The so-called “Jewish nation-state” bill, with which the cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concluded its agenda for 2014, is hardly an anomaly in the Israeli context. Racism and fanaticism directed at the approximately 1.7 million Palestinian citizens of Israel and the more than two million Palestinians in the West Bank has become a norm. Israelis claim the right to build exclusively Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which effectively become Jewish ghettos. The bill is part of a systematic Israeli drive to Judaise the Occupied Territories and codify Jewish exclusive rights, to the detriment of a large portion of its population. It also expresses the extent to which the so-called Palestinian “demographic bomb” continues to obsess politicians and decision-makers in Tel Aviv. Given this racist context, it is difficult not to draw a connection between the bill sponsored by the Netanyahu government and the Paris Conference held on 26 July, during Israeli's third war against Gaza (dubbed Operation Protective Edge). Absent from the conference were the real stakeholders in the Palestinian cause — Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority (PA) — and present instead were Turkey and Qatar. This is significant as Washington's aim in Paris was to use the war in Gaza as a platform for promoting a major political deal to create a new political reality on the ground. The most important feature of that project would entail a remedy to the Gaza conflict, reached independently of the larger issues of the Palestinian cause, which would permanently alter the political map by definitively severing Gaza from the West Bank.
GEOGRAPHY AND DEMOGRAPHY: The unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza put into effect in 2005, but not yet with respect to the West Bank, should be seen in this context as part of the ongoing changes to the racist Separation Wall by which Israel seeks to appropriate and annex more Palestinian territory. Israel hopes to isolate the Palestinian people further. The repeated talk about land swaps are part of the drive that has led to the drafting of the “Jewish-nation state” bill. These processes reflect the fact that Israel has grown more aware than ever that the only way for it to preserve its Jewish majority and, hence, its Jewish character, is to cut itself off entirely from the Palestinians, using solutions such as land swaps. This demographic factor has become the most salient determinant of decision-making in Israel. The intent to keep Israel a Jewish state is what propelled the Labour government under then Israeli prime minister Yitzak Rabin to consider the possibility of territorial concessions through negotiations. It is what led the Israeli right under Ariel Sharon to build the Separation Wall on the West Bank and to unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. Israeli strategists admit that the country's most critical dilemma now is how to reconcile demographic with geographic considerations. In its early days, Israel favoured the latter over the former. In the 1949 Rhodes Armistice Agreement with Jordan, for example, Israel insisted on annexing the area known as the Triangle (subsequently the focus of some deliberate demographic engineering to push Palestinian inhabitants in that direction). The pretext was an expansion of “Israel's narrow waist” in the Hadera-Netanya region. In fact, Israel was so determined to obtain this parcel of land that it threatened to resume hostilities against Jordan if Amman refused to shift the Green Line eastward. Today, however, in view of current demographic pressures, Israel may not be able to hold onto both its geographic and demographic assets at the same time. This makes for a close relationship between the rise in unilateral solutions in recent years and demographic realities. Israel has chosen two different strategies for contending with this dilemma: the Separation Wall on the West Bank, designed to ensure the annexation of its settlement blocs, and the withdrawal from Gaza after evacuating its settlers.
