Global Policy Forum

By Graham Usher

For Israel and the Palestinians the war for Iraq has already begun. The new Israeli government is using the preamble to establish realities it hopes will contain, in the aftermath, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on terms laid down by Ariel Sharon and approved by George Bush. The Palestinians, people and leadership alike, are seeking only to "outlive the crisis", aware that the blowback from Baghdad may prove every bit as lethal to their cause as the winds that swept the region after 11 September.

The war is being fought, vicariously, in Gaza. On 15 February a roadside bomb killed four Israeli soldiers inside a tank, and Israel's Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz, vowed "a harsh war against Israel's enemy Hamas". Since then, 44 Palestinians (and one Israeli soldier) have been killed in 14 army raids on towns, villages and refugee camps throughout the Strip.

The latest attacks came on consecutive days. On 2 March Israeli tanks and bulldozers penetrated deep into Khan Yunis, home to 100,000 Palestinians and Hamas stronghold. An eight-storey apartment block was razed to the earth, as were five other buildings and the walls of a school and hospital -- all used, said the army, by guerrillas to snipe on the military bases and settlements that now ring the southern Gaza town in a vise. Three Palestinians were killed, including a nine-year old boy shot dead at the funeral for the other two, and 54 rendered homeless. There were no Israeli casualties.

Twenty-four hours later army undercover squads, backed by tanks, invaded Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza to capture veteran Hamas political leader, Mohamed Taha, and three of his sons, all activists in the movement. In ferocious defence of the camp, eight Palestinians were slain, including a 13-year old boy shot dead in the stomach and a 33- year pregnant woman, buried alive under the debris of a dynamited house. Two other shelters were demolished and a mosque raked by machine-gun fire. Before leaving, army bulldozers ripped up the camp's electricity and sewage systems.

The war is certainly harsh, but what is the aim? Some Israeli military analysts aver the offensive is to "pressure" Hamas into accepting the one-year moratorium on armed attacks proposed by Egypt at the inter- factional Palestinian talks in Cairo in January and now adopted as official policy by the Palestinian Authority and Fatah leaderships. But given Mofaz and Sharon's stated desire to "uproot the military infrastructure" of Hamas, with or without a cease-fire, such a claim seems disingenuous.

Rather, Israel's attack appears born of the realisation that Hamas in Gaza remains the cutting edge of the armed Palestinian resistance, whether in terms of its base among the people, its ability to strike at soldiers and settlements within the Strip or growing prowess in pitching rockets at Israeli towns beyond them.

Mofaz knows that if Israel is to suborn Gaza, it must "deter" the base and dismantle the prowess, to "create in the terrorists a persecution mania". That accomplished -- and in the propitious circumstances provided by a post-Saddam Iraq -- containment can be imposed on Gaza along the lines of that in the West Bank. This at least is reading of the Palestinian leadership. Israel's military actions are "a prelude to reoccupying all of the Gaza Strip, exploiting the world's preoccupation with the Iraqi crisis," said PLO negotiator, Saeb Erekat, on 3 March.

Against this "looming storm" leaders like Erekat seek international shelter, aided by Palestinian remedies that will, they hope, bring international intervention. The first is that Hamas and other Palestinian factions accept unconditionally Egypt's cease-fire proposal and "serve the higher interests of the Palestinian people," in the words of a leadership statement issued on 3 March. The second is compliance with the reform agenda set down by the Middle East Quartet (the US, UN, European Union and Russia) to get them to publish and activate the diplomatic "roadmap", now "the sole means to achieve security and stability in the Middle East".

The first remedy requires a shared national consensus among the Palestinian factions: the second, international pressure on Israel to accept the roadmap. Neither has been forthcoming. According to PA sources, another meeting of the factions in Cairo has been "indefinitely postponed" due to Hamas and Islamic Jihad's refusal to accept the Egyptian cease-fire. As for the Quartet, it has been rigorous in the pursuit of Palestinian reform but mortified in the face of Israeli and American intransigence that would anchor it in reality, such as allowing Palestinian elections based on an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian towns, villages and refugee camps.

In the hope that the first will some day lead to the second, on 3 March Yasser Arafat gained Fatah's approval for the appointment of a Palestinian prime minister and announced meetings of the PLO Central Council and PA parliament to effect the necessary constitutional changes. It is unclear whether Israel will allow these meetings to take place. It is clear -- at least to the Palestinians in Gaza -- that neither reform nor a cease-fire is likely to thwart Israel's military solutions in the occupied territories, at least not this side of that other war in Iraq.

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