- Hamas wants to avoid reconciliation with Abbas
- Hamas cracks down on free speech, press freedom
- Terrorists hide behind civilians
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Washington, March 25 - The sudden upsurge of rocket attacks from Iranian-backed Hamas and its terrorist allies in Gaza against Israeli civilians has analysts wondering, why now?
Of course, Hamas hates Israel and wants to destroy the Jewish state and its Charter exhorts people to “kill Jews.”
With Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak overthrown, Hamas may also be finding it easier to smuggle rockets and other weapons into Gaza. And Iran may have its own reasons for stirring up trouble to divert attention from the democratic opposition at home.
But there is another factor that may lie behind the worst flare-up of violence since early 2009, namely internal Palestinian rivalries and hatreds.
Last weekend, some 58 rockets and mortars fired from Gaza landed in Israel, including two longer-range Grad military-grade rockets which slammed into Ashkelon, a city of 112,000 people, some five miles north of the Gaza border. Because nobody was killed or seriously injured, the international media did not make much of the story.
The rocket firing went on throughout the week. On Wednesday, a Grad hit Beersheba, southern Israel’s largest city. Others were fired against Ashdod, its main port which has power stations providing one-third of Gaza’s electricity. On Thursday, a couple of rockets struck the southern outskirts of the Greater Tel Aviv area.
The Israeli response has been extremely measured, consisting of air strikes against smuggling tunnels and one direct hit of a gang of terrorists about to fire a rocket. On Tuesday another four mortars slammed into Israel. When the IDF attacked the point of fire, four civilians including three children were killed. An IDF statement said: “The IDF regrets the harm caused to these uninvolved Palestinians. However, the IDF wishes to emphasize that it is the terrorist organization Hamas that chose to launch mortars from amongst the civilian population, using them as human shields.”
Hamas’ use of civilians as human shields is well-known. In 2009, the group stored explosives in a zoo and placed its military command headquarters under a hospital.
According to a count maintained by The Israel Project, some 165 rockets, missiles or mortars have already been fired into Israel so far this year, compared to 238 for all of 2010.
So what lies behind the latest escalation?
One analysis by the Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh suggested that some factions of Iranian-backed Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, actually wanted to drag Israel into a new military confrontation to divert attention from the Islamic movement’s growing problems inside the Gaza Strip. Last week, there were large public demonstrations throughout the Strip calling for reconciliation between Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement, which runs the West Bank.
Abbas has even said he wants to visit Gaza soon, for the first time since 2007, when Hamas routed Fatah forces and drove them out of the region. Abbas has suggested holding talks with Hamas leaders on the formation of a Palestinian unity government.
Such reconciliation talk makes the Hamas leadership exceedingly edgy. According to news accounts, dozens of the movement’s undercover police officers attacked last week’s pro-unity demonstration, injuring at least 50 including eight local journalists. Sources in Gaza City said the Hamas policemen also stormed the offices of CNN, Reuters and a Japanese TV station.
Press in Gaza is strictly controlled and the Islamic-fundamentalist movement maintains a lengthy catalog of banned books and materials – anything that contradicts their concept of strict Sharia law.
Human Rights Watch, a New York-based non-governmental organization, last week urged Hamas to immediately lift the book ban and also to stop barring newspapers that support Fatah, a rival movement that leads the Palestinian Authority (PA), from being distributed in the Gaza Strip.
Another explanation for the sudden upsurge in violence might also be connected to Israel’s recent seizure of a huge Iranian arms shipment on its way to Gaza. The strategic weapons found on-board the vessel, including many 60 and 120 mm mortar shells, and C-704 anti-ship missiles. The C-704 shore-to-sea missiles have a range of 21 miles and its likely use along the Gaza Strip would have endangered Israeli shore cities in close proximity such as Ashkelon.
Hamas, which is armed and financed by Iran, may have wanted to demonstrate that it still possessed powerful military capability despite the seizure of the shipment.
The irony is that while Abbas seems eager to make peace with Hamas, he shows no enthusiasm for returning to peace talks with Israel, which he left last September when a 10-month Israeli freeze on construction in the territories expired.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a CNN interview last week he is ready to sit down “at any time” with Abbas at the Palestinian leader’s headquarters 10 minutes away in Ramallah. But Abbas instead spends his time traveling the world meeting with other governments, said Netanyahu, referring to Abbas’ attempts to bypass direct negotiations and garner international support to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state.
“I said, ‘don't fly around the world. You want to make peace? … I'm willing to come to you. You can come here. Let's sit down, shut the room, you know, basically sit down until smoke comes out’,” said Netanyahu, referring to the process the Vatican uses to choose a pope. “That's the way you make peace. That's how we made peace with Egypt. That's how we made peace with Jordan.”
