Trouble in Palestine

The revolutions that have swept across the Middle East and North Africa to create the “Arab Spring” of 2011 have left virtually no corner of the region untouched. From Qatar and Algeria to Syria and Tunisia, a surge of newfound pride and energy has fundamentally reshaped the political environment of the Middle East and forever altered the course of the region’s history. It is hardly surprising, then, that the dynamic of the region’s omnipresent issue—the question of Palestine—has also been affected. But just what the Arab Spring will bring for Palestine remains to be seen: the Arab Spring may herald a new trend of non-violence on the tentative path toward peace; just as likely, it may portend a summer of resurgent violence and misery.

A House Divided

Just days after the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak following massive popular protests, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority sought to demonstrate that he is aware of the changes sweeping the Middle East and the ramifications they could have for the legitimacy of his own leadership. Abbas announced that he was accepting the resignations of all of the members of the Palestinian cabinet and instructing Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to quickly assemble a new cabinet. At the same time, Abbas called for new elections for the Palestinian National Authority to take place by September. The elections are currently scheduled for July 9.

Unsurprisingly, Hamas immediately announced that it would not participate in the elections. Hamas claims that Abbas has no legitimacy to call elections and refuses to lend legitimacy to the vote by participating. According to Jon Donnison, the BBC News correspondent in Ramallah, West Bank, Abbas’ bold response to the fall of his longtime ally Mubarak may be more an example of cosmetic changes and political gamesmanship than genuine concern for responding to the needs of the people: many of the Palestinian ministers who resigned are expected to be reshuffled within the Cabinet or even return to their old positions. Likewise, by calling for new elections and forcing Hamas to preemptively reject the proposal, Abbas makes it look as if Hamas is the faction not holding back democracy in Palestine. Elections were already cancelled in 2010 because of the continuing rift between Hamas and Abbas’ Western-backed Fatah faction. The Palestinian parliament has not been able to sit for four years, which has put “democracy on hold,” says Donnison.

The Fatah-Hamas conflict has been the single most important factor influencing Palestinian politics since the split began in 2006 with Hamas’ legislative victories in national elections. The feud came to a head in July 2007 with the Battle of Gaza, a brief military conflict between Fatah and Hamas that led to a Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip and the removal of Fatah officials. Since then, Palestine has been divided, with Fatah ruling the West Bank and Hamas the Gaza Strip.

Reconciliation talks between the two factions have progressed little since 2007. Indeed, the gulf between the two sides on key negotiating points is so wide that compromise is hard to imagine. According to Al Jazeera, Fatah insists that Hamas recognize Israel, renounce violence, and accept existing agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. Hamas has made no indication that it will agree to any of these conditions. While Fatah has tried, unsuccessfully and to the frustration of many Palestinians, to reach an agreement with Israel, Hamas has publicly reserved the right to use force in response to Israeli aggression and has refused to recognize the legitimacy of Israel as a state.

Some analysts saw a silver living in Hamas’ 2006 election victory: Hamas, which is classified as a terrorist organization by the US government, would be forced to replace agitation and loud rhetoric with practical services and effective governance. By taking on a position of responsibility, Hamas would either be forced to moderate itself and rule effectively or face widespread unpopularity if it were unable to improve the lives of Palestinians. While Hamas has demonstrated a certain willingness to work with Israel to limit violence, the change has not been drastic. Rocket attacks into southern Israel continue.

Worse still, Hamas may be losing its grip on Gaza to even more extreme groups. Dennis Ross, an American diplomat who served as special Middle East coordinator under President Clinton and is now a special adviser on the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia to Secretary of State Clinton, says that there are at least 47 different militias in Gaza alone, and while Hamas may serve as the public face of Gaza, the internal dynamic is never certain.

If the recent murder of a pro-Palestinian activist in Gaza is any indication, Hamas’ hold is more tenuous than ever. On April 14, 2011, Hamas discovered the body of Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian citizen with extensive experience in Gaza who had arrived in 2008 to protest the Israeli blockade. Arrigoni had been captured by a radical Salafi-Jihadist group that threatened to kill him unless Hamas released the leader of their movement. Salafi-Jihadist groups consider Hamas to be too moderate and have often fired homemade rockets into Israel in an effort to stir up conflict with Israel. While Hamas has often cracked down on such groups, the murder of Arrigoni is likely to embarrass Hamas, says Fares Akram of the New York Times. Hamas has prided itself on “restoring security and ending years of armed chaos in Gaza,” and the kidnapping was the first of a foreigner in Gaza since Hamas took control in 2007.