CALCULATIONS ON GAZA: In withdrawing from Gaza and closing its 17 settlements there, Israel shed a huge demographic burden. There were more than 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza, compared to the approximately 700,000 Jewish settlers there. Gaza forms a major part of the Israeli demographic nightmare as the inhabitants of the Strip account for about 40 per cent of the total Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza combined. Therefore, Sharon's decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza came at a minimum geographic cost. The withdrawal took place on only one per cent of the Occupied Territories, namely the area in Gaza that had remained under Israel's direct control. In addition, the demographic burden in the West Bank became less threatening in the medium term. The unilateral withdrawal, combined with construction of the Separation Wall on the West Bank and the expansion of settlements, made it less likely that a peace settlement would be imposed on Israel. In short, the withdrawal from Gaza aimed to deliver a blow to two alternative solutions: a single democratic state for two peoples (by removing 40 per cent of the Palestinian demographic burden) and the two-state solution, achievable through a total withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza (by severing Gaza from the West Bank and constructing the Separation Wall on the latter). Not surprisingly, since Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005 many Israeli think tanks have promoted a notion based on spurious logic. This holds that all attempts to realise political unity between two non-adjacent geographical regions, the West Bank and Gaza, have generated chronic tensions and ended in permanent separation. The two cases that are most often used to illustrate this are those of East Prussia and the rest of Germany, and Bangladesh and Pakistan. In the case of the former, the “Polish Corridor” was the geographical barrier that impeded contact with an area under German sovereignty (East Prussia). All attempts by Germany to retain the area failed, and when World War II drew to a close East Prussia was divided between Poland and the USSR. In like manner, India performed the same function as the Polish Corridor for Pakistan and Bangladesh, creating a geographical barrier between what were formerly known as East and West Pakistan. The upshot was the secession of the eastern part of Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh. The point that Israeli theorists are trying to drive home to public opinion is that Israel is to Gaza and the West Bank what the Polish Corridor was to Germany and East Prussia, and what India was to Pakistan and what later became Bangladesh. The conclusion they want people to draw is that all efforts to link the West Bank and Gaza are doomed to fail and that the separation of Gaza from the West Bank is geographically fated. What they do not mention, of course, are cases that have put paid to such contentions, most notably the cases of Alaska and Hawaii in relation to the US mainland. What mattered to the Israeli decision-makers was putting the theories of their think tanks into practice, which successive governments have done, with the purpose of entrenching the separation between the West Bank and Gaza and preventing reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. Indeed, it is in this context that we can understand the Israeli shift of tack in its approach toward Hamas after Hamas gained control in Gaza. From a “terrorist” organisation that had to be destroyed, Hamas was now cast as a hostile entity that had to be controlled. What this shift meant in practical terms was that from 2008 to July 2014 Tel Aviv was not interested in launching a military offensive aimed at toppling Hamas in Gaza. Instead, it adopted a strategy based on the following points: 1. Gaza could be contained from outside (because of its small size) but it would be difficult to penetrate (due to its population density). As such, it contrasts to the West Bank, which is difficult to contain because it is larger (with a 300-km border along the Green Line) but easier to penetrate due to its relatively lower population density; 2. Retaining a strategic “address” in Gaza (Hamas) that Israel could both deter and reach understandings with has been a crucial factor in determining the threshold of any military operation; 3. Ground offensives are not inevitable. Aerial strikes and artillery bombardments from outside could do the job. It would not be in Israel's interest to launch a ground invasion as this would generate a situation that would drive Gaza into the hands of the PA, which Israel does not want. Accordingly, during Operation Cast Lead in 2008, the Ehud Olmert government took pains to launch a limited land offensive that sought to destroy Hamas infrastructure but without jeopardising its hold on power in Gaza. The Hamas “address” had to stay in power because Gaza had to remain politically separate from the West Bank. The same strategy was applied during the Pillar of Defence Operation in 2012. In that operation there was no ground invasion of any sort, and Netanyahu refrained from delivering a debilitating blow to Hamas, preferring instead to exploit the rise to power in Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood with its close ties to Hamas. The Netanyahu government's preferred strategic option for handling Gaza at the time involved a blend of the pre-1967 framework and the post-2005 reality. This entailed a semi-autonomous statelet in Gaza attached to a regional incubator (Egypt) The latter would be brought in for negotiations (as deterrence works better against states and governments than against organisations) while Hamas would be given administrative and internal security control over Gaza. In this framework, as conceived by Israel, the Egyptian-Hamas relationship would be based on the following terms: open border crossings, shutting down the tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, halting the militarisation of Gaza, perpetuating the truce and altering Hamas's functional situation. FALL OF THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD: During the third Gaza war (operation Protective Edge) it was remarkable how quickly US Secretary of State John Kerry rushed to hold the Paris Conference. The meeting, held on 26 July, saw the major players in the Palestinian cause, Egypt, Jordan and the PA, conspicuously absent while both Turkey and Qatar were noticeably present. Washington was eager to set in motion a process that would take advantage of the war in Gaza and produce a major diplomatic deal that would lead to the creation of a new political reality. The envisioned deal would end, forever, the conflict between Hamas and Israel, even if a peace agreement were not signed between the two sides. Hamas would be offered a major role in supervising a long-term truce, partnership in the protection of security and order in Gaza, and partnership in the process of reconstruction and development projects, all in exchange for assurances that this would be the last war Hamas waged. The process would simultaneously establish the foundations for a new approach to the piecemeal handling of the Palestinian question. This was especially in regard to the conflict in Gaza, which would be treated as a separate issue, as though totally unconnected with the Palestinian cause and its subsidiary issues. In this manner, it would be possible to put an end to the powder keg that exploded every couple of years or so. It would facilitate the laying to rest of the question of the refugees, treated as though they were a mere tangential detail, after which it would be possible to turn to the other “pieces,” namely the West Bank and Jerusalem. Such aims made the attendance of Qatar and Turkey at the Paris Conference particularly important. Hamas's Muslim Brotherhood face, rather than its resistance face, is what counts most to these two allies. Neither Ankara nor Doha wants Hamas to remain merely the fuel for truces with Israel that get renewed from time to time. Instead, they want the Muslim Brothers to sustain a strong presence in the Palestinian field and to play a central role, regardless of the costs and sacrifices. If discussion of the question of the Gaza seaport and airport, in advance of any guarantees regarding Palestinian-Palestinian reconciliation, and putting an end to the Hamas-Fatah rift means setting Gaza on the path toward permanent political separation from the West Bank, this is of minor importance in the calculations of Qatar and Turkey. Indeed, an exclusively Muslim Brotherhood “statelet” in the Middle East, built on the ruins of the Palestinian national struggle, would guarantee Qatar and Turkey a special weight in the framework of US policy in the Middle East.
