In Gaza it’s calm on Saturday but feels like no end in sight

It’s been an eventful week here. The sheer number of rockets and mortars launched by Palestinian militants last Sunday put Gaza back in the headlines, but the real headline grabber was the bomb that exploded outside the central bus station in West Jerusalem on Wednesday. The first one of its kind in ages. A 60-year-old woman was killed. A British one.

 Israel was quick to enforce a gag order on all investigations and proceedings linked to this case. That means none of the Israeli media can report any of the truth – or conjecture – that is presented in court when the suspect is prosecuted. Isn’t that suspicious? How come they didn’t jump on this act of terrorism in the heart of Israel? Shouldn’t the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem be under total curfew with tanks parked outside their houses and Apaches hunting down the terrorists? 
 
And why did Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and prime minister Salam Fayyad almost beg for forgiveness – followed by Obama’s condemnation (no condemnation of the killing of four innocent Gazans playing football that same day, just condolences to their families) when Israel doesn’t even want us to know who the suspect is?
 
The only conceivable probability right now is that the attacker was not Palestinian after all. None of the Palestinian factions, brigades, parties, and fronts, popular or otherwise, claimed responsibility, and that’s something. Sometimes we get press releases from four different brigades saying they fired the same rocket. A bomb in Jerusalem would be probably televised live on Al Aqsa TV- the Hamas mouthpiece on satellite – if only they could do it. The truth is, they don’t want to.
 
Hamas not only disowned the attack, but it has also been calling on all factions to stop rocket fire, calling on Israel for a hudna – truce. How do you reconcile that with Hamas’s own Izz Al Deen AL Qassam brigades claimed responsibility for shooting at least 30 mortars (Israeli media said 50!) in one day last Sunday? Two Israelis were reportedly injured together with some damage to buildings. Israel replied with an entire week air raids, incursions, and deadly fire that killed innocent civilians. On 22 March, the Israeli army fired high-precision Keshet mortar shells at the Shajaiya neighbour hood, east of Gaza City. Those shells killed four Palestinian civilians, three of them from the same family, including two children.
 
The Hamas militant wing claiming responsibility is in itself a rare event, as the movement in government has been keen on policing the buffer zone to avoid a repeat of Operation Cast Lead. This has, over the last two years, led to disenfranchisement by hardline militants who are known to have defected to Salafi-Jihadist groups who accuse Hamas of selling out to the occupation, being un-Islamic and corrupt just like the Palestinian Authority and Fatah.
 
In fact, since the end of the aggression against Gaza, the Hamas movement has repeatedly convened all the factions in the enclave to ensure an unofficial cease-fire, with prime minister Ismayil Haniye appealing publicly to all brigades to refrain from their rocket and mortar launching operations at the buffer zone. The most to come out against this - through their declarations and actual reported operations - have been the armed Popular Resistance Committee and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), whose military brigades have claimed responsibility for several attacks, sometimes on the same day in which Hamas would have declared its instructions to the factions. Israel always responds that Hamas remains responsible for all attacks coming out of Gazaand normally launches its own air raids on tunnels, empty areas and vacated government buildings. In contrast, the previous Wednesday 16 March, Israel had responded to a Qassam rocket falling near Sderot with the bombing of a Hamas training camp in Netzarim, killing two Palestinians. 
 
Sunday's barrage of mortars and, more importantly, the Hamas militant group's claim of responsibility, preceded by Israel's Netzarim training camp bombing, opened a bracket in the unstated rules between Hamas and Israel. Prior to this, however, there was a sporadic escalation of rocket attacks and Israeli attacks on farmers and fishermen at the bufferzone and at sea starting last December. While 2010 is classified by Israeli intelligence with just 28 total injuries on the Israeli side out of 8,000 conflict-related injuries since the 2000 Al Aqsa Intifada was launched. Palestinian casualties nevertheless soared as Israel stepped up its attacks, leading to speculation about whether or not another Israel was about to wage another war on Gaza, including public statements in this regard by the Israeli establishment.
 
According to the Israeli military, prior to the 19 March attack, over 30 Grad missiles, Qassam rockets and mortar shells landed in Israeli territory. Grad missiles and a mortar shell landed in southern Israel on 31 January, damaging a vehicle and causing four people "to be treated for shock". The first two months also witnessed more than 12 explosive attacks along the buffer zone and a total of 83 attacks.
 
The question as to why Al Qassam brigades launched the barrage of mortars into Israel last Sunday is perplexing given that prior to the attack, Hamas had given every indication it had no intention of upsetting the status quo with Israel despite enormous Salafi-Jihadist pressures. It must be seen in the context of the ongoing grassroots calls for unity, taken up a notch by President Mahmoud Abbas when he declared the previous Tuesday that he was ready to come to Gaza"tomorrow" for reconciliation and unity among the factions after he was invited to Gazaby Hamas prime minister Haniye. They might have been calling each others’ bluff, but Al Qassam were not amused.
 
Al Qassam being directly answerable to and funded by the Syrian exiled leadership of Hamas, one possibility is that the militants and hardliners did not approve of Haniye's invitation to Abbas, exposing once again the currents and counter-currents between the Gaza-based political circles and the hardline Al Qassam elements under the patronage of Khaled Meshal in Damascus. Palestinian nationl unity and reconciliation for these elements has always been viewed highly problematic as they are the ones who stand most to lose if Hamas had to give up total control of the Gaza Strip, mainly because of fears of reprisals of executions carried out in the 2007 coup.
 
At the same time, the Hamas government has shown to be incapable of dealing with peaceful demonstrations from students for unity launched on 15 March and has been suppressing them brutally ever since. An unprecedented mortar attack on Israel could serve to deflect attention and make Abbas's trip to Gaza unfeasible. Israel would be more than willing to make unity harder than it already is as it has already taken a strong stand against it, telling Abbas he could not push for peace while forming a government of terrorists.
 
On Thursday night, F-16s bombarded buildings in Gaza City, rocking the entire Gaza Strip.  A couple of injuries reported, but turns out it was only on empty, abandoned buildings, one of them – Safeena Building – built by the US to house the Palestinian Authority’s then secret services in Gaza. 
 
Neither Israel nor Hamas want a war, but the real one who can afford to be the brinksman right now is Israel. In killing civilians, it told Hamas it can also raise its drum beating by a notch. Most of the rockets fired since the Al Qassam barrage have been amateurish home-made rockets, with some of them exploding prematurely or falling in Gaza itself. Very depressing stuff – nothing compared to the Grad rockets fired by the Hamas guys. Only problem is, if one of these stray rockets kills and Israeli, or wipe out an Israeli family, then we’re in for trouble. Netanyahu will have to respond to public anger while avoiding another Goldstone report and all that bad publiclity.
 
Israel and Hamas are like two lovers. They need each other just like the Church needs Satan, McCarthy needed Communism and George Bush needed Bin Laden. And it’s a long love story full of drama, backstabbing, flings and love affairs, the raw material for an epic tragedy.
  
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