Nearly 980 days have passed since the soldier Gilad Shalit was taken prisoner. On any one of these days it would have been possible to free him for the price fixed by Hamas right from the beginning: 450 “important” Palestinian prisoners, in addition to hundreds of others, as well as all the women and juvenile prisoners.
But Ehud Olmert is afraid. There lurks a political problem, too. How will the prisoner exchange affect the balance of power between Fatah and Hamas? The release of 1,200 Palestinian prisoners will be perceived by the Palestinian people as a huge victory for Hamas. It will shame Mahmoud Abbas. Olmert could, of course, free a thousand prisoners belonging to Fatah, as a gesture to Abbas.
To give Abbas something for nothing? Preposterous. Out of the question! This exposes again the divided attitude vis-à-vis the PLO that has bedeviled Israeli policy for dozens of years already.
In September 1993, after a long and bloody fight, Yitzhak Rabin signed an agreement with Yasser Arafat and recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. The logical continuation would have been for Israel to help in establishing a Palestinian state next to Israel and to do everything to strengthen Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. But, oddly enough, successive Israeli governments have done exactly the opposite. The peace negotiations did not even start. The settlement drive continued unabated. The absolutely essential passage between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was not opened. Not only did the economic situation of the Palestinians not improve, but on the contrary, it worsened perceptibly.
All this was already happening under Rabin, and became much worse after his murder. The stupid decision of his successor, Shimon Peres, to assassinate the Hamas bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash brought about a series of bloody revenge attacks and raised the prestige of Hamas — something totally opposed to Israeli interests as presented by our leadership.
Things reached a climax at the 2000 Camp David summit conference. Ehud Barak, the then prime minister, initiated the conference and then scuttled it himself with a blend of arrogance and ignorance. He also spread the mantra, “There is no one to talk with! We have no partner for peace!” Not content with that, Barak allowed Ariel Sharon to carry out his provocative visit to the Temple Mount, triggering the outbreak of the 2nd intifada and prepared the ground for Sharon to come to power. Sharon, elected prime minister at the beginning of 2001, blockaded Arafat in the Ramallah Mukataa and demolished the Fatah infrastructure throughout the occupied territories. When Arafat was murdered (one can guess by whom) Mahmoud Abbas was elected to fill his place.
Contrary to Arafat, who had been demonized by the Israeli leadership for decades, Abbas was seen in Israel as a nice, peace-loving person, an absolutely ideal partner for peace. It could have been expected that our leadership would now move energetically to fortify his regime by a rapid advancement in the peace negotiations. But the opposite happened.
With the result that in the Palestinian elections, Hamas won a victory that surprised everyone, including the Hamas leadership itself. Israel boycotted the new Hamas government. In order to minimize the damage to his party, Abbas formed a Fatah-Hamas unity government, but Israel (followed by Europe and the US) boycotted that one, too.
This situation benefited Hamas. Palestinian support for Abbas is based mainly on the hope that he can bring about peace with Israel. If he is unable to do that, who needs him?
The Israeli government — and its satellites in Washington, D.C. — were not content with that. They tried to establish Muhammad Dahlan, a man considered by many Palestinians as an agent of Israel and the US, as the strong man of the Gaza Strip. To pre-empt this move, Hamas assumed direct power in the Strip, turning it into “Hamastan”. Thus Abbas lost all power over almost half of the Palestinians in the occupied territories.
This would probably have been impossible if Israel had not completely cut off the Gaza Strip from the West Bank, in violation of the agreements it had signed.
The continuation is well-known: Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza, Hamas launched rockets at Israel, a cease-fire was declared, which the Israeli Army violated on Nov. 4 by entering the Strip and killing several Hamas militants, Hamas launched more Qassam rockets, Israel started the Gaza War. Israeli leaders asserted publicly that they were waging the war also for Abbas’ sake, thus marking him in the eyes of the Palestinians a collaborator with the enemy against his own people. The Hamas regime in Gaza survived.
The net result: Hamas was hugely strengthened and according to all expectations will increase its power in the next elections. Most governments in the world understand now that they must start a dialogue with Hamas.
Many people around the world believe that we Jews are immensely clever and that all our actions prove our diabolical cunning. The existence of Abbas (and Arafat before him) hinders the Jews from taking hold of the whole country, because the world demands a compromise with the “moderate” Palestinian leadership, but not with the murderous Hamas, and therefore the clever Jews are interested in a Hamas victory.
On the other hand, many Israelis believe that the series of actions that have weakened Fatah and reinforced Hamas are just a march of folly, the result of Israeli stupidity.
Israeli policy is indeed foolish, but there is method in this foolishness. It can go on only because it conforms with a deep-seated desire, which most people are not conscious of or do not want to admit: To hold on to all of Eretz Israel and not to allow a Palestinian state to come into being.
If we want to change this, we must drag the unconscious motivation up to the level of consciousness: What do we want? Peace or more territory?
It is too late to turn the wheel back. Hamas is now a part of reality. It is in the Israeli interest that a Palestinian unity government be set up, a government with which we can reach an agreement that will be kept. If we have already played such a pivotal role in turning Hamas into a central Palestinian power, by all means let’s talk with them! This way we can also free Gilad Shalit in a prisoner exchange — before his 1,000th day in captivity.
