Hamas drifts into Gaza fight it doesn't know how to finish

The latest mini-war between Israel and Islamist group Hamas began with the Gaza-based militants eager to strike a blow, but the escalation that followed has left them physically and diplomatically exposed, with no ready way out.

Hamas has sent its rockets streaking into Israel after a month of army raids in the occupied West Bank – in search of three missing Israeli teenagers – that landed more than 900 Palestinians in jail, many of them Hamas members.

Hamas said it hadn’t sought a war, but now hundreds of Israeli bombs continue to pound the coastal strip, killing scores of Gazans. It says the onus for ending the hostilities is on Israel. “Yes, we want calm. We don’t like escalation, and we didn’t make an escalation. [Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu] imposed this aggression upon us,” Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said.

“To end his aggression, first end his policy of occupation, settlement, Judaisation, detentions, killings and demolitions. End that first. Our people deserve to live free,” he added.

Position intact

Previous lopsided battles between Palestinian militants and Israel’s powerful military have left Hamas’s position mostly intact.

The group would claim victory, buoyed by some international sympathy, speedily replenish their cache of rockets through Gaza’s porous border with Egypt and maintain its broad presence in the West Bank. But much has changed since.

In Egypt, the military has ousted the ruling Muslim Brotherhood, a key ally to the Gaza government, which helped mediate a truce in 2012. And it will be harder to restock when hostilities end now that Egypt’s new government has stepped up efforts to demolish the cross-border tunnels that fed not only the blockaded coastal strip’s weapons caches but its entire economy.

Gaza was once the favoured cause of regional powers, but with Egypt now openly hostile and stalwart backers Turkey and Qatar distracted by the lightning rise of Islamist extremists in Iraq, Hamas has found itself orphaned.

“Turkey and Qatar may play a role in trying to restore calm, but they have no direct influence on the occupation, which makes their position weak,” said Hamza Abu Shanab, a Gaza political analyst.

Secular rivals

In the West Bank, too, where it is always under the jealous eye of secular Palestinian rivals, Hamas’s fortunes have hit a new low with Israel’s arrests.

“Israel is holding all Palestinians responsible for the killing of the three Israelis, and that’s what it’s doing with the campaign of arrests everywhere in the West Bank, and it’s extended this policy of collective punishment now to Gaza,” Hamas MP Fathi Qarawi said.

“Hamas was forced to make a response, and events have developed. We want a truce . . . Egypt can still play a role and a good role in pressuring Israel to stop its attacks,” he said.

Securing a truce, however, is not simple when a determined military showing is considered a matter of pride and honour. Despite the death and pain wrought on Gaza’s citizens, Hamas says it has the means to carry on a long campaign if it must.

“Whoever thinks Hamas’s ammunition will run out in days, weeks or months is delusional. We have lots in our pocket,” said senior Hamas official Mushir Al-Masri.

Weakness at home

The tough rhetoric, however, is in part a cloak for weakness at home, where deepening poverty and hardship in Gaza helped push the group into a troubled unity government with the Fatah party headed by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

“Hamas is extremely weak now. Weaker than ever before. It capitulated entirely to Abbas’s demands in forming a reconciliation government. Gaza is in economic crisis. Hamas is bankrupt and doesn’t have a friend left in the world,” said Gershon Baskin, an Israeli peace activist and analyst.

“There are power struggles within [Hamas] . . . and it lacks an authoritative command. It’s a mess inside. But if there’s one thing all parts of its organisation agree on, it’s that an Israeli attack on Gaza builds up sympathy for it there, the West Bank and the Arab world,” he said. If so – and Israel has hinted it could launch a ground offensive to decisively pare back Hamas’s capability – it is a bleak bargain. – (Reuters)