Strategic Folly Update
As I was saying earlier, refusal to provide humanitarian aid to Gazans will not only embitter the population against those withholding aid they could send but will present Hamas with the opportunity to maintain and improve on its position as the provider of services and supplies. Haaretz reports that Hamas is doing just that very aggressively. In fact, Hamas has been so aggressive that it is attacking U.N. warehouses to seize the goods inside so that they can be seen as the ones distributing them, which is very much like biting the hand that feeds them, but Hamas has every incentive to take advantage of the siege conditions in this way.
Meanwhile, the debate outside Gaza seems to be mostly about the different methods to be used in punishing the Gazan population to “educate” them, as Friedman might say, in the folly of supporting Hamas. It is not just that the Gazans are going to learn a very different lesson from their misery than the one Friedman, Inbar, et al. expect them to learn, but that when it comes to competing for the loyalties of the population Hamas is currently the only serious competitor in a position to act. Isolation, sieges and coercion do not undermine Hamas, as should be obvious by now. Naturally, then, Israelis are poised to vote into power a coalition made up of parties that do not understand this at all and either believe that current policy is succeeding or that it has failed because it has not been “tough” enough.
It is probably true that the Israeli electorate in the generality has no comprehension of the situation, but I perceive a great deal of rank cynicism in the Israeli government position. They know full well that their policy of siege and collective punishment will fail; but they want it to fail, because failure is the necessary precondition of a refusal to negotiate peace, and the fantasy of a Eretz Israel has never been renounced. The Palestinians will either “feel themselves subdued” or the punishment will continue, but in either case there will be no Palestinian state, merely a slow ratchet in the opposite direction.
Hamas is the Irgun of the Gazans.
I’m no fan of Israeli policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians, particularly on the West Bank, but the sentiment on this site is often too one-sided, and not fully cognizant of realities on the ground. Case in point, this news today:
“UNRWA informed the IDF on Friday that it is suspending its humanitarian aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip after Hamas stole supplies the United Nations organization had transferred to the Palestinian territory.
The seizure of the 200 tons of supplies took place Thursday night and in response, UNRWA officials informed the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration that it was suspending its deliveries to the Gaza Strip until further notice. The supplies confiscated included flour and other basic commodities.
The transfer of 40 truckloads of humanitarian supplies – some 800 tons – planned for Sunday has already been canceled.
It was the second time this week that Hamas stole UN supplies transferred to the Gaza Strip for impoverished Palestinians.
The first incident took place Tuesday evening when armed Hamas police broke into a Gaza warehouse packed with UN humanitarian supplies and seized thousands of blankets and food packages.
The seizure took place after UNRWA staff earlier refused to hand over the aid supplies to the Hamas-run Ministry of Social Affairs.
“We received a phone call this morning from UNRWA officials that they have decided to suspend their deliveries after Hamas stole supplies from one of the organization’s warehouses in the Gaza Strip,” explained a senior official.
The official said that the IDF noticed the trend already during Operation Cast Lead last month, when despite the fighting, Israel transferred close to 80 trucks a day to the Strip.
Nuaf Atar, a Fatah operative captured during the operation, told the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) that Hamas government officials “took over” humanitarian aid Israel allowed in to the Gaza Strip and sold it when it was supposed to be distributed for free.”
UNRWA Spokesman Sami Mshasha confirmed that the organization had suspended its deliveries to Gaza after Hamas stole its supplies.
“This is the second incident this week and this is a point of great concern for us and sets a bad precedent and if we are to provide services to people in Gaza after such an ordeal we need assurances that our work will be unimpeded,” Mshasha said. “We cannot subjugate our work to the Ministry of Social Affairs in Gaza.”
Winston,
That is the incident Daniel referenced in his post. Go back and read it.
WRW, I can read, thanks. Daniel mentioned the one incident – the article mentioned two others, as well as the harmful consequences of those incidents for Gazans as a whole. Daniel’s emphasis was on the harm Israelis were plotting to cause. One can be very strongly opposed to Israeli policy and not consider Hamas quite as benignly, from the point of view of Gazans, as sometimes seems to be the case here.
Yes, why can’t I be more even-handed and fair! In almost every post on this topic I have gone to some lengths to make the point that everything Israel is doing in and to Gaza is counterproductive and bad for Israel. If I were genuinely one-sided, instead of looking at this as an outsider who wants non-intervention, I would not bother. The political reality is that Hamas exploits the siege and abuses its power to retain its hold in Gaza, which is not going to be weakened by depriving people in Gaza of necessities. I would suggest that those who think that continuing the siege and refusing aid to the Gazans is the right way to go are the ones not “cognizant of the realities on the ground.”
“One can be very strongly opposed to Israeli policy and not consider Hamas quite as benignly, from the point of view of Gazans, as sometimes seems to be the case here.”
