Middle East Inside Line (30 August): Israel-Gaza Tension Rising, Sweden and Israel Still Fighting

Israel Tension with Hamas Rising: The tension between Israeli forces and Palestinians in Gaza has been increasing since Monday. Palestinian militants fired a Qassam rocket into the Western Negev. A 20-year-old Palestinian was shot dead when he approached a security fence separating Israel and the northern Gaza Strip; the Israeli military claimed that gunmen were placing a bomb near the security fence and opened fire. After the Palestinian's death, mortar shells fired from the Gaza Strip injured an Israeli soldier; the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), a Palestinian militant group, claimed responsibility.

On Tuesday, two Israeli jets dropped bombs on smuggling tunnels in the southern town of Rafah. The IDF said that the airstrike, which killed three Palestinian brothers and wounded seven others, was in response to Monday's mortar shell fire at Israel on Monday.

Israel-Sweden Fight Continues:

After recent tension over Palestine and the "stolen organs" controversy, diplomatic storm clouds are still over Stockholm and Tel Aviv. On Friday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul-Gheit gave a clear yet a provocative statement in Sweden:

East Jerusalem must be included in a freeze of settlement activity before Middle East peace talks can restart....Jerusalem is Arab and it will continue to be so.

Meanwhile, Washington has denied reports that the Obama Administration dropped the demand for the freezing of settlements in East Jerusalem in exchange for the Israeli concession of a 9 to 12-month settlement freeze in the West Bank.

Saturday Debate: Prosperity or Invasion in the West Bank?

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Israel's high-profile Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, has been on an intense public-relations campaign over the last week. He had a nice chat with Fareed Zakaria on CNN and then wrote last week in the  On August 13, The Wall Street Journal published "The West Bank Success Story". Oren explained that the economy of the West Bank has been flourishing because of the decline of terrorism and corruption and because of Israel’s contribution to the area's financial boom. After “the Palestinian initiative [on security] and the responsible fiscal policies of West Bank leaders”, supported by Israel’s initiatives through “removing dozens of checkpoints and road blocks, withdrawing Israeli troops from population centers, and facilitating transportation into both Israel and Jordan”, the West Bank is enjoying “an annual economic growth rate of 7%, declining unemployment, a thriving tourism industry, and a 24% hike in the average daily wage". Meanwhile, in Gaza, “Hamas has spent millions of dollars restocking its supply of rockets and mortar shells”.

Slovaj Zizek, not quite as high-profile as Oren, begs to disagree. Zizek, the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, wrote on Tuesday, "Quiet slicing of the West Bank makes abstract prayers for peace obscene". Zizek claims, "While paying lip-service to the two-state solution, Israel is busy creating a situation on the ground that will render such a solution impossible.” Israel’s “bureaucratic invasion” of the West Bank, with legal  settlement constructions, is the main obstacle to peace:

The state of Israel is clearly engaged in a slow, invisible process, ignored by the media; one day, the world will awake and discover that there is no more Palestinian West Bank, that the land is Palestinian-free, and that we must accept the fact. The map of the Palestinian West Bank already looks like a fragmented archipelago.

So, what do you think? Is the Netanyahu Government deliberately slowing the peace process through “the pretext of economic flourishing”, whose primary outcome is the widening of the gap between Gazans and the inhabitants of the West Bank? Or is this economic growth the only way to reach a settlement through a “bottom-up” process, even if the issue of settlements is still a political problem to be resolved?

West Bank Success Story

The Palestinians are flourishing economically. Unless they live in Gaza.
Michael B. Oren

Imagine an annual economic growth rate of 7%, declining unemployment, a thriving tourism industry, and a 24% hike in the average daily wage. Where in today's gloomy global market could one find such gleaming forecasts? Singapore? Brazil? Guess again. The West Bank.

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Quiet slicing of the West Bank makes abstract prayers for peace obscene

Condemnation of 'illegal' settlements and violence only blurs the reality of what the Israeli state is sanctioning, day by day.
By Slovaj Zizek

On 2 August 2009, after cordoning off part of the Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in east Jerusalem, Israeli police evicted two Palestinian families (more than 50 people) from their homes; Jewish settlers immediately moved into the emptied houses. Although Israeli police cited a ruling by the country's supreme court, the evicted Arab families had been living there for more than 50 years. The event – which, rather exceptionally, did attract the attention of the world media – is part of a much larger and mostly ignored ongoing process.

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Gaza: "Moderate" Hamas Does a Balancing "War on Terror" Act

World, may we introduce you to the "moderate" Hamas?

During last Friday's prayers in Rafah, the leader of Junut Ansar Allah (Soldiers of Allah's Supporters), Abd al-Latif Musa, declared "the birth of an Islamic emirate in Gaza". There were his last words of him. Hamas attacked the mosque, killing 24 --- including six unarmed civilians –-- and injuring 125.

Now this may seem a curious way to become "moderate". However, with the Rafah mosque attack, Hamas was not only acting against a perceived insurgent threat. In the past, it has often been alleged that al-Qaeda militants are training and receiving support from Hamas. The Gazan leadership has always denied this but, with last Friday's operation, it offered a war against anti-American Islamist “terrorism”, distancing itself from “radicalism” and sending “positive” signals to Washington and Brussels.

Doing so, the Gazan organisation is striking a delicate balance. On the one hand, it is maintaining a low-profile vigilance against any anti-Western rhetoric that might give its opponents (read "Israel") ammunition for a public-relations assault. On the other, it is maintaining relations with Islamic groups, including some backed by Iran, to prevent any opening of space for challengers in Gaza.

Khaled Meshal, the political director of Hamas, said last week in an interview with Qatari newspaper al-Watan that the post-election turmoil in Iran would not endanger Tehran’s support for Hamas: "No doubt what is happening in Iran concerns and worries us, but we consider it to be an internal affair… But we are definitely not worried about the relationship with Iran or the support that Iran offers us.” Meshal's words took on new signficance after the provocative speech of Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah on Friday: "Hezbollah is able to hit every city in Israel, and I repeat: if they hit Beirut, we will attack Tel Aviv.”

For, while Hezbollah might want to shake a fist at Israel right now, Hamas does not. So Meshal’s “worry” indicates a thin red line between Hamas and Tehran. Iran, for both domestic and regional reasons, is anxious to keep the heat on Tel Aviv, and it may be sending a message to Hamas to be less forthcoming towards an Israel-Palestine settlement. On the other hand, Meshal in particular has been attentive to sending signals to Washington that Hamas welcomes the US brokering of an agreement.

So Hamas finds itself manoeuvring both vis-a-vis external powers and against internal challenges. Flexibility becomes the keyword for strategy. But if that means Iran cannot be put to one side, it also means that "radicalism" is no longer an attractive label for Gaza's political leaders.

Welcome then to the new, moderate (if War-on-Terror-fighting) Hamas. But how will the world (read "United States") react?