Behind the pictures of a fateful Monday

Weak leadership and dogmatic inflexibility on the Palestinian side are providing excuses for many in Israel to expand settlements

Everybody in his right mind can only be saddened by the spilling of blood; each dead casualty is a human tragedy. So, there is no underestimating the extent of the drama that was played at the Gaza-Israel border on Monday, May 14, leading to 60 deaths (till the time of writing this piece) on the Palestinian side. This, as the United States was inaugurating its new embassy in Jerusalem. As could be expected, there’s been widespread expression of outrage and protest — real or for show— across the world.

However, beyond the emotional reactions, it is useful to analyse what is behind the two parallel events that took place on Monday and their implications. 

The events of May 14 at the Gaza-Israel border were part of the Hamas initiated “Great Return March”, launched on March 30 to force the Israeli government to accept “the right of return” of Palestinians. The objective of Hamas was to mobilise tens of thousands of demonstrators to overwhelm the Israel forces at the border and succeed in an attempt of mass penetration into the Israeli territory. The demonstration on Monday was meant to be the culmination of the Hamas initiative. The Israeli Airforce dropped thousands of leaflets before May 14, warning the Palestinians in Gaza to stay away from the border fence if they did not want to endanger their lives, warning that the Israeli forces were “determined to defend Israel’s sovereignty”.  

The fact is that if Hamas had even partly succeeded in its mass penetration operation the danger of high-intensity terrorist attacks inside Israel was only too real. Hamas has never renounced its official objective to eliminate the state of Israel and replace it by an Islamic state, and is considered a terrorist organisation not only by Israel but also the European Union, the US and scores of other countries.

The leaders of Hamas knew very well that the Israelis would not hesitate to use lethal force as they would not accept the risk of being overwhelmed and having infiltrations inside the Israeli territory proper. Hamas nevertheless kept mobilising the Gaza population to march to the border, with the clear calculation that they could gain a propaganda advantage through the images of Palestinian casualties at the hands of Israeli soldiers preventing any breakthrough at the border fence. So, along with the sanctimonious hand-wringing about the use of “excessive force” by the Israeli military, it might also be wise to address the long-tested cynical practice of Hamas putting young people in harm’s way to achieve its propaganda gains.

Illustration: Binay Sinha

Have the Hamas leaders achieved these gains at the cost of tens of lives and scores of wounded? Definitely yes. Have they gotten closer to achieving their objective of erasing Israel from the map? Definitely not. Neither this kind of actions — and there will certainly be others in the future — nor the kind of fake concession made by the organisation in 2017 — accepting the idea of a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders but still rejecting any recognition of the right of Israel to exist — will get the Israeli-Palestinian conflict nearer to any solution, or Hamas closer to its ultimate goal stated in its “Covenant” of the replacement of Israel by an Islamic state.

Which leads to the second event of this fateful Monday: The inauguration of the US embassy in Jerusalem. Here again the overwhelming reaction has been that this was a reckless move by President Donald Trump, just to fulfil an electoral promise and please his core constituency among the evangelical Christians. For most observers Mr Trump’s decision only adds fuel to the fire in a Middle East and Arab world convulsed in conflicts, and will complicate even more the search for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

There is some validity in all these points. However, one cannot but observe that conventional thinking has not moved the conflict one single inch towards a solution. True, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has used and contributed to the deadlocked situation to expand the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the Jerusalem area and the Golan Heights. But there is no escaping the central question: Who are the interlocutors with whom Israel could discuss a peace settlement — if it were willing to do so. 

While the Palestinian Authority led by its President Mahmoud Abbas runs most of the West Bank and has recognised the existence of the state of Israel, Hamas, which controls the Gaza strip for more than 10 years, is definitely not ready to make that kind of a move and has condemned the Oslo Accords. Hamas and Fatah — the key component of the Palestinian Authority — signed a reconciliation agreement in the fall of 2017 but the two organisations remain belligerent rivals. Armed clashes erupt frequently and Mahmoud Abbas blamed Hamas for an assassination attempt on PLA’s prime minister and the head of its intelligence service last March.

The move of the US embassy to Jerusalem may complicate the search for peace further as has been claimed, but it could also show the Palestinian parties that — whatever may be said or written — history, both ancient and modern, shows that there are very few examples of diplomatic agreements that could obfuscate or completely ignore the realities on the ground. As time passes, these realities created by Israel become more and more entrenched. Any Palestinian state that could possibly emerge one day from a negotiated settlement will be confronted with increasingly limited options. 

As for the notion that by moving its embassy to Jerusalem the US has renounced any pretence of being an honest broker between the Palestinians and the Israelis, does not hold much water. The dominant fact of the Middle East today is the intense rivalry — more precisely, animosity — between the US Saudi Arabia and Israel, on the one hand, and Iran, on the other hand. In such a context, where Hamas, as part of the Palestinian camp is very closely allied with — and supported by — Tehran, any US policymaker will know that US interests at this stage are more aligned with Israel. The discreet but very significant rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel is a testimony of how things have changed since the time of Yasser Arafat. In this new Middle East context, the Palestinian issue, once at the centre of the region’s problems, has now been sidelined. 

The tragic reality is that the weakness of leadership and the years of evasion from realism into fiery empty rhetoric, personal rivalries and dogmatic inflexibility on the Palestinian side are providing excuses for many in Israel — starting with Mr Netanyahu — to expand settlements. In the meantime, the prospect of a two-state solution, the only realistic solution to the conflict, becomes more remote every day. 

The writer is president of Smadja & Smadja, a strategic advisory firm. Twitter: @ClaudeSmadja