Who considers Hamas benignly here? I have on many occasions emphasized Hamas’ terrorist nature and their willingness to kill their political opponents to consolidate power, which has led me to criticize the naive idea that if you just starve and pummel the Gazans enough that they will turn on Hamas. I have made it quite clear that they unscrupulously exploit the siege conditions to enhance their position. The problem is that their methods are successful, and so they are well-entrenched and will continue to control Gaza and act as they see fit. That marks the Israeli policy of siege and attack as a failure. That seems to me to be a fairly realistic assessment of things.
Daniel, just to be clear, I’m totally opposed to any blockade by Israel that deprives Gaza of anything except rockets. (On the contrary – I would be doing everything possible to improve the lives of the people there.) So I don’t at all disagree with your position on that, though for what it’s worth I think Hamas would seize and retain power no matter what Israel does. But I do disagree that “the debate outside Gaza seems to be mostly about the different methods to be used in punishing the Gazan population to ‘educate’ them.” There’s no doubt there are elements in Israel that feel that way, but I think most people just want the rockets to stop. That’s what I don’t think you see.
I see and hear nothing else in most of the coverage and commentary. I am well aware that most Israelis just want the rockets to stop, but the trouble is that this desire makes them acquiesce in policies that seem to guarantee that Hamas will continue to hold power and fire off those rockets whenever it wants. It seems to have led a lot of people there and here in the U.S. to weigh different options for collective punishment, as if these will yield the desired result.
That’s fair enough. And too many Israelis, tragically including the center, don’t see the connection between their country’s policies on the West Bank and the problems they are getting out of Gaza.
Given the above discussion, I thought this new poll (via Sullivan) would interest readers here:
Poll: Gaza war boosts Hamas support
Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza, which killed more than 1,300 people and left large swathes of the territory in ruins, has boosted the popularity of the Islamists, an opinion poll found on Thursday.
Hamas would get 28.6 percent of the vote compared with 27.9 percent for the rival Fatah faction of Western-backed president Mahmud Abbas if elections were held today, according to the survey by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre.
It marks the first time that an opinion poll has placed Hamas in front of Fatah, which it ousted from the Gaza Strip in deadly fighting in June 2007.
Hamas scored an upset victory in January 2006 parliamentary elections, defying opinion poll predictions which had seriously underestimated the Islamist vote. \
Ironically Thursday’s poll found that Hamas has stronger support in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, still administered by Abbas, than it does in its own Gaza bastion.
In Gaza, the poll put Hamas at 28 percent against 33.6 percent for Abbas’ Fatah. In the West Bank, the poll gave Hamas 29 percent support against 24.5 percent for its rival.
The balance was shared by a myriad of smaller parties.
Some 27.7 percent of those questioned said they trusted Hamas, compared with 26 percent for Fatah.
The poll found that Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, who Abbas dismissed after the Islamist takeover of Gaza, is the most trusted Palestinian politician with 21.1 percent support, far ahead of the incumbent president with 13.4 percent.
When asked who won the war in Gaza, 53.3 percent of people in the West Bank said Hamas, compared with 35.2 percent in Gaza.
The pollsters surveyed a sample of 1,198 people — 758 in the West Bank and 440 in Gaza — and gave a margin of error of plus or minus three percent.
I doubt anyone is still reading these posts, but here’s another mideast poll that contradicts elements of the previous one, but also shows support for increased militancy:
After Gaza War, Palestinians are of a Mixed Mind About Hamas.
February 7, 2009 · According to poll conducted by Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre, the war in Gaza has increased the popularity of Hamas and decreased the support for Fatah. . . .
However, a similar poll conducted by the Palestinian Center For Public Opinion has produced significantly different findings. According to this study:
The rate of support for Fateh (40.6 %) among the Palestinians lies now higher than that for Hamas (31.4 %). The rate of Fateh’s popularity in Gaza Strip, established at (42.5 %), lies much higher than that of Hamas on its own terrain, reaching namely the rate of (27.8 %). The same trend has been found in the West Bank, where Fateh scored (39.2 %) of the Palestinians’ support, whilst Hamas has to content itself with only (23.7 %).
Another important finding of the PCPO poll is that “the overwhelming majority of the Palestinians, (88.2 %), are for the present in favor of a Palestinian-Israeli truce, specifically (86.1 %) in Gaza Strip and (89.6 %) in the West Bank.†Contrast that with the JMCC poll which concludes that:
Israel’s war on Gaza contributed to an increase in support for military action against Israel. The percentage of respondents who believe that locally-made rockets help achieve the Palestinian national goals rose from 39.3% last April to 50.8% in this poll, with a decrease in the percentage of respondents who believe that the rockets harm national interests from 35.7% last April to 20.8% in this poll.
In the same trend, the percentage of those who support military operations against Israel targets as an appropriate response under the current political conditions increased from 49.5% last April to 53.5% in this poll. Moreover, this poll found that the percentage of supporters of bombing operations against Israeli civilians increased from 50.7% to 55.4% for the same period.
According to the JMCC poll results, the war led to an increase in the percentage of those who oppose peace negotiations. Nearly 41% (40.9%) of respondents polled opposed peace negotiations compared with 34.7% in a JMCC poll conducted last November.
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