The Hamas-Israeli Truce

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Hamas and Israel have agreed on a truce between them, brokered through Cairo, and most of the Palestinian factions that consider themselves resistance factions have agreed to respect the verbal agreement. The media have been heavily preoccupied with this agreement, rushing to relay statements and analyses about it, focusing their attention on whether it can last, and most analysts and observers have expressed doubt about its durability in light of past experience.

What Is the Agreement?

I honestly do not know exactly what the agreement is, because I have not read any written text signed by the two parties to the truce. I have heard from the media of provisions in the agreement such as a mutual ceasefire, but no clear, specific document has been issued. My assessment from the outset was that Israel would not sign an agreement on this matter unless it included all its demands, which boil down to Hamas’s need to recognize the agreements signed with Fatah, to recognize Israel, and to resist the resistance. Since Israel has not signed anything on paper, I expect that the truce did not meet all of Israel’s demands, but it must have satisfied them partially. I believe the verbal agreement stipulates that Hamas will stop the activities described as preparation for battle, and stop the alleged smuggling operations from Sinai, and also that it must rein in the other factions and persuade them to halt rocket fire. Israel, for its part, has perhaps committed to a partial opening of the crossings, but I do not think it has pledged to lift the siege entirely on Hamas or on the Gaza Strip.

Legally speaking, this agreement is worthless. Verbal agreements have no legal value, even under Egyptian sponsorship or that of any other state, and there is consequently no mechanism — not even a moral one — for holding accountable whichever side breaches the agreement, or for indicting it for violations. It seems to me that the Palestinian side has fallen into an error it has committed before, in the Fatah style, namely failing to insist on written details that would stand as clear evidence of whatever aggressions Israel commits. I detect in the media a reliance on Egyptian monitoring of the agreement, and that alone is not sufficient.

Interests Served by the Truce

Hamas has an interest in the truce, for the following reasons:

The siege on Gaza is in full force, and it has placed people under severe strain. It is true that the people have not risen up against Hamas, but they are looking for political steps that would ease some of their suffering, provide them with the medical supplies they need, and make up some of the food shortfall. Any intransigence on Hamas’s part would find no justification among a public whose patience has worn thin, and Hamas therefore has an interest in demonstrating to everyone that it possesses enough flexibility to relieve the pressure on the Strip. There is an implicit Hamas message embedded in the truce: that Hamas is not the cause of the siege, and that it will do whatever is necessary, within the bounds of its strategy, to ease the public’s burden and remove the pretexts others use to keep the siege in place.

The internal Palestinian political scene constitutes a major source of pressure on Hamas, owing to internal bickering and friction. For example, while the siege bears down on Gaza, the West Bank has not carried out acts of solidarity, and at the street level has shown little concern for the suffering taking place. Many peoples around the world have shown solidarity with Gaza, while the West Bank has failed to live up to a historic solidarity that used to be a given at the internal Palestinian level. At the official and factional level, Palestinian officials and faction leaders have held Hamas responsible for the killing and destruction that Israel itself carries out. The West Bank, at both the popular and official levels, is experiencing a discordant state the Palestinian arena has never known before: a kind of gloating over Israeli aggression.

Hamas needs to catch its breath and take something of a break in order to attend to internal administrative, financial, and economic matters. The overall state of military tension is disorienting, and leads to a kind of internal chaos and scattered attention; Hamas’s situation has not settled since it won the elections and since it took control of the Gaza Strip, because of the way so many forces — internal, external, and Arab — have ganged up against it.

Israel, too, has an interest, which can be summed up as follows:

Israeli strikes no longer land the way they used to, and some of them have ended in failure. Israel failed in Lebanon, failed to properly bolster the Palestinian security services, and Gaza fell easily [out of its control]. The population in the north of Israel now lives in a state of instability, and the same has become true of the settlers in the south. There is significant popular pressure on the Israeli government to relieve the hardship caused by the threat of primitive rockets.

The large-scale military operation Israel has long threatened carries no guaranteed results, since it is not expected to eliminate Hamas or the other resistance factions. Israel is capable of destruction and killing, but that may not produce the desired results, and could well increase Hamas’s strength on the Palestinian street. History has taught us that the Palestinian people rallies behind whomever Israel stands against.

Israel and America are now concerned with isolating the various files in the Arab-Islamic region from one another, because of the failures both have suffered in recent years. The two states have fumbled many files, from Pakistan to Palestine, without achieving success in any of them. They tried to ignite Sunni-Shia strife, hoping that people would fight each other and thereby exhaust themselves, and they failed; now they are trying to isolate the files through certain political maneuvers, so as to gain control over the situation across the region as a whole. Israel opened indirect negotiations with Syria, America made a concession in Lebanon that has yet to bear fruit for the opposition, and Israel agreed to a verbal truce [with Hamas].

