As Gazans Attack Border Crossing, It’s Israel, Not Hamas, Coming to Their Aid

As Gazans Attack Border Crossing, It’s Israel, Not Hamas, Coming to Their Aid
http://www.aish.com/jw/me/As-Gazans-Attack-Border-Crossing-Its-Israel-Not-Hamas-Coming-to-Their-Aid.html?s=mm
May 29, 2018  |  by Yaakov Menken and JNS.org
As Gazans Attack Border Crossing, It’s Israel, Not Hamas, Coming to Their Aid
Israel is working around the clock to keep the crossing open and functional, despite Hamas’ own attacks on it.

Despite Hamas’ repeated assault on the Kerem Shalom border crossing, the only lifeline that supplies basic goods to civilians in Gaza, Israel has been battling intensively to keep it open.

The episode underlines a much wider phenomenon in which Hamas seeks to create a crisis in order to bring in outside funding for Gaza’s needs, so it can ensure the stability of its regime and keep supporting its military wing.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority seeks to choke off Gaza’s economy to punish Hamas for refusing to disarm its military wing and force it to pay a price for splitting off from the PA.

However, those paying the price for this are the residents of the Gaza Strip.

Three times this month, Kerem Shalom was attacked by mobs acting under Hamas instructions. Rioters destroyed fuel pipes that carry critical energy supplies and looted the Palestinian side of the crossing terminal.

A truck parks next to a security barrier inside the Kerem Shalom border crossing terminal between Israel and Gaza Strip, January 16, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Amir Cohen / File.

According to Israeli intelligence assessments, these actions are part of a wider effort by Hamas to ramp up the pressure on Israel and the international community in order to obtain fresh funds for the collapsing Palestinian economy. The deadly border incidents orchestrated by Hamas this month are part of the same effort. Hamas wants someone else to foot the bill for the civilian economy so it can rescue its regime from collapse.

Gaza’s power plant, for example, runs on gas, and can supply 150 megawatts of electricity per month. Yet on April 12, Hamas shut the power plant down completely, cutting off energy supplies to two million Gazans. Throughout this time, gas was flowing freely into Gaza from Israel. Despite the daily power cuts to Gaza’s civilians, Hamas’ tunnels continued to receive power. It is safe to assume that Hamas’ rocket factories also continued to work.

Israel is, in fact, the only country that has been fighting to keep Gaza supplied with electricity. Egyptian power lines can deliver 30 megawatts, but have been shut down by Egyptian authorities for the past four months.

As part of its conflict with Hamas, the PA reduced payments for electricity. Israel quietly pressured it to reverse this decision, and the PA did so.

Similarly, at Kerem Shalom, Israel is working around the clock to keep the crossing open and functional, despite Hamas’ own attacks on it.

Thanks to these efforts, diesel fuel and gas tankers have recently resumed the transfer of critical energy supplies to the Gaza Strip, averting a certain fuel crisis.

“The most important thing to know is that these people who came to Kerem Shalom and demolished the crossing point did not go there by themselves. We know that Hamas sent them,” a senior Israeli security source said earlier this month.

Brig.-Gen. (Res.) Alon Eviatar, an expert on the Palestinian issue and a former adviser to Israel’s office for Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, said that Israel has been left on its own to deal with Gaza’s economic and humanitarian needs. Even though the Jewish state wanted to disconnect from Gaza after leaving it in 2005, “It learned over the years that it is becoming the central player, against its interests. Not Egypt and not the Palestinian Authority,” he said.

The PA, for its part, is deliberately abandoning its responsibility for Gaza, added Eviatar.

“This created a very problematic result for Israel in the short – and long-term future,” he said. “As the door of reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas closes shut, the ball falls in our court.”

At the same time, Israel understands that Hamas is going to remain in power for many years to come. As bitter a pill as this is to swallow for Israel, it is preferable to a power vacuum with no one ruling Gaza at all, resulting in armed anarchy.

As a result, explained Eviatar, “Israel’s steps have been to not topple Hamas, to not push it into the corner, not to conquer Gaza. Israel is stopping itself from going all the way. The Israeli rationale is to balance all of the time.”

Israel has “sensors” in place warning it ahead of time before Gaza reaches a real humanitarian crisis. While conditions in Gaza are bad, they have not reached the extreme, red-alert level, he said.

Meanwhile, Hamas has realized that if it wants to avoid going back to being an underground armed movement, it must find a solution to civilian needs or risk losing its power over the Strip.

The way out of this dead end, according to Eviatar, might well be in the form of a “tactical, temporary arrangement [between Israel and] Hamas” that would protect Israel’s security control on the one hand, but allow for sufficient economic assistance on the other, thereby preventing a future explosion.

“Hamas’ ideology will remain unchanged. Their vision is unchanged. But in the intermediate stage, the tactics have changed. There is also religious approval [in Gaza] for this. Therefore, Israel can seek unwritten understandings; a ladder that will suit both them and us,” he said. “I think this might be feasible.”

Until such a development occurs, Israel has attempted to take some of the pressure off Gaza. In recent months, Israel significantly increased the number of permits it granted to Palestinian businesspeople and merchants, allowing them to enter the country via the Erez pedestrian border crossing. The first quarter of 2018 saw an increase of 80 percent of such traffic, according to the senior Israeli security officer, with 10,000 movements recorded in the past three months alone.

Yet Hamas, as part of its campaign to ramp up the pressure to find a bigger solution, disrupted this economic progress, setting up a checkpoint on the Gazan side of the crossing and stopping some of the businesspeople from entering Israel.

In addition, Hamas routinely forces such pedestrians to try to smuggle terror-financing cash and explosive material into Israel, though these efforts are usually intercepted by the Israeli Defense Ministry’s personnel who run the crossings.

Similarly, on the humanitarian front, the PA froze the transfer of medical goods into Gaza, leaving Gazans dependent on Israeli medical supplies entering via Kerem Shalom.

In the first quarter of 2018, Israel’s efforts enabled Gazans to export 37 million shekels of agricultural goods, 2 million shekels in furniture exports, and 8 million shekels of textiles.

Nevertheless, these efforts have not been adequate to forestall a crisis in the Gazan economy – a crisis created by Hamas, but which Israel now has no option but to address.