The Bush White House has not been noted for losing much sleep over the finer details of Middle East policy. However, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice got only two hours in bed Monday night because she was busy nailing down the final parts of a largely technical deal between Palestinians and Israelis that allows Gaza’s borders to be reopened. The fact that she was prepared to do this shows how badly Washington needs some sort of success in the Mideast.
On the face of it, the agreement looks worth Rice’s lost sleep. There will be a road link from Gaza to the West Bank. Gaza agricultural produce can be exported. Work on the port and airport can resume and the Gaza border into Egypt will be controlled entirely by the Palestinians but be monitored electronically by a joint EU/Palestinian team. It will be the Europeans who make the subsequent movement records available to the Israelis. The secretary of state prolonged her Mideast trip and delayed her arrival at a conference in South Korea to achieve this breakthrough.
Unfortunately, timing is everything and this deal, welcome though it is, comes at a particularly delicate moment. Both Palestinian and Israeli administrations face tough electoral challenges, Mahmoud Abbas in January and Sharon probably in the spring. Statesmanship and compromise will take a backseat in the electoral battles, particularly for the Palestinian government which will face a strong assault from Hamas.
There is also the more immediate problem of Israeli provocation. Even as Rice was busy brokering the agreement, Sharon was laying the grounds for its destruction or at least suspension. Israeli forces murdered a senior Hamas commander in Nablus, Amjad Hanawi, at his home. Hamas immediately vowed that the assassination would not go unpunished. The awful prospect is of another revenge suicide attack in Israel. As and when that happens, Israel will once again play the wounded party, protest that it is having to deal with men of violence and impose some further restriction on the Palestinians.
The obvious target for such sanctions is the new border agreement. Suspending or even disowning it will crush any tender Palestinian hopes that have sprung up since the agreement, anger ordinary people and increase support for radicals. This of course is precisely what Israeli policy has always sought to achieve. It needs to keep stoking the fires of fury and violence in order to justify its occupation and repression. Zionists want Hamas to win ever wider popular backing because it knows it can always rely on Washington’s support when Israel refuses to deal with them.
What Israel fears is the triumph of moderate Palestinian leaders because that would mean it would have to sit down and deal honesty and fairly Palestinian grievances. Thus for all Sharon’s apparently grudging acceptance of this latest US-led deal, in fact he was rubbing his hands gleefully because he knew that he had another means of keeping radical Palestinian opinion inflamed.
It is a time of hopes and fears in Gaza.