Hamas Between Two Fires

[…] repeatedly criticized the Palestine Liberation Organization for its indirect negotiations with Israel as a prelude to the direct negotiations that led to the signing of the Oslo Accord — and here it is now, conducting indirect negotiations of its own through Egypt, having to face criticism from both its enemies and its friends on this score. At the same time, Hamas must tell people that it is not responsible for the siege imposed on Gaza, by demonstrating political flexibility.

Hamas has come under fire from part of the Palestinian domestic scene because that part held it responsible for the siege, and now it comes under fire from that very same part because it accuses Hamas of abandoning resistance. Hamas is under fire whether it resists or does not resist, and thereby finds itself at the mercy of Palestinian political bickering that reflects, to a considerable degree, a lack of maturity. There is a great flaw on the Palestinian scene: an action is wrong so long as someone else is the one doing it, and right so long as I am the one doing it. This flaw exists in the conduct of every Palestinian faction, Fatah and Hamas foremost among them. For instance, indirect negotiations have now become acceptable to Hamas, while “resistance” has become a slogan for Fatah — the very movement that signed an agreement with Israel obligating the Palestinian Authority to pursue the resistance fighters.

Israel, Too, Is Between Two Fires

In Israel, there are those who believe the Israeli government should seek a solution to bring calm to the southern settlements, and those who believe the government should not give Hamas a chance to catch its breath, by intensifying military action instead. Some accuse the government of inaction and a lack of seriousness in decision-making, while others accuse it of cowardice and fear of Hamas and its appetite for resistance. Israelis are now saying that Hamas will not stop its smuggling operations, and that it will have an opportunity for further preparation and readiness, as well as an opportunity to smuggle in funds to cover its internal expenses.

Israel is also under external pressure, particularly from the United States, which is unsettled by its inability to achieve any notable accomplishment in the region. America wants Israel to continue coordinating with it over Gaza, so as to avoid further instability in the region. America views the instability currently present in the region as extremely dangerous, and fears a deterioration of conditions in a way that would negatively affect the Arab regimes friendly to it and to Israel. It wants a truce that satisfies certain Arab regimes, but at the same time it does not want to recognize Hamas, whether explicitly or implicitly.

Recognition of Hamas

If Hamas has been seeking to achieve recognition, that recognition has now come about indirectly. Israel negotiated with Hamas through Egypt, and America accepted this, thereby acknowledging Hamas’s weight in the region and its importance to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel and America, together with some Palestinians and Arabs, tried to wear Hamas down and turn the people of Gaza against it, but Hamas remained standing and steadfast, and in the end everyone was forced to look for a peaceful solution to the tense situation.

Has Hamas achieved something? My assessment is yes, because Hamas tried to enter the international game from the very first day of its election victory, with Khaled Mashal’s visit to Russia. Hamas is not interested in abandoning the international arena to focus solely on military action, and it has repeatedly tried to open doors for Europeans and others to talk and deliberate over the affairs of the Arab-Islamic region; if it still remains far from the international stage, that is because others reject it, not because it holds itself back. From this angle, Hamas has achieved a breakthrough. This, of course, is separate from the question of what Hamas’s own aims are in entering the international political arena, since it is likely that it has no desire to follow the path of the PLO and Fatah toward recognizing Israel.

The Commitment of the Palestinian Factions

Based on past experience, the other Palestinian resistance factions, such as Islamic Jihad and the al-Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, will abide by the truce. It is true that these factions will lampoon Hamas and criticize it for monopolizing the decision, but they have previously gone along with Fatah on various matters in which Fatah alone made the decision. The Palestinian factions other than Hamas and Fatah are not widely spread, and possess neither the institutions capable of influencing the decision nor the secret resistance strength that could make them formidable. To date, no Palestinian faction other than Hamas and Fatah has been able to assert its presence in decision-making except by currying favor with a larger faction, and speaking to it in the language of brotherhood, shared bloodshed, and common suffering.

The Truce Will Not Hold

The truce will not hold for long, because the aims and objectives of both parties to it require that it not continue. Israel needs a measure of calm essentially in order to isolate its problems from one another, while Hamas wants to prove to people that it possesses political flexibility, thereby answering both its critics inside the Palestinian arena and its accusers on the international stage. Israel will not be serious with an Islamic faction unless that faction clearly and explicitly declares its recognition of Israel, and Hamas is not prepared to do that, because it would lose its Islamic credibility.

The truce fits within each side’s own vision of the pulls and clashes underway across the Arab-Islamic region, which are raging and accompanied by threats, warnings, and the massing of forces and military capabilities. The region is shaking, and each side considers itself a party preparing for what is to come; the truce offers both Israel and Hamas an opportunity to grit their teeth for a while, hoping the winds will blow as the ships desire. In other words, the truce amounts to nothing more than catching one’s breath — it does not appear that it will open out into a truly open expanse of fresh air.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “التهدئة الحمساوية-الإسرائيلية” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.