There has been a very welcome development in the Gaza Strip: Israel and the various Palestinian factions have committed to a ceasefire. What’s more, it appears to be holding. It comes after the IDF failure to stop the Qassam rockets landing on Sderot and southern Israel despite months of incursions and military operations into the Strip. When the Palestinians first proposed the truce, Israel rejected it, labelling the move as “ludicrous” and a “media stunt”.
But the Qassams continued despite the expanded Gaza offensive, and so the ceasefire deal was signed and went into effect 7 am, Sunday morning, with Israel withdrawing its troops from Gaza.
The good news, however, ends there. Barely an hour after the truce, two Qassam rockets were fired into Israel. Islamic Jihad and the military wing of Hamas claimed responsibility. Despite Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad’s statement that “All of them now, without exception, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Fatah and other factions, they decided to respect the agreement and also to be committed 100 percent to this agreement,” Islamic Jihad members are split over whether to abide by the ceasefire. Apparently, sections of Islamic Jihad are made of foreign fighters and these are opposed to the truce.
Olmert pledged "restraint and patience" and there were no IDF retaliations. This is important, because any future peace or ceasefire deal will involve some initial violations by groups like Islamic Jihad. The idea is that once a just peace (or, in this case, a ceasefire) is signed the number of active militants will vastly decrease, and those few who continue to fire at Israel will become increasingly isolated and easy to deal with. If Israel were to, as it has in the past, insist that any violation of the ceasefire would result in the whole thing collapsing, it would effectively be handing a veto to the fanatics.
However, there are already ominous signs that the ceasefire is crumbling. Some Palestinian militant groups, including the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, have demanded that Israel extend the ceasefire to the West Bank and have threatened to resume firing if it does not. Israel has so far refused; today in the West Bank, the IDF shot dead a People’s Resistance Committees (PRC) militant and a woman, apparently civilian. It has continued to “arrest” Palestinians - 15 were detained overnight.
This afternoon saw another two Qassam rockets fired into Israel. The al-Aqsa Maryrs’ Brigades, which rejects the ceasefire because it doesn’t apply to the West Bank, claimed responsibility for the attack, which has met with condemnation from the Palestinian leadership. The ceasefire is, as of now, still holding.
But here’s the really bad news. History tells us that Olmert is not interested in a peace with the Palestinians - at least, not a peace that they could ever accept. Hence his refusal to talk to the Arab League, his utter rejection of the Hamas government despite the Prisoners’ Document, the brutal Operation Summer Rains which killed over 300 Palestinians (roughly half of them civilians) and his infamous ‘realignment’ plan. We should not allow recent events to wipe this history away from our minds. Olmert did not go to bed one night pro-Occupation and wake up the next morning pro-peace.
When looked at through this lens of historical context, the current ceasefire carries with it little hope of a long-term solution. Olmert knows that certain Palestinian militant groups, al-Aqsa and Islamic Jihad included, will never keep to a ceasefire whilst IDF troops continue to shoot and detain Palestinians in the West Bank. It would be like Hamas asking the rest of Israel to keep to a ceasefire whilst continuing to fire on Tel Aviv. Olmert professes his desire to extend the truce to the West Bank, but on the condition that the Gaza ceasefire works out. Why? What’s stopping him from doing it now, when it might make a difference?
The answer might well be because he has no intention of a long-term ceasefire and certainly not of a peace settlement. It is possible that Olmert’s spokeswoman Miri Eisin’s description of the Palestinian truce offer as “a media stunt” more accurately applies to Israel’s (eventual) acceptance of it. We have already seen that Olmert has ordered attacks in the West Bank to continue, despite knowing that this would doom the ceasefire to failure. A possible explanation for this is that he wants the ceasefire to fail. Why? Because it would allow Israel to claim that, once again, the Palestinians have rejected peace for violence. After Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza since June 25, together with its dismissal of the Arab League and Syria’s pushes for peace, many people around the world have beenquestioning whether or not Olmert is looking for peace at all. By entering into a ceasefire with the Palestinians, acting in a way so as to ensure its failure and then blaming the Palestinians for the renewed violence, Olmert would put the Palestinians back on the defensive.
Olmert has also been talking about extending the ceasefire to a full peace settlement. In reality, as we have seen, he has refused even to extend it to the West Bank. In a speech delivered today, Olmert urged the Palestinians to “choose a new path, a path that gives a chance to a different future for you and for us. Yesterday we went down that path and I hope it will push us forward towards the goal that want to reach – peace, calm and trust in one another”. What kind of peace? Disappointingly, Olmert referred back to the long dead “roadmap”, but described the establishment of an “independent Palestinian state, with territorial contiguity in the West Bank, a state that will enjoy full sovereignty and will have defined borders.” All that sounds good, but the devil is, as ever, in the details.
If he was being sincere, such a speech is an extremely positive development and one with real potential. However, as I said, historical context forces us to be extremely skeptical when Olmert talks about peace. Ever since he’s come into office he’s done nothing but wage war on and lay siege to the Palestinians whilst rejecting outright peace with Syria and the Arab League. The idea that he had a sudden, miraculous revelation over night seems somewhat unlikely, to say the least.
The key statement, for me, is this: “I extend my hand in peace to our Palestinian neighbors in the hope that it won’t return empty”. If Olmert is breaking with both Israel’s and his own recent history and is sincere in this hope, the ceasefire may be looked back on by future generations as the beginning of the end of the conflict. The again, if this is the case, I can think of no rational explanation for Olmert refusing to extend the ceasefire to the West Bank, thereby dooming it to failure. If, on the other hand, Olmert is following tradition and being insincere, the ceasefire may actually be extremely damaging for the Palestinian cause.
Why damaging? Firstly, as mentioned above, if Israel continues to operate in the West Bank and militants in the Strip continue to fire Qassams into Israel, the ceasefire will be dead within days. Israel will portray the failure as yet more proof that the Palestinians are not interested in peace and will use it to justify greater military offensives (much as the failure of the “disengagement” to stop Qassams was used to justify Operation Summer Rains). Furthermore, international public opinion - the most potent weapon in the Palestinian arsenal - will shift towards Israel.
On the other hand, Olmert personally has a lot to lose if this all goes wrong. He has already been attacked by right-wing MKs who argue that all the ceasefire will do is give the Palestinians time to rearm. Sections of the military agree. If the ceasefire fails to stop the Qassams, it is likely to be the final nail in the Olmert coffin and would probably signal a Likud victory in the next elections. Olmert, as the appointment of Avigdor Lieberman illustrated, is absolutely desperate to hold on to power. It therefore makes no sense for him to deliberately torpedo the ceasefire and with it his political career.
I don’t know whether Olmert is being sincere or not. If he isn’t, the truce may well end up damaging the Palestinian cause severely. If he is, there is great potential to move forward to serious peace negotiations, but he must first extend the ceasefire to the West Bank and agree to talk with Hamas, before the momentum is lost. Either way, Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Brigades must stop firing rockets into Israel. The biggest victims of the Qassam rockets are the Palestinian people.
Cross-posted at The Heathlander