Truce or Bloodbath

Ignoring its own people's wishes in attacking Gaza, Israel leaves Hamas no choice but to fight back

By Azzam Tamimi

A recent poll published in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz
suggested that 64% of Israelis favoured a negotiated
truce with Hamas. But in the past few days, a military
onslaught that has so far claimed more than a hundred
Palestinian lives, mostly women and children, has made
it clear that the Israeli leadership is not interested
in any peaceful exit from the current predicament.

The Ha'aretz poll may point to a lack of confidence
in the government's ability to settle its problem
with Gaza through the use of force, and vindicate
those within the military and intelligence community
who have been advising the Israeli prime minister,
Ehud Olmert to talk to Hamas. A truce as once
proposed by Giora Eiland, who served as national
security adviser to the former prime minister
Ariel Sharon, would entail a reasonable
exchange of prisoners and a lifting of
sanctions in exchange for a cessation of
all hostilities between the two sides.
Hamas would, in principle, have agreed
to negotiate a truce along these terms.
But it seems that Olmert's cabinet has not
given up on the idea of bringing Hamas to
its knees or finishing it off altogether.

The attack on Gaza comes at a time when all
previous means of inciting the Strip's population
against Hamas have failed. The sanctions imposed
globally on Hamas and the siege that almost
suffocates Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants
have neither forced Hamas to accept the
three conditions set out by the Quartet
(the US, the UN, Russia and the EU) nor
convinced the Palestinian population to
rise against it.

The enormous resources dedicated to empowering
an influential group within Fatah to effect a
coup against the legitimate government backfired
and finally uprooted that group from the
Palestinian political scene. Starving Gaza
while the Ramallah-based West Bank authority
receives financial and political backing from
Israel and its allies in the west has failed
to shift Palestinian opinion in favour of
President Mahmud Abbas and his prime minister,
Salam Fayyad. So, rather than heed the advice
of the experts and fulfil the wish of his own
public, Olmert has decided to go to war with
the Gaza Strip.

Once again Olmert is taking a gamble. He might
have been encouraged by the fact that, unlike
Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas has no immediate
regional backers and is less capable of confronting
his troops. The rockets fired from Gaza are
nothing compared with the missiles Hizbullah
used in July 2006.

This is perhaps what encourages senior Israelis
officials to threaten the Palestinians with a
"shoah" if they continue to defy Israel. It is
not clear whether the Israeli deputy defence
minister meant to use the Hebrew word for
Holocaust when he warned the Palestinians of
Gaza. What really matters is that the message
has been delivered; this Israeli administration,
which has failed to force capitulation on the
Palestinians, is willing to use its war machine
to burn them alive.

The Israeli establishment is incapable of learning
a single lesson from past experience. Hamas,
like Hizbullah, and the Palestinians, like the
Lebanese, have no choice but to fight back until
the Israelis are forced to retreat. Few people
thought that Hizbullah could defeat Israel in
2006. Fewer people may think today that Hamas
is capable of something similar. They might be
surprised. The number of casualties among the
Palestinians will, undoubtedly be much higher,
but Israelis will die and suffer too. The only
way to avoid a bloodbath is for the Israeli army
to withdraw immediately from Gaza and negotiate
a truce before it is too late.

Dr Azzam Tamimi, the director of the London-based
Institute of Islamic Political Thought, is the
author of Hamas: Unwritten Chapters - info@ii-pt.com