brought in -- and the use of force against Palestinian demonstrators.

 

Mansour was echoing the official PA position of holding Israel -- and Israel alone -- responsible for the violence and suffering of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

 

This is the same PA that has been imposing severe economic and financial sanctions on the Gaza Strip since 2017. Those sanctions include, among other things, cutting salaries and welfare payments to thousands of Palestinian employees and families in the Gaza Strip. The PA is even considering additional sanctions against the Gaza Strip as part of its effort to undermine the Hamas regime.

 

On the one hand, the PA is accusing Israel of imposing restrictions on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. On the other hand, it is the PA itself that is punishing the people there by cutting their salaries and firing thousands of civil servants. When Palestinians in the West Bank took to the streets to protest the PA sanctions against the Gaza Strip, the PA sent its security forces to break up the protests and arrest many of the demonstrators. This is the same PA that is now accusing Israel of using force to disperse Palestinian protesters at the Gaza-Israel border.

 

Until a few days ago, the PA was accusing Hamas of committing crimes against unarmed Palestinians protesting the high cost of living and increased taxation by Hamas. Now, the PA is denouncing Israel for targeting Hamas after Hamas fired rockets into Israeli towns.

 

One PLO official, Tayseer Khaled, went as far as likening Hamas's repressive measures to those of Nazi Germany's secret police, the Gestapo. Another Palestinian official, Jamal Muheissen, said that Hamas was like a terrorist group that has hijacked an airplane.

 

Last week, Abbas himself denounced Hamas as "dogs" and said that it will end up in the dustbin of history. "They [Hamas] can go to hell; those dogs," Abbas said while he was visiting in hospital a senior Fatah official who was reportedly badly beaten by Hamas members in the Gaza Strip. The official, Atef Abu Seif, was transferred from the Gaza Strip to a hospital in Ramallah.

 

Abbas and the PA are furious because Hamas militiamen and security officers have been breaking the arms and legs of protesters in the Gaza Strip. They do not seem overly concerned, however, when Hamas or other groups in the Gaza Strip indiscriminately fire rockets and booby-trapped balloons at Israeli civilians.

 

Abbas says he would like to see Hamas "go to hell" and "end up in the dustbin of history," but when Israel responds to Hamas's rocket attacks, he and his officials rush to condemn Israel. Clearly, the PA leaders are afraid to condemn the rocket attacks on Israel. They evidently do not want to be accused by their people of betraying the Palestinian "resistance" against Israel. The PA's anti-Israel incitement makes it impossible for Abbas and his PA officials to speak out against terror attacks on Israel.

 

Without a doubt, Abbas despises Hamas and would indeed see it buried and gone. Deep down, he and his officials also likely hope that Israel will one day do that job for them. The PA leaders, however, do not hate Hamas because it launches rockets at Israel. They hate Hamas because the Islamist movement humiliated them and expelled them from the Gaza Strip in 2007. They hate Hamas because since then, Hamas has been arresting, beating and torturing Abbas loyalists in the Gaza Strip.

 

Abbas and the PA are simply doing the one thing they are good at: trying to frame Israel for Palestinian crimes against their own people. Only when Hamas beats the brains out of PA supporters do Abbas and his associates respond. As far as they are concerned, rockets and mortars can explode to their hearts' content -- as long as they land on Israeli homes. Thanks to this double game, which the PA has been playing for a long time, Abbas and his senior officials appear increasingly to be losing credibility among their people.

 

Will This Weekend Reignite Israel-Gaza Conflict? - By Yaakov Lappin - http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=3084

 

Hamas is set to hold a mass march this Saturday to the Gazan-Israeli border to mark "Land Day," an event that has the potential to transform into mass disturbances, which, in turn, could reignite Gazan rocket fire and Israeli military strikes.

 

In such a scenario, Israel may decide that air power alone is no longer sufficient to extinguish the rocket threat terrorizing southern Israeli civilians.

 

As a result, the Israel Defense Forces is keeping its massed infantry, artillery and armored units parked right on Gaza's border, pointed at Hamas. The forces are ready at a moment's notice to launch a ground maneuver to attack Hamas's military wing in response to a new escalation.

 

These scenes are the latest act in a year-long Hamas campaign aimed at using controlled violence to achieve goals, in what Col. (ret.) Reuven Erlich, director of the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, described as a "kind of a war of attrition."

 

"On March 30 a year ago, Hamas changed its policy, ending the relative quiet that existed from 'Operation Protective Edge' [in 2014] to that point," Erlich told JNS. Up to that time, there were very few rocket attacks out of Gaza, he noted, describing this period as "the quietist time since Hamas came to power [in 2007]."

