Iran and Israel pursue cold peace in Gaza

Gaza, the perennial stepchild of US-led diplomacy, stubbornly refuses to accept its second-tier status. Less than one month ago, Israel and Palestinian forces operating in Gaza each sought to remind the world in their own way that, even more than the West Bank, Gaza remains a tinderbox of often violent, competing aspirations that retain the ability to sabotage an unlikely Israel-PLO rapprochement.

Reports earlier this week suggest that as part of an Israel-Turkey resolution of claims resulting from the Mavi Marmara incident in May 2010, Israel will facilitate entry into Gaza of 500 trucks of construction materials along with 70 trucks containing electrical and communications equipment necessary for the construction of a Turkish-sponsored hospital south of Gaza city.

But perhaps most interesting is an extraordinary set of Gaza-related considerations involving Hamas, Iran and Israel.

In politics, nothing is forever. Today both the Rouhani government and Hamas, each for its own reasons, are interested in a resumption of ties. It will be difficult — if not impossible — to reestablish the sense of revolutionary common purpose that characterized the failed “resistance front,” but each has its own set of interests to promote. Hamas is trying to recover from its bad bet on Egypt’s ousted Ikhwan and its broader failure to accurately diagnose the inferior power of the Sunni revolt in Syria. Hamas needs to replace the patronage and strategic depth lost when Cairo turned out the Morsi government — a move that has evolved into a wide-ranging campaign against the Ikhwan throughout the Arab world. Tehran, for its part, views a workmanlike association with Hamas at the very least as an insurance policy against charges that it is pursing a strictly sectarian regional agenda and as continuing evidence of its pretentions to broader influence throughout the Middle East.