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From: "Middle East Report
Online" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Weary, Guarded Hope in Gaza
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 12:05:02 -0500
Weary, Guarded Hope in Gaza
Omar Karmi
February 8, 2005
(Omar Karmi is managing editor of Palestine Report and a reporter for
the
Jordan Times.)
There is a bullet hole in the door of the Sufi family's diwan. The
windows
are newly replaced. Inside the clan's gathering place, a large
rectangular
room lined with cushions and small tables, there is further evidence of
life
on the front line in the Gaza Strip. At least eight more bullet holes
add
texture to the otherwise bare white walls. Family elder Humeid Ayed
al-Sufi,
52, his wife and ten children live in the apartment upstairs. The
apartment
has four bedrooms, but for the past year the family has huddled together
in
the only one that does not overlook the street. "It's just not safe
at
night. There's too much shooting," said Sufi, a taxi
driver.
At the February 8 Sharm al-Sheikh summit between Palestinian
Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the
two
sides agreed "to end all acts of violence." While their
agreement fell short
of a formal ceasefire announcement, people like the Sufis in the
Tal
al-Sultan neighborhood of Rafah will be the first to feel the effect of
any
lull in the violence.
"STOP SHOOTING"
Across the street and 500 meters of empty wasteland from the building
where
the Sufis live is the Egyptian border. Israeli army watchtowers overlook
the
area, both to control the border and to guard a nearby Jewish
settlement.
Tal al-Sultan is a place of nightly gunfire and the scene of some of
the
fiercest fighting of the second intifada.
Not far from here, in October 2004, an Israeli soldier reportedly
emptied
his magazine into wounded 13-year old schoolgirl Iman al-Hums. Five
months
earlier, Tal al-Sultan saw one of the Israeli army's largest incursions
into
Palestinian territory in the four years of the intifada. The
announced
purpose of that incursion was to find and destroy tunnels allegedly used
to
smuggle weapons into Gaza from Egypt. Those tunnels were put to a
different
use on December 12 when a large explosive device was placed under an
army
border outpost, and two armed Palestinians, one from Hamas' Izzedin
al-Qassam Brigades and one from the Fatah-affiliated al-Aqsa
Brigades,
emerged shooting to claim the lives of five Israeli soldiers.
"I hope the fighters will stop shooting and the soldiers will
withdraw,"
said Sufi, speaking just over a week after ongoing talks between Abbas
and
the armed factions had resulted in an informal and temporary agreement
to
end attacks on Israeli positions. "There is still random shooting at
night
from the Israelis," said Sufi, "though it's much better than
before. But we
want complete quiet."
RAPID SUCCESSION
Sufi might have his wish granted if all parties respect the
ceasefire
announcement in Sharm al-Sheikh. A lasting ceasefire would be a
significant
achievement for Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, who ran his
presidential
campaign on a platform that included opposition to the armed intifada and
a
strategy of pursuing Palestinian goals through negotiations only.
Following
his victory in the January 9 election, his advisers and the
international
media claimed a ringing mandate for that agenda.
But Abbas' presidency got off to a stormy start. On January 14, five
days
after the election, a joint operation mounted by the armed groups of
Fatah,
Hamas and the Popular Resistance Committees at the Mintar (Karni)
crossing
between the Gaza Strip and Israel resulted in the deaths of six
Israelis.
The operation prompted Sharon to freeze newly restarted contacts with
the
Palestinian Authority (PA) the next day, even as Abbas was sworn in
as
president.
Abbas responded by immediately heading to Gaza for talks with the
factions,
but on the same day, January 18, a suicide bombing claimed by the
Izzedin
al-Qassam Brigades killed one Israeli soldier and wounded seven others
near
the Jewish settlement of Gush Katif. The attack was widely interpreted as
an
open challenge to the new leader, and prompted substantial criticism in
the
Palestinian press. Writing in the al-Ayyam newspaper, Hani Habib argued
that
the two operations were legitimate resistance to the occupation, but
also
that they could be seen as an attempt "at undermining any popular
mandate
Abu Mazen has to put the Palestinian house in order and enable the PA
to
honor the obligations of the road map."
Hamas denied that any challenge was intended, however, and soon there was
an
announcement that the talks had yielded an agreement to calm things down.
On
January 20, the PA, in coordination with the Israeli army, deployed
troops
in northern Gaza to prevent Qassam rockets from being fired at
settlements
or into the Israeli town of Sderot. Efforts at PA-Israeli security
coordination resumed, with the first high-level meetings in a year and
a
half between former Palestinian minister of public security Muhammad
Dahlan
and Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. On January 27, further PA
troops
were deployed in southern Gaza, and Sharon declared that he was
"very
satisfied" with the Palestinian measures. A date was announced for
the Sharm
al-Sheikh summit, freshly confirmed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
paid
visits to Sharon and Abbas, and suddenly the hoped-for truce appears to
be
in place.
