Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Why Israel's Netanyahu May Prefer a Waltz With Hamas to a Tango With Abbas

 
Why Israel's Netanyahu May Prefer a Waltz With Hamas to a Tango With Abbas
Posted by Tony Karon Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 7:48 pm
 
Tuesday's milestone prisoner exchange does not, repeat does not portend 
a new peace process between Israel and Hamas. Neither side is even 
seeking that goal: If the government of Prime Minister Benjamin 
Netanyahu is unable to agree peace terms with the moderate President 
Mahmoud Abbas, it's hardly about to seek a "grand bargain" to end the 
conflict with the more intractable leadership of Hamas, which Netanyahu 
sees as a mortal enemy. Hamas, even though its leadership has come to 
define its immediate goal as establishing a Palestinian state on the 
1967 lines,
has no interest in replacing Abbas in a peace process whose terms it has 
long rejected. Their existential conflict notwithstanding, however, 
Hamas and Israel may see mutual benefit in a liaison of convenience of 
the sort seen in the prisoner exchange, in which Abbas was an 
ineffectual spectator.
 
Netanyahu came to power in 2009 arguing that there was no prospect for 
completing the peace process that had been stalled since January of 
2001. A grand bargain with the Palestinians simply couldn't be done, he 
insisted: Abbas was unwilling or unable to accept Israel's terms, and he 
was too weak, politically, to sell any compromise deal to his own 
people. Abbas' term of office had expired but he dared not risk new 
elections; his parliament was actually dominated by Hamas which had won 
the last vote; and he had no authority in Gaza since his forces were 
evicted by Hamas in 2007. Rather than seek a political settlement with 
Abbas, Netanyahu argued, Israel's focus should be on "economic peace" -- 
easing up on Israel's stranglehold to allow the West Bank economy to 
grow and provide a basis for peace at some point in the future. (Gaza 
would remain under an economic stranglehold until its population was 
willing to topple Hamas.) While Netanyahu's logic may have tracked for a 
time with the efforts of the U.S.-picked Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to 
build Palestinian institutions -- and with Abbas' hopes of hobbling 
Hamas -- both Abbas and Fayyad insisted that  statehood and an end to 
the occupation remained their key objective.
 
And while the incoming Obama Administration had tacitly accepted the 
"economic war" on Gaza, it made clear that Washington expected more than 
"economic peace" in the West Bank. So Netanyahu went to Plan B, 
rhetorically accepting the principle of a two-state solution but setting 
such preconditions as to ensure that Israel would not, in practice, be 
required to implement it. Abbas has known all along that Netanyahu won't 
concede the minimum
necessary for a Palestinian leader to conclude a peace agreement, but 
he'd hoped the Obama Administration would supply the leverage required 
to change Israel's calculations. That illusion was shattered by Obama's 
cave-in to Netanyahu on the U.S. President's insistence that Israel halt 
settlement construction outside its 1967 borders, as required by 
President Bush's 2002 "Roadmap". Having been left dangling by Obama, 
Abbas turned to the United Nations, hoping to create negotiating 
leverage there through establishing international recognition of 
Palestinian sovereignty over the 1967 territories.
 
The U.N. bid, which put Abbas on a collision course with Israel and the 
Administration, remains in a kind of limbo, with the U.S. still hoping 
to sidestep it by restarting negotiations on the terms already rejected 
by Abbas and trying to frustrate his efforts to make headway at the U.N.
 
But Hamas had also, for its own reasons, opposed Abbas' U.N. bid, seeing 
it as nothing more than an attempt by the Palestinian to boost his own 
leverage before returning to the same old negotiating table, rejoining a 
process that, as Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan put it, "has proved futile 
over the past twenty years." Instead, Hamas insists that Abbas operate 
on the basis of a national consensus achieved via Fatah-Hamas 
reconciliation, and that the Palestinian focus be on pressuring Israel 
to end the occupation. A state could only be created once that 
occupation was ended, Hamdan warned.
 
The prisoner swap, hailed as a victory for Hamas' stubborn resistance, 
has given the organization
a desperately needed bump in its approval rating among Palestinians. 
Even then, its popularity remain in the doldrums, dragged down by the 
misery of Gaza. A recent opinion poll published by An Najah National 
University in Nablus found that while 67% of Palestinians living in the 
West Bank and Gaza believed the prisoner deal would boost Hamas' 
popularity, at the same time, only 8% said they would vote for a Hamas 
candidate in a presidential election -- compared with 27% for a Fatah 
candidate. More striking, perhaps was the fact that 22% said they would 
not bother to vote at all, while a further 20% were undecided. So Hamas 
has plenty of incentive to try and regain the support that saw it win 
the 2006 legislative election in the West Bank and Gaza.
 