 

For a variety of reasons, Hamas then shifted its policy, initiating "controlled pressure," said Erlich, based on the goal of shattering the calm, but avoiding a full-scale war with Israel.

 

"Hamas assesses that Israel, too, does not want to get dragged into a war. So it uses a variety of forms of violence--from border-rioting and sabotaging the security fence, sending explosives over the border tied to balloons, cross-border intrusions, rockets and rounds of escalation," he stated.

 

With Hamas controlling the level of violence in line with its interests, the latest escalation, which began when a Hamas rocket destroyed an Israeli home north of Tel Aviv on March 25 and injured seven of its family members, now appears to be coming to a close.

 

The Israel Air Force struck several multi-story Hamas buildings in Gaza, leaving sites such as the offices of Hamas senior political leader Ismail Haniyeh in ruins, as well as Hamas's military intelligence building and the headquarters of the regime's internal security forces.

 

A shaky unofficial ceasefire, mediated by Egypt, took hold on Wednesday, though it began with much uncertainty, after an unidentified Gazan group broke it by firing rockets at southern Israel's Eshkol region. This triggered IAF retaliation strikes on Hamas complexes, including a weapons' production facility, and Hamas responded with rocket fire on Ashkelon overnight.

 

In total, Gazan armed factions fired 60 projectiles at southern Israel, with Iron Dome air defense batteries intercepting many that were heading into populated areas.

 

As the violence tapered off on Wednesday, Erlich warned that it could easily reignite on Saturday. "I would estimate that tens of thousands of Gazans will take part in the march. There could be lots of grenade-throwing, rioting and the potential for new rockets," said Erlich.

 

Asked what he made of claims by Hamas sources that Monday's rocket attack on an Israeli village well north of Tel Aviv was the result of a "mistake," Erlich said "I am a very small believer in such mistakes. From 'Operation Protective Edge' until recently, there were no mistakes.

 

Now, there are multiple mistakes, and all sorts of rebellious Gazan groups outside of the Gaza consensus are also firing rockets. The important context is that in Gaza today, there is an atmosphere of violence towards Israel. I personally doubt this is a coincidence."

 

The threat of future escalations morphing into a war is "very real," he cautioned. "Hamas does not want to go all the way. But they are hitting the breaks less," he said.

 

Hamas is 'stuck in a maze of problems'

 

Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, director of the Project on Regional Middle East Developments at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and former head of the research division of IDF Military Intelligence, said it was important to examine the bigger picture of recent events.

 

"Hamas's situation is that it is stuck in a maze of problems that it does not know how to get out of," he said. "Sometimes, when it wants to 'shout for help,' it goes for the option of firing on Israel."

 

Monday's long-range rocket attack was not necessarily ordered by the Hamas leadership, but if someone in Hamas carried it out, "the rules of the game are that once the act is done, they close ranks and support it. They do not criticize action against 'the cruel occupier,' " explained Kuperwasser.

 

Either way, Hamas's situation is "severe," he said. "Sure, they can hit Israel with rockets, but that does not alleviate their distress. They are in this position because of pressure from Egypt, from [Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud] Abbas, because of problems they have in improving life for Gaza's population and because this population is coming out against them," he assessed.

 

"They are facing real constraints in their goal of 'liberating Palestine.' No one among Hamas's rank and file thinks they can 'liberate Palestine' by firing rockets. They believe they can destroy Israel in the long term, but not the short term," he added.

 

Israel, in the meantime, is developing economically and technologically, said Kuperwasser. "Let's not lose sight of the facts--Israel's per capita income is 40,000 dollars, and its unemployment rate is 3.7 percent. It has one of the highest standards of living.

 

In Gaza, there are frustrated people who, instead of improving their situation in a positive way, are digging a bigger hole because of strange ideologies and corruption," he said, describing Hamas's leadership.

 

"Clearly, these are frustrated people. Some have demonstrated against Hamas itself. Some fire on Israel. They know it will not improve their situation. Haniyeh said Israel 'understood the message' today. What message? The [actual] message is that if Israel hits Hamas hard, they will stop firing. That is the message."

 

Israeli civilians living in the vicinity of Gaza are justifiably frustrated with the ongoing security situation, and Israel needs to do more to make it clear to Gaza's factions that "there is a cost to this limited violence," said Kuperwasser. "We have not done that, and now we are paying [for it] by absorbing this violence. But this can change."

 

Hamas understands that if it pushes Israel too hard, it will provoke a military operation that could threaten the survival of its regime, said Kuperwasser. Asked if Hamas could choose the "Sampson option" of crashing Gaza deliberately into Israel's hands, the former intelligence officer said, "At this stage, they are clearly not there. That could change in the future, but chances are not high. We must be ready for everything. Israel has plans on what to do in such a case. It very much prefers not to activate them."

 

 

 

 

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