Operation Cast Lead, Part II

Arrigoni’s murder was just the latest example of a recent surge of violence between Gaza and Israel that began in earnest in early March with the murder of an Israeli settler family in the West Bank settlement of Itamar. Five people, including a three-month-old baby and two other children, were stabbed to death in their beds. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades-Imad Mughniyah Brigades took responsibility and claimed their actions were justified in light of ongoing Israeli violence against Palestinians. In response, Israeli government officials vowed to expand settlement into the West Bank.

Then, on March 23, 2011, Jerusalem suffered its first bombing in seven years when a busy bus stop was attacked, killing one. The Al Quds Brigades, an armed wing of the radical Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, took credit for the attack and said there would be more bombings deep within Israel in the future.

Ongoing rocket attacks into southern Israel, including a militant attack on an Israeli school bus with an anti-tank missile, have provoked a strong response from Israel and tit-for-tat retaliation across the Israel-Gaza border. Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, has said repeatedly that his country would take “all necessary action” to protect itself and its citizens. After the school bus attack, Israeli aircraft and tanks struck Gaza, killing seven Hamas militants and five civilians, according to Time magazine.

Hamas has struck back with a fury. Since April 7, 2011, militants in Gaza have fired more than 120 rockets and mortar shells into southern Israel, the largest single surge in strikes since 2009. Breaking a two-year-old policy, Hamas has also publicly taken credit for some of the attacks, perhaps so as not to alienate Palestinians who have found Hamas too weak-willed compared to more radical local groups. Israeli reprisals have killed a total of 19 Palestinians, including six civilians, and wounded 65 others, says Time. At the same time, Israel’s new Iron Dome missile defense system has proven a success, stopping numerous attempted rocket attacks into cities across southern Israel, including Ashkelon.

The last time Israel was faced with such a spate of violence from Gaza, it responded with Operation Cast Lead, a highly controversial three-week military action intended to stop rocket fire from Gaza into Israel. Israel struck with coordinated ground, air, and naval forces, killing more than 1,000 (including a large number of civilians) and wounding more than 5,000. After the conflict, the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed a Fact-Finding Mission led by former South African judge Richard Goldstone to investigate accusations of war crimes. The Goldstone Report, released in September 2009, accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes, but the majority of the international attention focused on accusations that Israel had targeted civilians.

The risk of a revival of conflict is real. In late March, the International Crisis Group put out a briefing paper called “Gaza: The Next Israeli-Palestinian War?” in response to the recent rise in violence. Hamas may be losing control of Gaza, as evidenced by Arrigoni’s murder, or it may believe that Israel will back off before invading again, given the harsh international response to Operation Cast Lead. On April 10, 2011, a senior member of Hamas made an appeal for calm and peace on Israeli radio, but it is unclear how his call will be received. As a senior Israeli official in the Southern Command told Time in 2010, a renewed conflict would be “harder and more painful than the last one.” He added that Cast Lead One was just a small part of the IDF’s power, and 80 percent will not be withheld in the next attack. Neither Israel nor Hamas wants to go to war—but the inextricable tug of retaliation and the necessity to respond just may push both sides into renewed conflict despite the irrationality of war.

The widespread fear is that, given the current environment, a single incident could provide the spark to initiate an Israeli offensive. Cross-border retaliations have developed into a calibrated, almost performance-like, aspect since 2009, but as Israeli leaders have said, if an Israeli kindergarten is hit with a rocket attack from Gaza, all bets are off.

Words as Weapons

With Al Jazeera’s release of the Palestine papers in late January, a less violent, but equally explosive, ingredient was added to the mix. The trove contained almost 1,700 files, including meeting minutes, draft agreements, reports and studies, internal e-mails, talking points and preparatory notes for meetings, and more dating from 1999 to 2010, according to a release by Al Jazeera English. Much like document releases by WikiLeaks, the Palestine Papers have become an issue in and of themselves, and their release may mark a turning point in the ongoing peace process. The question is whether it will be a turning point for better or worse.

As Ben Smith of Politico put it, the main revelation of the Palestine Papers can be summarized as follows: during negotiations, both the Palestinians and Israelis have privately offered far greater concessions than they have ever admitted to publicly. Despite the private offers of far-reaching concessions on both sides, however, the gaps between the two groups remains wide.

The big winner from the release of the papers was Hamas, which was able to position itself as the true representative of the Palestinian people, while Abbas and other leaders of the Palestinian authority have come under criticism for offering to concede to Israel on many questions that Hamas considers non-negotiable. Indeed, Abbas even said that the release of the papers by Al Jazeera was an attempt to bring down the Palestinian Authority government. At least one member of Abbas’ team suffered direct repercussions: top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat was forced to resign after it was revealed that the source of the leak was in his own office.

