A regular feature of news and opinion pieces from the Israeli and Palestinian press.
1.) At 6AM this morning, a ceasefire went into effect between Israel and Hamas. Unfortunately, the agreement is extremely fragile. In a worrying sign, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has threatened to call off the ceasefire accord if even one Qassam rocket lands in Israel. Given the fractured nature of Gaza’s militant groups, Livni’s statement suggests that the prospects for a long-term calm are not promising. Indeed, as Israeli analyst Daniel Levy writes, it is not at all clear that Hamas has enough control over the activities of Gaza-based militant groups to ensure that the ceasefire actually holds; he notes the possibility that Islamic Jihad, pushed by Iran, will continue to fire rockets into Israel. Moreover, he speculates that Fatah-affiliated militants might attempt to undermine the deal through rocket attacks of their own.
Levy is mildly optimistic about the short-term, however, noting that both sides have more of an interest in a detente than they are letting on.
The cause for hope is that neither side really thinks it has a better option. Israel cannot deal a definitive military blow to Hamas and the opposite equation is even more unlikely. The residents of the Israeli communities in the south bordering Gaza, including Sderot and Ashkelon, will welcome a respite from the intolerable and unpredictable realities of life in the shadow of rocket fire. The 1.4 million Gazans who are not expecting to spend next year in the US as Fulbright Scholars have been subject to the devastating humanitarian consequences of the collective punishment imposed on their small strip of territory. Both of these communities will bear the ultimate price if the cease-fire does not hold.
2.) In a much less optimistic assessment, Israeli journalist Abe Selig chronicles the recent history of Israeli-Hamas ceasefires, placing this latest accord in the context of the several short-lived agreements that have come before.
In February of 2005, a similar cease-fire was announced, which lasted, according to official sources, until June of 2006. But the interim was fraught with rocket attacks on Israeli territory and IAF responses on Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza. In fact, the truce was almost completely called off five months after it started, when dozens of rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel, killing a 22 year-old woman and sparking IAF attacks that killed six Hamas terrorists.
The following cease-fire, declared in November of 2006, was filled with even more violence, with 75 rockets fired into Israel within the first month of the so-called cessation. According to the Israel Project, an international non-profit organization that provides journalists with information about the Middle East, two Israelis were killed by rocket fire in May of 2007, effectively ending that cease-fire, which had lasted, officially, for a year and a half.
3.) The Jerusalem Post reports that there has been some high-level discussion about the possibility of deploying a multinational force in Gaza during the final stages of the ceasefire accord.
According to a senior defense official involved in the cease-fire talks, Egypt raised the request for the deployment of the Arab force during meetings between Amos Gilad, head of the Defense Ministry’s Diplomatic-Security Bureau, and Egyptian Intelligence chief Omar Suleiman. Israel, the defense official said, was not completely opposed to the idea since it would ultimately bring Arab countries such as Egypt to “take responsibility” for events in Gaza. The deployment was also raised as a way for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party to regain control of the Gaza Strip.
At this point, however, such talk is still somewhat speculative, since “few people really expected that the cease-fire would last that long, or would run through all the relevant stages necessary to even begin discussions about the introduction of foreign Arab forces into the Gaza Strip.”
4.) Dion Nissenbaum, the Jerusalem bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers, reports on an innovate new effort to curb human rights abuses in the Occupied Territories.
Palestinians in the West Bank have started arming themselves with a new weapon in their ongoing conflict with Israeli settlers: Video cameras. Under an innovative program called “Shooting Back,” the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has handed out scores of video cameras to Palestinians across the West Bank so they can document attacks and harassment by Israeli settlers.
Last week, Palestinian farmers with a video camera captured one of the most serious incidents so far. The 69-second video shows four masked men with sticks walking up to a Palestinian farmer and beating him in a field.
Israeli police recently arrested two people who they suspect of being connected to the attack. Some Jewish settlers have indicated that they, too, will begin to wield video cameras in order to document acts of violence and abuse carried out by their Palestinian neighbors.