Any attempt to run Gaza like the West Bank will fail – and Hamas will benefit

The Guardian

The next administration is more likely to appear by default than by design, something that doesn’t bode well for Palestinians. (...)

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Smoke rises from the Gaza Strip during an Israeli bombardment, 6 December. Photograph: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images.

Two months into the military campaign against Hamas, and there is still little clarity about Israel’s endgame or the future for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank living under occupation. (...)

It is unclear to what extent Israel’s intensive bombardment of the Gaza Strip and its ground operations in the north have undermined Hamas’s operational ability. (...)

Hamas has refused to renounce the right to armed resistance, not least because when Fatah and the PLO did this in the 1990s at the beginning of the Oslo process that put them in control of the Palestinian Authority, they got promises of a state but few real concessions in return. (...)

When Hamas broke through the Gazan border wall and killed 1,200 people, a majority of whom were civilians, the Israeli policy of containing and isolating Gaza’s population in what many describe as “the world’s largest open-air prison” became untenable. The government has since promised it will usher in a new security regime.

One model it might seek to emulate is in the West Bank. (...) The strategy has been to create a checkerboard of small, isolated Palestinian enclaves, coupled with intense pressure from Israeli security forces on any form of political expression. (...)

The current war is an existential threat to Fatah, which leads the PA and controls the patchwork of Palestinian territories in the West Bank. (...) The PA has also been disadvantaged by Israel undermining the PA’s economy and tax base by withholding tax revenues that Israel collects on the PA’s behalf, and imposing high tariffs and limiting imports and exports. (...)

Any attempt to impose a system of control similar to that in the West Bank on the remnants of Gaza will be all but impossible. Israel has stated it is going to retain overall security control of the strip but has yet to clarify what sort of administration it intends for the territory. In all likelihood, Gaza will be almost ungovernable. (...)

This leaves no good options. The outcome of the Gaza war will probably be determined by a combination of Israel’s overwhelming firepower and to what extent the US is willing to indulge its ally. Right now the most plausible outcome is that the next administration of Gaza comes about by default rather than design. (...)

Hamas will adapt to the new situation as an underground resistance group in the occupied territories with its political wing in exile. Meanwhile, the PA will limp on in the West Bank, becoming ever more ineffective and irrelevant until western states no longer see a need for it. (...)

Israel’s western allies, which have enabled Israel’s occupation through their support for the PA and the Oslo process, while permitting Israel to exponentially expand its settlements, may be left to pick up the bill for the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, together with the Gulf monarchies. And the Palestinians will, as they always have, continue to bear the costs of a seemingly endless and brutal occupation.

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Tags: #israel #gaza #palestine #palestinians #hamas #pa #palestinian_authority #occupied_territories #war #west_bank #fatah