And the changing regional situation, in which Hamas may lose its 
sanctuary in Syria, makes the organization more inclined to please such 
potential future hosts as Egypt, Turkey and Qatar, all of whom see 
themselves as mediating a credible peace independent of the failed U.S. 
effort rather than as joining a "resistance front" with Iran and Syria.
 
The afterglow of the prisoner release will fade soon enough, which is 
why Hamas' priority now is to improve the quality of life in Gaza. 
Currently, it's struggling even to pay salaries there, with Iranian 
financial support having been withdrawn over Hamas' refusal to condemn 
the Syrian rebellion. Other sources of funding may well be found, but 
Hamas' priority going forward will be to ease and end the Israeli 
blockade of Gaza -- an issue reportedly addressed in the prisoner 
exchange deal.
 
The Wall Street Journal reports that in the course of the Shalit talks, 
Netanyahu had agreed to allow the reconstruction of Gaza, adding that 
the Israeli envoy to the talks had spoken of the Prime Minister's desire 
to see an economic boom in Gaza. The Journal quoted government officials 
admitting that the Israeli government planned to follow a policy of 
"growing openness" towards Gaza.
 
"Economic peace" in Gaza, then?
 
Despite its fundamental antagonism for Israel, Hamas' political fortunes 
may depend on its ability to secure the well-being of Gazans, and that 
certainly creates an incentive for maintaining its cease-fire with 
Israel. Egypt, which took the lead in mediating the Shalit deal, also 
benefits from at once easing conditions in Gaza and also demonstrating 
its ability to maintain security.
 
And for Israel, allowing Hamas to rebuild Gaza carries little immediate 
downside, but could help reverse its isolation by addressing 
longstanding demands of Turkey and Qatar for an end to the blockade. 
And, if allowing Hamas to make gains weakens President Abbas -- well, 
the Israelis weren't planning on doing a deal with him, anyway, and his 
U.N. strategy has created diplomatic problems for Netanyahu.
 
Israel has a long-established tradition of playing rivals off against 
one another, dealing with the one deemed most challenging at any moment: 
In the late '80s, it was actually Israeli policy to allow Hamas to 
emerge as a challenger to Yasser Arafat's Fatah in the West Bank and 
Gaza. During the '90s,  Israel repeatedly between a focus on negotiating 
with the Palestinians and on negotiating with Syria, using each option 
as leverage against the other. And there was even a period after his 
1996 election as Prime Minister during which Netanyahu reached out 
discreetly to Iran in the hope of improving relations.
 
So, cooperation between Hamas and Israel on easing conditions in Gaza is 
not a dance of peace, but rather of circumstance. Neither side may have 
much faith in Abbas and the peace process, but the deeper reality of the 
occupation will surely have them stomping on one another's feet -- or 
worse -- soon enough. Neither partner has any illusions about the other. 
Nor can the Gaza situation be considered in isolation: Hamas, remember, 
is a West Bank organization as well as a Gaza one. Also, the prisoner 
exchange could spur Abbas to act on his vow to to raise economic 
pressure and non-violent protest action for an end to the occupation -- 
as Palestinian civil society groups have been doing for some time. 
Indeed, the strongest impetus coming from ordinary Palestinians, right 
now, is for Hamas and Abbas to put aside their differences and create a 
unity government to forge a common strategy to end the occupation. If 
they do, neither Palestinian faction is likely to be dancing with 
Netanyahu for very long.
 
Read more: 
http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/10/19/why-israels-netanyahu-may-prefer-a-waltz-with-hamas-to-a-tango-with-abbas/#ixzz1bM5hUXMN
 
 
-- 
Sostieni Rete ECO
 
http://rete-eco.it/it/sostienici.html
 

 Why Israel's Netanyahu May Prefer a Waltz With Hamas
 
come diceva il Nostro Maggiore
"pares autem, vetere proverbio, cum paribus facillime congregantur"


Eh, ma almeno Hamas non ha quinte colonne con doppia cittadinanza che 
organizzano happening istituzionali col sindaco ex fascista.


 people.
 
eh gia'.
 
Ho l'impressione che Persio abbia postato senza leggere.