Israel’s security establishment is quietly congratulating itself on breaking the back of Palestinian ”terror networks”, months after driving the leaders of Hamas and its smaller allies underground or killing them.
The army and intelligence chiefs have proclaimed a dramatic fall in the number of suicide bombings during the first half of this year, down by 75% on the same period a year ago. For four months, there has not been a successful ”operation” inside Israel, as Hamas and Islamic Jihad describe their attempts to kill and maim on buses and streets.
Israel’s defence minister, General Shaul Mofaz, told the Cabinet on Sunday that two years of assaults on West Bank towns, with the assassination of Hamas and Islamic Jihad commanders, mass arrests, severe restrictions on movement, and now construction of the much-criticised ”anti-terror fence”, have forced Palestinian armed groups to retreat.
Israeli officials say the attacks have been curbed despite Hamas’s vow of a bloody revenge for the killings of its spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in March and his successor as leader of the Islamic resistance movement, Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, a fortnight later. During the past two years, virtually the entire original leadership of Hamas in Gaza has been killed.
Hamas does not disagree with the Israeli assessment.
”Israel’s security measures are very tight,” said Sami Abu Zuhri, its spokesperson in Gaza. ”It is true we have tried and failed. It is very difficult to launch operations.”
The effectiveness of the Israeli pursuit has forced the entire Hamas leadership in Gaza into hiding, with meetings arranged only through intermediaries.
Khader Habib, a founder of Islamic Jihad in Gaza, tells the same story.
”The number of operations has decreased, but that is for the time being, and the struggle is still alive,” he said. ”There are cells still trying and failing, but still trying and still training. There are a lot of obstacles, a lot of security. We have lost a lot of people.”
But while Hamas’s ability to attack Israelis on their own soil has been greatly curbed, paradoxically the organisation is better positioned than ever to grasp a political role in the Gaza Strip as Israel retreats from the territory.
”If there’s going to be a comprehensive withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, we are going to participate in the administration of the Gaza Strip,” said Abu Zuhri. ”The Israelis don’t want us there, the Americans don’t want us there. But we cannot be left out, simply because we are the most popular organisation here. We are the ones who have been making the sacrifices, and the people know it.
”In the past four months, 205 Palestinians have been killed, even though there were no attacks on Israel. No one exerts pressure on [Israeli prime minister Ariel] Sharon to tell him to stop. There’s no condemnation.”
Sharon has made little secret of his desire to wipe out the Hamas leadership, as much to prevent the Gaza Strip from becoming ”Hamasland” after the Jewish settlers and army are pulled out as to curb the bombings.
”A few years ago the Israelis focused on the leaders of Hamas because they want to clean Gaza and stop Hamas, and I think they succeeded to some extent,” said Ghazi Hamed, editor of the pro-Hamas newspaper al-Resala, which had its office destroyed by an Israeli missile in May.
”But since they announced the withdrawal it has become more urgent to stop Hamas as a political force. Israel wants to prevent Hamas becoming part of the political partnership that governs Gaza. Sheikh Yassin said Hamas wanted to be part of the political process, and they killed him for that.”
Hamed said Yassin’s death was a significant blow to Hamas, but it bolstered its support because the group was seen as having taken the greatest hits from the Israelis.
That is reflected in opinion polls, some of which show Hamas as the most popular political organisation in Gaza, and in elections for control of some trade associations, university councils and mosques.
While the Palestinian Authority (PA) is routinely denounced as incompetent and corrupt by many Gazans, anecdotal evidence suggests that Hamas has strengthened its credibility in the refugee camps by providing social services, medicines and money to the poor without favouring the recipients on the basis of their political loyalties, unlike the Fatah movement of Yasser Arafat.
Israel, Arafat and the Egyptians, who are attempting to broker the terms for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, all have an interest in seeing Hamas reined in. Arafat could do without the political challenge to Fatah, and Cairo fears Hamas’s ties to the banned Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
The US and Britain share Israel’s desire to keep Hamas out of the administration of Gaza and to see the Palestinian leadership confront the armed Islamist groups.
”Hamas is worried that all the security will be directed against them,” said Hamed. ”They are afraid of the Egyptians. They are afraid the PA will bow to pressure from the Americans.”
Palestinian officials are reluctant to address the issue publicly. ”It will be difficult not to involve Hamas,” said a senior Palestinian official. ”The PA has a lot of credibility problems. Those are not going to be eased by fighting Hamas. But Hamas will have to realise that it cannot come into the political process and keep up the attacks on Israel.”
Hamas has said it will cease attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip — such as the rudimentary rockets that killed a three-year-old boy this week — if all the settlers and soldiers leave the territory. But that is no guarantee that the killing in Gaza will cease.
Abu Zuhri said events there cannot be separated from what is happening in the West Bank.
”Sharon’s plan is very dangerous. It puts Gaza aside from the Arab-Israeli conflict and leaves the Israelis the opportunity to take more land and build the wall and fence and leave Israel to colonise parts of the West Bank,” he said.
But if Hamas maintains its attacks from Hebron or Nablus, Israel would be unlikely to hold off from hitting its leadership in Gaza.
If Sharon sticks to his timetable, the final withdrawal of Jews from the Gaza Strip is still more than a year away. Hamas and its allies intend to see that the Israelis are harried out of the territory, to bolster the Islamist resistance groups’ claim of victory over the occupiers.
In recent weeks, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have killed 14 Israeli soldiers in attacks on armoured vehicles in Gaza City and Rafah, and by burrowing a tunnel 300 metres to lay explosives under an army post next to a Jewish settlement.
The attacks were humiliating for the military and strengthened support among ordinary Israelis for getting out of Gaza. – Guardian Unlimited Â