It seems unlikely that any international forces will be sent to Gaza due to Hamas's opposition, writes Saleh Al-Naami Yaroun London, the political commentator for Israeli television Channel 10, tried in vain to fend off the biting criticism flung at him on live air last Friday by Avigdor Lieberman, deputy prime minister and head of the extremist Yisrael Beiteinu Party. It seemed that Lieberman was seeking revenge against London and other Israeli journalists and commentators who had derided him when, three months ago, he proposed for the first time that international forces be sent to Gaza. At the time, commentators said that such a proposal could never succeed because the Palestinian side would never agree to it. Yet after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) made a call to send international forces to the Gaza Strip following his meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy on 29 June, Lieberman stated that Israel must encourage Abu Mazen to adopt the idea with the goal of convincing the world to do so as well. He quickly obtained authorisation from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to begin a tour of NATO member countries in order to convince them to send NATO forces to the Gaza Strip. While Abu Mazen stressed that international forces must be sent to secure the conditions necessary for holding early legislative elections, Lieberman held that the document authorising these forces must provide for three primary missions. These included preventing Palestinian fighters from targeting Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip, halting the smuggling of weapons through the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, and beginning to dismantle the military wings of the Palestinian resistance movements. After praising the "rationality" of Abu Mazen, Lieberman made sure to point out that if the forces succeeded in these missions, this would realise the "shared goal of Israel and Abu Mazen, that being the collapse of Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip," as he put it. With the exception of the Fatah movement, all the Palestinian factions have rejected the idea of sending international forces to the Gaza Strip. Hamas's media outlets have exploited Abu Mazen's agreement with Lieberman on this idea to raise doubts over his motives and his national commitment. The movement's radio station "The Voice of Al-Aqsa" has repeated ad nauseam Lieberman's well-known racist positions, such as his call to bomb the markets and mosques of Gaza with F-16 fighter jets and to expel the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip and settle them in Sinai. His party's election platform included a call to impose Jewish control over the Al-Aqsa Mosque and bar Muslims from praying in it. He also called for bombing the Aswan High Dam so as to drown Egyptian cities, and the destruction of the Syrian presidential palace. Yehia Daabisa, vice-president of the Hamas parliamentarian bloc in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), holds that Abu Mazen's adoption of the ideas of Israel's extreme right is evidence that, "he has gone far in his readiness to sacrifice the interests of the Palestinian people." In a statement to Al-Ahram Weekly, Daabisa said Abbas had "lost his national credentials due to his agreement to make such a monumental decision on behalf of all Palestinians without their approval". He believes that bringing international forces to the Gaza Strip would represent "an advanced step in obliterating the Palestinian cause, and a serious affront to the Palestinian national endeavour." Daabisa accused Abbas of wanting to "repeat the experience of Afghanistan and become a new Karzai, entering Gaza on the back of American tanks. He wants to do what the Iraqi opposition in collusion with the occupation has done, with the major difference that the Palestinian public in the Gaza Strip has mobilised around the Hamas leadership and is aware of the disgraceful meeting between Abbas and the figures of extremism on the Israeli side," as he put it. Despairingly, Daabisa asked, "why doesn't Abbas call for international forces to be sent to the West Bank, where the occupation is present, to protect our people who are subjected every day to assassinations, arrests and invasions?" The military wing of Hamas, the Ezzeddin Al-Qassam Brigades, has threatened that if these forces are sent, it will deal with them exactly as though they were occupation forces. In a statement the Weekly obtained a copy of, it wrote that, "we will not, under any circumstances, allow any international forces to enter Gaza. We will only greet them with shells and missiles." Yet Abdullah Abdullah, a Fatah representative and president of the policy committee in the PLC, emphatically rejected Hamas's accusations and doubts over Abu Mazen's motives. He stressed that the Palestinian president is acting on the basis of "national" considerations when proposing the idea of international forces. Abdullah told the Weekly that, "proposing the idea of sending international forces to the Gaza Strip aims essentially to make the circumstances of life for people there easier." With the presence of these forces, he suggested, the Israeli army won't be able to control the border crossings connecting Gaza to the outside world. Abdullah accused the Hamas movement of sinking to new lows by tying Lieberman's enthusiasm for the idea of sending international forces to Abu Mazen's proposal, saying that it "wasn't necessarily the case that Israel would succeed in imposing its vision for the mission the international forces would undertake." He added that Abu Mazen would be careful that "only the national interest would triumph." Palestinian writer and journalist Nihad Al-Sheikh Khalil said Abu Mazen's request for an international force of 20,000 soldiers to be sent to the Gaza Strip fell within the framework of his wanting to "take revenge" on the Hamas movement for taking control of the Gaza Strip. Khalil told the Weekly that after Abu Mazen failed to reign in the Hamas movement, he grew more attached to the American agenda, explaining that Washington "was not deterred by the negative results of its experience in Iraq, and wanted to repeat the same experience in Gaza, in the hope that it would succeed in quelling Palestinian resistance." He believes that American support for the idea of sending international forces to the Gaza Strip comes as part two in the "constructive chaos" strategy developed by the American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The first episode in this strategy failed. A plan, developed by the American military coordinator Keith Dayton sought to create circumstances which would facilitate long-term Palestinian infighting that in the end would succeed in removing the Hamas movement from the circle of political activity. Khalil doubts that this Israeli-American bet on international forces will succeed. He says that the international forces will not be more powerful than the Israeli forces, which failed to quell the Palestinian resistance movements. He believes that proposing this idea is like "retesting an experiment which has already failed". Yet the enthusiasm of Lieberman and the sensitivity of the Hamas movement regarding the idea of sending international forces to Gaza does not mean that the majority of observers in Tel Aviv view it as representing Israel interests. General Roni Daniel, the military commentator for Israeli television Channel 8, holds that if Israel agrees to send international forces to Gaza, that would be a "strategic mistake". Daniel agrees with Khalil that international forces would not be able to reign in the resistance movements and prevent them from continuing their operations against Israeli targets, in particular the firing of locally made shells at the settlements surrounding the Gaza Strip. Daniel expects that the security situation will become "more catastrophic" following the arrival of the international forces in the Gaza Strip and suggests that matters will grow more complicated given that the Israeli army will not be able to act against the Palestinian resistance movements while the international forces are present. As for General Amos Galbu, former head of Israeli military intelligence, he states that what is taking place in Iraq will become "a mere joke in comparison to what will take place in Gaza". In an interview with Israeli television Channel 1 last Sunday, he warned that should Palestinians be killed in operation by international forces, that would not only result in Palestinians uniting behind the Hamas movement, but would also "make Abu Mazen look like someone working in accordance with the Israeli agenda". As for General Aharon Zeevi, also former head of Israeli Military Intelligence, he points out that the motivation to fight amongst soldiers in the international forces will be very low in comparison to that of members of the Palestinian resistance. In an interview with Israel television Channel 10 last Sunday, he warned that the states who send these forces will soon withdraw them due to the major losses they will incur. He says that sending international forces will excuse Hamas from responsibility for the results of the economic siege in the eyes of the Palestinian public, as the siege is supposed to end with the arrival of these forces. Yet Akiva Eldar, the political commentator for Israeli newspaper Haaretz, said this debate is premature, as he doubts the likelihood of any state sending its forces to Gaza, particularly as six UNIFIL members were recently killed in southern Lebanon. Aldar disapprovingly questions, "why should we even assume that a state would agree to risk the lives of its soldiers for the sake of protecting Israeli security?"
