The Middle East can be an incredibly unpredictable region. Syria’s Bashar Assad found this out the hard way when his police state arrested and tortured a few schoolboys for writing anti-government graffiti on the walls, only for the country to erupt into a full-blown proxy war. But there is one constant in this otherwise dizzying part of the world: the prevalence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Countless men and women have tried to resolve the region’s longest dispute, only to walk away in sheer frustration, anger, and unreserved disappointment.
In the discussion about Middle East peace, the Gaza Strip is usually a stagnant backwater. The 140-square mile territory nestled between Israel, Egypt, and the Mediterranean is a bleeding ulcer in the intestinal lining up of the peace process – a place so impoverished, economically destitute, and politically stifling that it has been intermittently described as the world’s largest open-air prison. Gaza’s 2 million inhabitants live in a perpetual state of siege, with Israel and Egypt limiting the amount of aid and fuel that can go in and the number of people who can go out. Youth unemployment is at 60 percent, raw sewage leaks into the sea, and the power shortages are so bad that Gaza Palestinians are lucky to get 4 to 5 hours of electricity a day.
As troubling as the economic and social indicators are, Gaza’s residents have become used to the morbid and recurring cycle of conflict between Israel and the Hamas Islamists who have run the coastal enclave as their personal fiefdom for more than a decade. The pattern goes something like this: Hamas or a smaller militant Palestinian faction lobs mortars, rockets, or flaming kites towards southern Israel, forcing Israelis into their bomb shelters; Israel swiftly retaliates by conducting airstrikes on Hamas positions scattered throughout the strip; Hamas retaliates with a few more rockets; the Israeli army broadens its air campaign and cuts traffic and fuel deliveries into Gaza; Egypt, Qatar, or the United Nations negotiates a truce; and the area returns to a semblance of quiet. Then, a few months later, the cycle begins anew.
This month saw the biggest exchange of fire between Israel and Palestinian militants since the summer of 2014, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and Gaza’s Hamas rulers agreed to a ceasefire after a seven-week war that killed 1,400 Palestinians and 70 Israelis (the third large-scale war in six years). The violence ended with the help of Egyptian and U.N. mediation, averting a fourth for the time being. But you can bet that another volley of rocket fire and another round of airstrikes is around the corner.
The international community has been telling itself for years that Gaza is a tinderbox waiting to explode. The Trump administration, waiting for a good time to release its peace plan, makes a sound claim that Gaza’s humanitarian disaster won’t get any better until Hamas stops provoking the Israelis with senseless violence and refuses to reconcile with its Fatah rivals in the West Bank. The White House is also correct to say that Israel has an inalienable right to defend itself. No nation would sit back on its heels and refuse to respond when its citizens are running for bomb shelters every time the air sirens go off.
The U.N., too, is correct when it states that the incessant back-and-forth between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza won’t end unless and until a political arrangement is made by leaders on both sides of the Israel-Gaza border who are able to take risks for their people.
Hypothetically, Israelis and Palestinians all know what a prospective deal for Gaza would look like. Hamas and Israel, going through the Egyptians, would agree to cease fire permanently and unconditionally in order to bring back a sense of normality to their people. Israel and Egypt would gradually remove the siege that has defined daily life in Gaza for more than a decade. The legitimate Palestinian Authority would take their positions at the Israel-Gaza border to monitor the traffic of medicine, building materials, and people in and out of the enclave. And the international community would hold a donor conference to raise the billions of dollars Gaza desperately requires to reconstruct the clinics, sanitation systems, power lines, homes, and small businesses that are all hanging on by a thread. Eventually, assuming there were no major hostilities over a period of months (most likely years), foreign investors would feel comfortable enough to send capital into Gaza and put their money to work.
This, unfortunately, is the best case scenario. Hamas has demonstrated no interest in disarming, incorporating itself into the Palestinian security forces, or living in peaceful coexistence with Israel. Netanyahu’s government has no interest in making Hamas’ life easier by loosening the siege. The Palestinian Authority has no interest (or ability) to take over responsibility for Gaza’s mess. There is no will from any of the parties to break out of a cycle that everybody (including the militants launching the missiles and the pilots dropping the precision-guided bombs) recognizes is dangerous over the medium and long term.
We are a long way from Gaza being an inhabitable space again. Yet this is precisely the change that must occur if any Middle East peace proposal has a possibility of surviving.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