GHOSTS OF HUDNAS PAST
It was a rapid succession of events, one that has elicited sanguine
commentary abroad, but too much water has passed under the bridge for
Gazans
to be anything but wearily and guardedly hopeful. Ask anyone whether
they
are optimistic that a ceasefire will work and the response is
almost
invariably a shrug of the shoulders and a "God
willing."
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, on the other hand, is blunt about what
it
would take for a ceasefire to prevail. "The ball is in Israel's
court," he
said in an interview before the Feburary 8 summit. "If they agree to
our
stipulations we can enter into a ceasefire." Abu Zuhri, like most
Hamas
officials, rarely drives anywhere for fear of assassination,
traveling
mainly on foot instead. Perhaps as a result, or perhaps deliberately, he
is
a good hour late for an appointment with reporters in an office in
downtown
Gaza City.
An end to Israeli assassinations comes high on Hamas' list of
stipulations,
which also includes an end to Israeli incursions into Palestinian
territory,
the removal of checkpoints, a withdrawal of Israeli forces from
Palestinian
towns and villages, and the return of the bodies of slain Palestinians
as
well as a return of those who were deported by Israel from the West Bank
to
Gaza. Finally, and Abu Zuhri stresses this point as "very
important," Hamas
wants a release of Palestinian prisoners. Some 8,000 Palestinians
arrested
during the past four years currently languish in Israeli
prisons.
His insistence on this point may partly explain the recent PA rejection
of
an Israeli cabinet decision to release 900 prisoners as an overture
to
Abbas, 500 of them before the February 8 summit. It would have been
the
largest such release in four years of fighting. On February 4, PA
negotiators called the offer "insulting" and said it was
"harming [Abbas]
rather than coming toward him." The PA is especially keen on the
release of
234 prisoners who were incarcerated before the 1993 Oslo
accords.
The two sides have been here before. During the 2003 "hudna,"
the temporary
ceasefire unilaterally entered by Palestinian factions when Abbas was
prime
minister, Israel released 339 prisoners in a similar "good
will" gesture.
But with 100 of the prisoners serving time for criminal offenses rather
than
anything related to the uprising, and most of the rest close to being let
go
anyway, the release angered rather than placated the Palestinian side.
The
prisoner release issue will continue to be contentious as long as
Israel
insists that prisoners with "blood on their hands" are not on
the agenda.
The 2003 hudna was always conditioned on Israel's response. But
Sharon's
right-wing coalition government never acknowledged it as anything but
an
internal Palestinian issue. While there was some scaling back of
Israeli
army activity during that period, arrests of members of Palestinian
factions
continued, in several instances leading to bloodshed, most notably when
four
Palestinians, two Hamas members and two bystanders, were killed during
an
incursion into Nablus on August 9. Two suicide bombings killing two
Israelis
followed on August 12. When another Israeli incursion, ostensibly to
arrest
the Hebron leader of Islamic Jihad's al-Quds Brigades military
wing,
Muhammad Ayyoub Daoud Sidr, resulted in his killing on August 15, a
suicide
bombing carried out by a Hamas activists in revenge killed 20 people
in
Jerusalem on August 19. Israel responded by assassinating senior
Hamas
leader Ismail Abu Shanab, and on the same day, August 21, the
factions
announced the hudna over.
That experience may explain why Abu Zuhri, who is as cautious about
his
choice of words as he is about how he travels and whom he meets,
studiously
avoids the word "ceasefire" or "hudna" in describing
the current situation
in Gaza and the West Bank, preferring instead the word "calm."
"Any
ceasefire will not be between us and Abu Mazen," he says.
"There is
currently no agreement for a ceasefire, but there is an initiative by
the
resistance factions to create a temporary calm to enable the success of
the
Palestinian-Palestinian dialogue." Any formal ceasefire, he
maintains, will
depend on formal commitments from Israel that are implemented in
practice.
"ABBAS' PROGRAM"
Taking time off from organizing logistics for the January 27
municipal
elections in Rafah, local Fatah leader Hasan al-Ajrami was equally
insistent
that while all Fatah members will follow "Abbas' program," the
success or
failure of that program "completely depends on Israel."
"If the Israeli
incursions and killings continue, the armed resistance will be back
by
popular demand. You heard the firing tonight," he continued,
referring to
several bursts of sometimes heavy machine gun fire from the direction of
the
Morag settlement that earlier had punctuated an otherwise unusually
quiet
Rafah evening. "There was no reason for that shooting. This simply
has to
stop."
A similar burst of apparently random gunfire that morning from Israeli
army
positions around another settlement a little further north near
Deir
al-Balah killed a three-year old girl, Rahma Abu Shamas, as she was
taking
breakfast with her family. The Israeli army said there had been
Palestinian
shooting in the area at the time, something Rahma's family flatly
denied.
"There was a 15-minute burst of gunfire from the settlement,
"said Rahma's
father Ibrahim, 40, in the tented enclosure outside his tiny home where
his
daughter was killed. "I don't know why. There is no rocket fire
here, and
there was no shooting before that. It happens often, but it had been
quiet
for three days even from the Israeli side, and we heard there was a
ceasefire. Now, we see there's no change."
