The latest fighting in the Gaza Strip signals that a dismal status quo promises more radicalization and mayhem.
Periodic bouts of aerial bombardments between Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip have become a regular feature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the most recent spasm wasn’t between Israel and Hamas. Instead, it heralds the rise of an even more militant group: Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
In the latest round of conflict, at least 44 Palestinians were killed, including 15 children, between Aug. 5-8 in a back-and-forth between hundreds of PIJ missiles fired into Israel and Israeli air force strikes against Palestinian targets. While the PIJ missiles were largely ineffective, a Palestinian militant opened fire on a bus in Jerusalem, injuring eight Israelis. In the process, the PIJ acquired a new level of militant credibility.
This is as predictable as it is alarming. The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories seized in 1967 — East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — with no political horizon for ending it, has ensured a steady radicalization among Palestinian factions. That’s a disaster not just for the Israelis and the Palestinians, but also for the Middle East and wider world.
The second Palestinian intifada, which broke out after what should have been the culmination of the Oslo peace process at the 2000 Camp David summit, radicalized both sides. Approximately 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis — both mostly civilians — were killed between late 2000 and early 2005.
Another casualty was the Israeli “peace camp” and the credibility of its Palestinian counterpart, the Palestine Liberation Organization. Israeli politics turned to the hard right. Among Palestinians, Hamas, which rejected the peace process and championed armed struggle, became a contender for national leadership.
That set the stage for the Palestinian split in 2007 as the Palestinian Authority held on to the small areas of self-rule, mostly West Bank towns and cities, secured through the Oslo process in the 1990s, while Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip.
Since then, the peace process has been non-functional, and the two Palestinian factions have treated each other as mortal enemies.
Yet over time Hamas has ossified from the leader of armed Palestinian resistance into a kind of entrenched de facto government in Gaza, dependent on regular financial bailouts from Qatar while engaging in periodic aerial bombardment conflicts with Israel that have become less frequent and more opportunistic.
Conditions have long been ripe for the rise of a more radical faction, and the Iranian- backed PIJ has been vying for that role for years.
The Gaza Strip is a perfect incubator for extremism. Some 2 million people, mostly refugees from what is now southern Israel, are crammed into a tiny, wretched area subjected to a total blockade mainly by Israel and, in some ways, Egypt.
Hamas appears content to rule this open-air prison of misery, but the PIJ is increasingly usurping Hamas’s traditional role, by using Gaza as a launchpad for attacks on Israel not just from the strip itself but in the West Bank and Jerusalem. On Wednesday, the PA reported seizing two PIJ members with 17 kilograms of explosives in the West Bank city of Nablus.
This latest bout of radicalization of the Palestinian national movement may not be surprising, but that does not make it any less dangerous. And there is a great deal the outside world can and must do to contain and reverse it.
The PA and the PLO have been made to look ridiculous and ineffective as their policies of negotiations and security cooperation with Israel have resulted in no major gains since 1996. That’s a huge boon for all extremists.
They need to be strengthened with greater economic support, more diplomatic recognition — including the restoration of the US consulate in East Jerusalem and the PLO mission in Washington — and an end to constant, often abusive Israeli raids into PA-controlled areas, which have been condemned by international human rights groups.
Hamas has indicated it wants greater international recognition and to join the PLO. The international community should lay out a clear roadmap for the group to become a legitimate interlocutor, including Hamas’s acceptance of Palestinian treaty commitments such as the Oslo agreements and, even if the group will not disarm, at least abjure all forms of terrorism.
A significant effort to improve the daily lives of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — and in Gaza without unduly strengthening Hamas by relying on international NGOs and UN agencies — in sectors such as health and education is essential. Hopelessness and despair make radicalization inevitable.
Finally, a horizon for liberation is essential. Israel should, at long last, formally recognize the Palestinian right to a genuinely independent state. The details can be left to future negotiations. But such a commitment would provide Palestinians with much-needed hope for eventual freedom.
Without such measures, just as Hamas rose to challenge the PLO, the PIJ will continue to bedevil and challenge Hamas, with increasing success. The death toll among Israelis and Palestinians will incrementally rise until the next, and inevitable, explosion of massive and sustained violence.