“Illegal” Palestinian Homes Demolished

Here is a news report about some Palestinians who had their homes demolished on the pretext that they had been built illegally. This kind of thing happens all the time in Jerusalem, where new homes for Jewish Israelis are built all the time but Palestinians find themselves mysteriously unable to obtain planning permission. If they go ahead and build anyway then sooner or later the Israeli authorities show up with bulldozers.

The odd thing here is that these demolished homes are not in Jerusalem or in some other area under direct Israeli occupation, but rather in Rafah, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip. The homes were demolished by security forces working for the Hamas government that administers Gaza, on the basis that the land was government owned. That some of the people whose shacks were destroyed had previously been made homeless by Israel’s invasion in January 2009 seems not to have moved the Hamas cadres.

This is of course incredibly ironic, and not in a good way.

Hamas continues to hold journalist

Paul Martin is a British journalist and film-maker who has previously worked for the BBC and the Times. He is currently under arrest in Gaza, being held in administrative detention by the Hamas authorities there. Mr Martin’s detention is disturbing in a number of ways. First of all, his arrest marks the first imprisonment of a foreign journalist since Hamas took control of the Strip in 2007. But the circumstances of his arrest also have sinister implications. Mr Martin had been working on a documentary on Mohammad Abu Muailik, an activist linked to Fatah, the historically dominant Palestinian group with which Hamas is in conflict. Abu Muailik had fallen foul of Hamas and was himself on trial, accused of collaboration with Israel. Mr Martin had travelled to Gaza to give evidence on Abu Muailik’s behalf, but when he began to speak in court the prosecutor accused him of being an accessory and had him arrested. One must wonder why the Hamas government goes through the charade of running courts and pretending towards some kind of due process when its legal system is being run in this kind of farcical manner.

more (Guardian)

Hamas secrets of Barack Obama

The Guardian reports that Barack Obama is going to establish secret backdoor channels of communication with Hamas, in a startling break with previous US leaders' policy of total ostracism of the popular Palestinian Islamist party: Obama camp 'prepared to talk to Hamas'. Obviously, these secret backdoor channels are a bit less secret now that Obama "sources" are reputedly telling the Guardian all about them, but I imagine that any links will be tentative and covert for some time yet - don't expect to see Ismail Haniyeh (the Palestinian Authority's de jure prime minister) or Hamas' exiled leader Khaled Meshal invited to the White House any time soon.

I'm curious as to whether this means that all the right-wingers in the USA and Israel were right to fear the election of Barack Obama. From their perspective, having any kind of non-violent interaction with Hamas represents a terrifying concession to the most sinister of forces. Aside from being an obviously sensible course of action, even tentative US engagement with Hamas may also prove an annoyance to those who predicted that no change whatsoever would ever result from a change in US leadership.

What exactly is war good for?

If you've seen the news, you will be aware that Israel has launched an air offensive agains the Gaza Strip of unprecedented ferocity. There are reports of about 280 people killed and over 700 wounded. While many of these are members of the Hamas-controlled security services in Gaza, the BBC quotes reports that a third of the casualties are civilians. The Israeli leadership is talking about continuing and widening their air strikes, and seem to be suggesting that a ground offensive is on the cards. Meanwhile, one Israeli has been killed by rockets fired by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip.

So, what is this all about? There had been a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The ceasefire had always been a bit shaky, and it came to an end before Christmas. Hamas cited Israel's failure to lift the siege of Gaza and its unwillingness to extend the truce to the West Bank, while Israel cited Hamas' failure to prevent the rockets being fired from Gaza at Israeli border towns and lack of progress on freeing Gilad Shalit (an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas in 2006).