Meanwhile, the United Nations is playing an ever-larger role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In February, the Security Council very nearly passed a resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as “illegal” and ordering all settlement construction there to stop; the United States was the sole dissenter, causing the resolution to fail with its veto power. Though Susan Rice, US Ambassador to the United Nations, strongly rejected the legitimacy of Israeli settlements, she said the passage of the resolution would not improve the likelihood of a peace agreement and would only harden resentment on both sides. The United States had threatened to support the resolution in the lead-up to the vote in order to leverage pressure against Israel to stop building, but Israel has nonetheless resumed construction after a ten-month building freeze ended in September 2010. Even more importantly, there is growing expectation that the United Nations General Assembly will endorse a unilateral Palestinian declaration of an independent state within the 1967 borders by September. If the United Nations endorses the declaration, Israel would be in violation of international law by occupying a sovereign state recognized by that body.

To head off this move and calm international furor—even Israel, after all, is not entirely immune to international outrage—Prime Minister Netanyahu is considering a military withdrawal from the West Bank. It is not only the Palestinians who face internal turmoil and division, however. According to Haaretz, hard-line Israeli settlers have threatened a possible takeover of parts of the West Bank if the military were to withdraw. As September approaches and the possibility of a UN resolution in support of a Palestinian declaration of statehood becomes more likely, tension between Israelis hoping for a compromise and hard-liners will only increase.

A New Voice

If the Arab revolts and the recent surge of violence have heightened tensions in Israel and Palestine and made the specter of renewed war more likely, another trend has revealed a possible path forward. Palestinian students inspired by the movements in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya called for huge public demonstrations on March 15, 2011 to force an end to the internal Palestinian divisions that have crippled united action; like the other young revolutionaries they sought to emulate, the organizers of the movement used Facebook to mobilize supporters and spread information.

The rallies held in March were met with decidedly mixed results. Only a couple thousand Palestinians attended the demonstration in Ramallah in the West Bank, and fewer than 10,000 attended a parallel demonstration in Gaza City. Nonetheless, the movement has already seen some gains as both Hamas and Fatah attempt to blunt public pressure: according to Time, both sides felt sufficient public pressure that each made very public moves toward unity. Ismail Haniyeh, Prime Minister of Gaza, issued an invitation to Abbas to visit Gaza. Abbas accepted and the details of the journey are being arranged. Hamas and Fatah were also threatened enough by the demonstrations in March that they chose to co-opt them, flooding the demonstrations with loyalists chanting party slogans and waving flags and signs. The demonstrations were supposed to be nonpartisan, but members of both factions arrived with loudspeakers and microphones and tried to turn the events into public rallies in support of their faction. Hamas even went so far as to break up the Gaza City protests. The demonstrations may not have gone as intended, then, but they have certainly touched a nerve.

The leaders of the March 15th Movement are young, networked, and nonviolent; they see the recent uprising in Egypt as an example of the power of non-violence and united action. In order to settle grievances with Israel, they say, Palestinians must first settle the issues that divide their own ranks. In this vein, leaders of the movement have called for the revival of the Palestinian National Council, a governing body that was largely abandoned after the Oslo Accords created the Palestinian Authority. According to The Economist, young Palestinians are tired of both Fatah and Hamas and the rule-by-decree style that has characterized Palestinian life recently, as both factions seek to consolidate power in their respective areas of control. If the young leaders of the March 15th movement can unite enough Palestinians around these common grievances, it will be a major step. Divide-and-conquer may be a useful strategy for warfare, but it has proven untenable in negotiations. The only hope for peace is through negotiations by leaders of both the Israeli and Palestinian sides that can truly speak on behalf of their people. It is far too early to pin hope on the movement as either moderate or powerful enough to broker any type of sustained and lasting peace, but the outburst of a grass-roots, popular movement like the March 15th movement represents a positive first step.

It would be foolhardy to attempt to predict with any certainty what the future holds for Israel and Palestine. The energy unleashed by the Arab Spring was bound to find its way into the dynamic of the region’s omnipresent conflict, but whether that energy is directed toward violence or reconciliation remains to be seen. If attacks from and into Gaza continue to escalate, it is only a matter of time before a rocket finds its way to a kindergarten and unleashes a wave of harsh Israeli retaliation like Operation Cast Lead. If the international community can responsibly pressure Israel into accepting compromises and the Palestinians can present a united front in calls for peace, the first tentative steps toward a long-term solution may be possible. The alternative is more violence and suffering for a region that has seen more than its share.