EGYPTIAN CALCULATIONS: Egypt faced a number of dilemmas in determining its response to the third Gaza war. How could it halt the aggression against the Palestinian people while ensuring that Hamas did not emerge crowned with the laurels of victory? How could it weaken Hamas without appearing as though it were taking advantage of the Israeli aggression to settle petty scores? How could Hamas's allies (Qatar and Turkey), which had chosen to become enemies of the new Egyptian regime, be prevented from filling the void that resulted from Cairo's delay in mediating between the Palestinians and Israel? Could Cairo intervene without having to normalise its relations with Hamas? Such questions were apparently crucial in determining Egypt's strategy for managing the crisis and in assessing the ramifications of every step it took. There are parties that continue to level accusations against Cairo for the positions it took, even though they know perfectly well that the network of tunnels between Egypt and Gaza and the traffic of arms, provisions and personnel through them would not have existed had the former regime of ousted former president Hosni Mubarak not turned a blind eye. The regime may have even facilitated the passage of Hamas elements to enable their training in Iran (albeit under certain conditions, such as refraining from underground activities in Egypt). Egypt has adopted a different position today, having resolved to destroy the tunnels that have proven to be not only a futile but also a dangerous experiment. At the same time, Egyptian officials have been keen to deliver a clear message to the Palestinians: any expectations of Egypt's role in the future of Gaza must remain within the framework of carefully studied and coordinated steps. For example, many had expected the establishment of a “national concord” government in Palestine to lead to the permanent reopening of the Rafah crossing. Egypt, however, believes that the question of this crossing, as well as other matters pertaining to Gaza, needs to be resolved as part of a wider context that also includes the nature of Gaza's relationship with the Israelis and the crossings between Gaza and Israel. This seems only logical. Cairo is fully aware that severing Gaza from the West Bank has long been and remains an Israeli aim, part of a strategy to divide and rule and the foundation for a piecemeal solution to the Palestinian question. It is right to insist that the reopening of the Gaza airport and construction of the Gaza seaport must proceed in tandem with the creation of a free and safe land corridor between Gaza and the West Bank. Without that link, Israeli will gobble up the West Bank for good, as well as Jerusalem. By the same token, the lifting of the blockade of Gaza should come with the guarantee that Gaza can be reconnected with the West Bank. Otherwise, the two will go in separate directions and the Palestinian national project will be forfeited. In the light of the above, the current Egyptian position falls within the framework of “conflict management”: trying to minimise the severity and levels of violence, while deferring a solution in Gaza to a later phase. This is especially the case since Hamas appears to be determined to continue fragmenting the security issues in Gaza and separating them into phases. Accordingly, it has agreed that the presidential guard can man some crossings, while the Gaza tunnels and internal security remain under a different authority. Such divisions cannot possibly succeed. All they will accomplish is to add another source of tension to the many that already exist. It is difficult to imagine that Hamas will bring itself into harmony with the framework of a Palestinian political order, or that it will work constructively with Fatah and the other factions towards a comprehensive strategic vision for the future of Gaza that takes Egyptian concerns into consideration.
The writer is a researcher at the Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies.