Israeli forces have a tendency to lash out blindly, and this time is no exception. It is very difficult to see what exactly they are trying to achieve with this latest offensive. They would, obviously, like to stop Hamas and other Palestinian groups from using Gaza as a base to fire rockets into Israel, but on previous form no amount of air raids will accomplish that. They might get more results from launching a ground offensive into Gaza, but that could easily lead to an Armageddon-like battle in which enormous numbers of Palestinian civilians (and sizeable numbers of Israeli soldiers and Hamas cadres) are killed. Even with that, the rocket fire into Israel would be likely to resume once the Israelis withdraw, while a permanent occupation of Gaza would be regarded as a Fail by Israel. It does look a bit like the Israelis might be repeating the mistakes of 2006, by launching a war that they cannot win and that will make them look to the world like total cockfarmers.

That Clausewitz guy began his famous book by saying that war is a continuation of politics by other means. He meant interstate politics (or political struggles between princes, given the times in which he lived). But it is often striking how wars can result from the internal politics of countries. Israel is holding an election in barely a month's time. Binyamin Netanyahu, the loathsome former prime minister who essentially killed the Oslo process, was riding high in the polls with his promise to stop Hamas. It seems like the leaders of the current government have decided to act tough to try and undercut Netanyahu, and it is the Palestinians who are picking up the tab for the government's attempt to regain electoral support.

At the same time, one could ask what exactly Hamas are hoping to achieve by firing rockets at Israeli civilians. At one level, there is something a bit symbolic about Hamas' rockets – they hardly ever hit anything and serve mainly to say "We're still here!". But they are being fired at Israeli civilians, and they do occasionally kill them. From Hamas' point of view, one could see the rocket campaign as an attempt to force Israel to the negotiating table, by imposing a rough balance of terror. However, this has failed; the rocket campaign has instead united Israelis behind ever more draconian (and irrational) policies. I suspect that the main targets of the Hamas rocket campaign are actually the Palestinians. The rockets are meant to show Palestinians that it is Hamas, and not the waster quislings in Fatah, who are taking the fight to the Israelis.

That said, one has to be wary of making any kind of moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel. Israel is the power besieging Gaza (with the kind assistance of Egypt). The balance of forces between Israel and Hamas is tilted so in the former's favour that it is more or less inevitable that any Hamas retaliation to Israel's siege will be made against Israeli civilians. The leaders of Hamas should nevertheless ask themselves whether ineffectually trying to kill Israeli civilians is actually that likely to raise the siege of Gaza.

Some links:

Israel renews air strikes on Gaza (BBC)

Israel's mixed motives for strikes (BBC)

To be in Gaza is to be trapped (Guardian)

Hamas, Israel, and the European Union

I have been reading lately that Israel and Hamas have agreed a truce. However, I have also read that Israel decided to start the truce by killing six Palestinian militants, leading a Hamas spokesman to vow revenge. So which is it guys, truce or war?

In other news, the European Union is apparently about to upgrade its ties with Israel. In some notional sense, EU links to Israel are tied to Israel's human rights record, but the EU never feels that actions by Israel (such as, you know, killing people or building walls through their country) warrant any invocation of penalty clauses. At a time when even the USA's Condoleeza Rice is making vague noises about Israeli settlement expansion not being such a good idea, the EU is happy to deepen its links to that country.

Let's Not Give Peace A Chance

As you know, Hamas (an Islamist political-military movement) currently exercise day-to-day control of the Gaza Strip region of Palestine (while the Israelis control its borders and airspace). From there, Hamas and other groups have been firing Qassam rockets across into Israeli border towns. As well as killing people and damaging property, this is causing great annoyance in Israel. Israeli forces have staged incursions and bombing raids into Gaza, killing many more people and destroying much more property than the rocket attacks; they have also run a blockade of the Gaza Strip, reducing the amount of foodstuffs and so on available to people there. The Israelis have, however, been unsuccessful at preventing the rockets from flying across the border.

Recently there has been some talk from Hamas of instituting either a hudna (truce) or a taddhiyya (period of calm, in which military operations would be downscaled) with the Israeli state. This would not be unprecedented, as Hamas has operated several such hudnas and taddhiyyas in the past. There was a slightly so-what quality to them in the longer term, as they failed to achieve any breakthrough in the political morass of Palestine-Israel; crucially, the Israeli state continued to assassinate Hamas activists and carry out offensive operations, and Hamas ceasefires would typically breakdown after the killing of a Hamas leader or the butchering of some Palestinian civilians who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. From the Israeli side, the Hamas ceasefires seemed rather inconsequential, given that they did not cover other militant groups such as Islamic Jihad. Nor were they always strictly observed by Hamas cadres.

