Allowing workers from Gaza into Israel has contributed somewhat to stability along the border. But on the long-term, Hamas is building its strength – especially in the West Bank
The most important report since the end of the Gaza operation was broadcast Tuesday evening on Channel 12 News. Reporter Ohad Hemo went to the Erez checkpoint on the Israel-Gaza border to interview Gazans who were entering Israel for work. The interviewees, some of whom were reluctant to speak openly for fear of getting into trouble with the authorities in Gaza, sounded surprised at the received Israeli interpretation of the operation. In their opinion, there was no reason to think Hamas would join Islamic Jihad in firing rockets at Israel.
While Islamic Jihad is busy with the military struggle against Israel, Hamas is occupied with entrenching its rule and accumulating money. There is a lot more money in Gaza these days, in the hands of both Hamas and the local residents, some of the interviewees noted. Why should Hamas fire rockets?
The only significant change that has taken place in the past two years, during which the Israel Defense Forces carried out three operations in the Gaza Strip, happened in the period of the Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid government. That was the decision to allow 17,000 workers from the Gaza Strip to enter Israel – a decision Netanyahu did not dare cancel. The accepted thinking in the IDF is that the new situation is better than the previous one. It’s true that once a year, and lately even more than that, Israel is dragged into a short round of fighting with Islamic Jihad, but Hamas prefers to sit on the fence and watch. As such, the improvement in the economic situation is furthering relative stability on the border.
But not everyone necessarily adheres to this line of thought. Many are disturbed that Hamas enabled Islamic Jihad to fire thousands of rockets in the last two rounds without paying any sort of price, and is only continuing to build up its military might. In the long term, Hamas is growing stronger at the expense of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and is encouraging terrorist attacks against Israel there. Nor is it certain that Hamas will confine its activity solely to the long range.
The Shin Bet last year uncovered more than five cases in which Hamas militants from Gaza initiated attempts to perpetrate attacks in Israel and the West Bank, involving the exploitation of workers’ entry into Israel. The Shin Bet gave a security green light for the decision by the previous government (the organization’s chief, Ronen Bar, differed in his approach from his predecessor, Nadav Argaman), but there, too, they might be starting to reflect anew on the benefit of accommodating Hamas over time.
A far more militant line is being taken by the Israel Victory Project, a right-wing organization that has been active for some years at the behest of American Jewish conservatives. In a document the group published this week, Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, a former head of the research division of Military Intelligence, argues that Israel needs to revise its policy and force Hamas to forgo its heavier weapons. Today, he writes, “Israel prefers the option of ‘mowing the lawn,’ which is enabling Hamas to strengthen itself and leaves the population in Israel under constant threat. According to the current policy, Gaza is a chronic and irresolvable problem which does not have top priority.”
He adds, “The objective of this policy is to create the longest possible periods of time between the rounds of fighting, to shorten the duration of the rounds and to exploit them to strike hard at Hamas and Islamic Jihad, thus leaving Hamas weak and deterred vis-à-vis Israel, but strong enough to govern in Gaza.”
“Kuperwasser is urging a change in this policy “to release Israel from the Hamas threat by prohibiting its rearming and in the end disarming it, while making it unequivocally clear that a threat to Israel is contrary to its [Hamas’] interests.”
That will happen, he avers, by means of special operations in the style of Israel’s aerial attacks against the arms smuggling to Hezbollah in Syria, and it does not necessarily require the use of a ground forces in the Strip. Those who heard Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich speak this week after the operation picked up an echo of similar ideas. Netanyahu thinks otherwise, but this is going to be an argument we will soon be hearing many times from the extremist wing of the government.