Well, if not a gesture of peace, it's at least a gesture of partial non-violence:
Hamas announced Saturday evening that it has reached an agreement with other militant groups in Gaza to stop firing rockets at southern Israeli towns to prevent retaliatory attacks.
"We have agreed with the factions that nobody carries out any action involving rockets for now," Fathi Hammad, Hamas' interior minister, was quoted as saying by the Chinese news agency Xinhua.
Obviously, this was tempered a bit, though quite within reason:
Hamad added, however, that if Israel sent soldiers into the Strip, the armed groups would be given "free reign to respond." Under the agreement, rockets will only be fired in retaliation to Israeli aggression, he said.
Now what is the reasoning behind Hamas getting other militants in line to try and end rocket attacks on Israel? There seem to be a few possibilities. The first is that they just don't seem to be doing the job the militants want them to. Haaretz had an article today about how Israeli military responses and preemption activities, including the much-maligned Operation Cast Lead, have led to Israel's "quietest year in a decade:"
At the beginning of the decade, it seemed as though the Palestinians had found a way to erode Israel's strength, by means of suicide terrorism. However, a combination of superior intelligence, freedom of operational action in the West Bank and the building of the separation fence blocked the suicide bombers, and the tactic has not been a significant factor in the conflict since 2005. Thwarting the suicide bombers, along with the deterrence achieved by the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, brought Israel its quietest year in the territories and on the borders in about a decade.
Compared to the suicide bombers, the rockets have caused far fewer civilian casualties to date: In the 34-day-long Second Lebanon War, 4,200 rockets killed 54 people. About 20 people have been killed by the approximately 12,000 rockets fired from the Gaza Strip since January 2001. In total, the rockets have killed the same number of people as four or five suicide attacks, the toll of one murderous month at the height of the second intifada.
A cynical read of this would be that Hamas is simply trying to buy time to rearm themselves under the guise of a ceasefire. This would allow them to import all sorts of new weaponry to terrorize Israeli civilians while at the same time putting on a nice face to appeal to those who want to believe Hamas isn't evil.
Another possibility is that Hamas is frustrated with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas' continued unwillingness to discuss peace with Israel, even while Israel is proposing a 10 month settlement freeze to entice Palestinians to give peace a chance. There were rumblings about Israel and Hamas talking in secret. Who knows if that rumor is true at all, but this new rocket-freeze seems to indicate that the rumor might have a little bit of traction.
In any event, Israel and Hamas have both made interesting gestures towards reaching a peace accord. The noticeably absent person is Abbas, who seems to be trying his hardest to keep Palestinians under occupation. Will Abbas get involved and try to hammer out a peace? All we can do is hope.