The current situation seems a bit different. The talk from Hamas of a ceasefire in Gaza was initially scoffed at by the Israeli establishment and taken as a sign that the movement was hurting as a result of Israeli military action. Then some government ministers broke ranks. Perhaps registering that military action was neither halting the Qassams nor securing the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, some Israeli government ministers have suggested that a serious truce offer from Hamas should not be rejected. While these people are still placing hoops for Hamas to jump through, they are talking about concrete issues rather than the symbolic demands on which the Israeli state is traditionally fixated. It is perhaps also significant that the politicians talking about engagement with Hamas are from the mainstream of Israeli politics and not its pacifist fringes; Shaul Mofaz is from the Kadima party of Ariel Sharon and current prime minister Ehud Olmert, while Binyamin Ben-Eliezer is from the hard-nut end of Labour.

For the moment, all this talk about truces and engagement with Hamas is just talk. Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has rejected any kind of engagement with Hamas unless the movement formally recognises Israel, something the movement is unlikely to ever do. The military campaign against Hamas will continue indefinitely, whether Hamas declares a truce or not. Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, another Israeli government minister announced the expansion of Israeli settlements in Palestinian East Jerusalem. So maybe we are in for more of the same next year, or maybe the public position of Mofaz and Ben-Eliezer suggests that there are subterranaean movemens taking place within the Israeli body politic.

Freedom

I've been reading a lot about the recent breakdown of constitutional government in the Palestinian Authority, with Hamas establishing an unrecognised regime in the Gaza Strip while President Abbas set up an illegal government in the unoccupied bits of the West Bank. The International Crisis Group have an interesting report on the whole business, entitled After Gaza. Its recommendations are of the "Can't you guys just get along?" school of liberal internationalism, but there are some fascinating details in it on how the Gaza takeover happened (and how the Fatah militias there collapsed). One thing they and other commentators draw attention to is the vast improvement in the security situation in Gaza - where people previously lived in fear of crime gangs, armed clans, and corrupt state security agencies, now Hamas activists have swept these people off the streets and ensured a basic level of personal security for all Gaza residents. The release of BBC journalist Alan Johnston is the great exemplar of the Hamas new broom, with the rescue of Sabrina the Lioness a close second.

There is unfortunately a dark side to all this. It would perhaps be an exaggeration to say that Hamas have instituted a reign of terror in the Gaza Strip, but commentators have noted that the openness of discussion that characterised Palestinian life has been somewhat curtailed in the area under Hamas control. People are reported to now be guarded about expressing opinions, in a way they would apparently not have been previously even in the most authoritarian days of the Arafat administration. There have also been reports of people being tortured while in Hamas custody. The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz carries an interesting story (partly from AP) illustrating this, about a hospital doctor in Gaza who was sacked from his job and then arrested after reporting that his hospital was running short of medicines. Dr. Jomma Saka is apparently a Fatah loyalist, but the Dr. Bassem Naim, the health minister in the Gaza jurisdiction denied that Dr. Saka was arrested because of his political affiliation: "The decision to send Dr. Saka for investigations stemmed from many reasons, including giving false information that has intimidated the public"

Hamas: agents of freedom?

As you know, Hamas fighters recently cleared the Gaza Strip of security officials loyal to Fatah boss Mohammed Dahlan. Since then a degree of law and order seems to have been imposed on this troubled territory. It is early days yet, and it is always possible that the less friendly face of Hamas might soon be seen by residents of the strip. Hamas nevertheless have scored a number of propaganda coups lately. Firstly, they organised the release of Alan Johnston by the fringe militant/criminal group holding him. And today they managed to rescue a prisoner who has been held by criminals for nearly two years. Sabrina the Lioness was abudcted from Gaza Zoo by criminals who were apparently charged people 50p a time to be photgraphed beside her. Sabrina is apparently very happy to be reunited with her brother Sakher in the zoo.