"International law gives us the right to fight the occupation,"
Ajrami says.
"When people's houses are attacked like [Shamas'], they will fight
back, and
no one can or will prevent them from doing so." Underneath the
rhetoric,
Ajrami's is more or less the line that Abbas has taken himself. While
PA
security forces have been deployed to prevent rocket fire and
"impose law
and order," Abbas has been clear that he has no intention of getting
engaged
in violent confrontations with the factions, thereby risking civil
war.
Israel is highly critical of this position, but Sharon's government
will
have to accept it, at least for the time being, if a ceasefire is to
hold
any promise.
PA security officials in Gaza were not available for comment before
the
summit. Speaking on condition of anonymity, however, one lieutenant from
the
newly deployed security forces in Beit Hanoun near Gaza's northern
border
with Israel made clear how far he was prepared to go in confronting
members
of the armed groups. "First of all, we [the security forces] are
also of the
people. As people we can talk, and that is what we will do to make
them
listen to us. If they still insist, we will use force, but I will not
draw
my gun. Spilling Palestinian blood is a red line we will not
cross."
He and his three subordinates were stationed as far north as had been
agreed
in the recent security coordination meetings with the Israeli army.
Their
orders were to prevent any unauthorized entry to the farms and orange
groves
that abut the Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing and a small cluster of
settlements
nearby. A pickup truck ahead had been summarily turned away, to the
obvious
displeasure of its driver and passenger. So far, the unnamed
lieutenant
said, everyone had cooperated with them. "Everyone," he said,
"is concerned
that there should be calm." Such was also the assessment of Amin Abu
Odeh, a
Fatah candidate in the municipal council elections in Beit Hanoun.
Speaking
on the sidelines of a Fatah rally on January 25, Abu Odeh said: "The
calm is
very important. We will support quiet in this area, and act to shut up
any
troublemakers. We will do our best to push ourselves forward rather
than
backward."
TIME ON WHOSE SIDE
In Tal al-Sultan, residents have acted several times to prevent
Qassam
rockets from being fired from the area, according to Sufi. "It is
always
[the residents] who pay the price. The Israelis don't distinguish
between
civilians and fighters." At the same time, no one questioned or
criticized
the volley of Qassam rockets the Izzedin al-Qassam Brigades launched at
Gush
Katif settlements in almost immediate response to the January 31 slaying
of
a 10-year old Rafah schoolgirl.
Like it takes time for tea to brew, says Ajrami, it will take time for
any
ceasefire to take hold. He also acknowledges that, beyond the
smaller
factions including Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees and
the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which have so far refused
to
accept the notion of a ceasefire under occupation, it will be hard for
Fatah
to control all the elements within its ranks. "There is opposition
within
Fatah against this move. There will always be opposition. But the
strength
of this opposition depends on Israel."
Abu Zuhri is more confident about discipline from the rank and file
within
Hamas. Asked if all Hamas members would obey an order by the
political
leadership of the group to end armed resistance, Abu Zuhri answers
without
hesitation, as if amused by the suggestion that anything else would
be
possible. "For sure."
Hamas has for some time been embroiled in an internal debate over how
best
to gain greater political influence over Palestinian institutions. Buoyed
by
recent successes in local elections -- the January 27 vote handed
Hamas
control over seven of the 10 municipalities up for grabs -- the movement
is
highly likely to enter elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council
in
July. According to Abu Zuhri, the faction is so close to taking
this
decision as to be in advanced negotiations over election procedures
with
Fatah and the PA. The Hamas leadership holds Abbas in high regard, and
all
sides describe the current Palestinian-Palestinian dialogue as
"serious and
mature." As such, and with some major "commitments" from
Sharon in Sharm
al-Sheikh, a stable ceasefire would be in the interest of the
Islamist
party.
If Hamas is on board, and given the widespread popular desire for peace
and
quiet, Abbas could be in a strong position to deliver "calm"
from his side.
With a left-wing coalition now propping up Sharon's government,
Israel
appears prepared to go some distance toward assuring a ceasefire's
success.
But, as the prisoner spat illustrates, for this ceasefire not to go the
way
of the 2003 hudna, substantial and immediate changes must happen on
the
ground -- changes perhaps more substantial than Sharon is prepared to
make.
"Israel has again been offered a choice between an olive branch and
a gun,"
says Ajrami, in reference to Yasser Arafat's 1974 UN speech. "Israel
has the
military might. It is the occupying power. You can't expect an
occupied
people to show good intentions toward an occupation. Israel must prove
its
seriousness."
-----
For background on the Palestinian presidential election, see Peter
Lagerquist, "A Very Slippery 'Landslide' for Mahmoud Abbas,"
Middle East
Report Online, January 20, 2005.
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero012005.html
.
Middle East Report Online is a free service of the Middle East
Research
and Information Project (MERIP).
.
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