The Israelis are getting in on this rescuing animals lark. Two golden eagles were busted out of a pet shop in Hebron by paratroopers last week.

Hamas & Palestine

I went to an interesting lecture yesterday by Dr Francesco Cavatorta. He specialises in the study of political Islam, and was talking about the victory of Hamas in the recent Palestinian elections. Here is my attempted summary of what he said, interspersed with occasional opinions of my own. Sorry if it goes on a bit or accidentally distorts Dr Cavatorta's opinions.

Hamas are in some ways like other Islamist groups in the Arab world. They seek to change the behaviour of individuals, in order to build a better society more in tune with Islamic principles and ultimately to seize control of the state apparatus. Like other Islamic parties they are happy to advance their goals through the political process - engaging in elections and so on.

However, Hamas have one major difference with other Islamist parties - they see themselves as engaged in a national liberation struggle against the Israeli state. As well as striving to Islamise Palestinian society, they seek to liberate all of historic Palestine from the perceived occupation of the Israelis. That is to say they seek to build a Palestinian state in all of pre-1948 Palestine.

While Hamas has an uncompromising charter, in practice they have shown themselves to be more flexible and pragmatic. In particular, they have prioritise the national liberation struggle over the goal of Islamising society. They have done this basically to build and maintain Palestinian unity in the face of Israeli power, and thus have refrained from attempts to impose their social vision.

One interesting thing about Hamas is how internally democratic it is, with the rank and file being closely involved in the formulation of policy. This is a virtue born of necessity. Israel has systematically exterminated the leadership of Hamas, so it is necessary to keep the rank and file fully onboard with all policy decisions so that there are no discontinuities when the next cohort take their brief turn at the top.

In the elections a couple of factors contributed to their victory over Fatah. Fatah is seen as having failed to deliver on bread and butter issues while engaging in corrupt cronyism. Hamas has made populist promises on economic issues, and as an opposition group it has not hitherto been able to engage in serious corruption. More generally, though, Hamas has profited from Palestinian disenchantment with the whole Oslo process; this has also seen Fatah itself move towards a rejectionist position.

So now what? There is no real likelihood of Hamas formally abandoning its campaign of violence against Israel, nor is their any likelihood of Israel and a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority engaging in face to face talks. However, Israel and Hamas have in the past had low-key indirect talks, and these are likely to continue [I have read an interview with a senior Israeli army officer, where he said that the Israeli army routinely meets with Hamas members when they hold local political office, so it is possible that Dr Cavatorta is underestimating the possibility of direct discussions between Hamas members and the Israeli state].

The West will probably choose not to talk to Palestine's new elected leaders. Western aid donors may well punish the Palestinian people for choosing Hamas, but this will not matter as much as people think. Western aid is not enormous in absolute terms, and could readily be made up by private and public donors in the Gulf and Iran. Hamas would probably prefer western money, but it will take what it can get.

Beyond that, a lot depends on whether Hamas succeeds in enticing Fatah into a national unity government. The populist promises of Hamas are probably undeliverable, so if Hamas governs on its own, it could see its popularity ebb, with Fatah staging an electoral return to power in a couple of years. By then Israel will have lengthened and strengthened its wall, and will be in a position to offer a take-it-or-leave-it Palestinian state of disconnected enclaves.

A solo Hamas government may find itself drawn toward imposing its social vision on Palestinian society as a compensation for lack of progress on the economic and national liberation fronts. This will probably further contribute to an erosion in Hamas popularity, as the Palestinian people have shown surprisingly little enthusiasm for the Islamist social project, and have punished Hamas at the polls in areas where they have attempted to enforce it.

What do I think? Well, if Fatah have the interests of the Palestinian people at heart they will join a national unity government, but if they are self-interested they will stay out. In a couple of years they could return to power, but whether they will accept the job of being Israel's bantustan enforcers remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, there is another possibility entirely - that Israel, dissatisfied with elections that produce leaderships that won't play ball, may simply shut down the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian electoral process.