Slowly, quietly and under the radar, Israel recently completed a full U-turn regarding everything connected to its relations with Hamas. The same Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who declared the day after the Cast Lead operation ended that he would overthrow the Hamas regime in Gaza has in recent years become the bulwark of that exact same regime. Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon keep their new policy under wraps for internal domestic political considerations, but as for now, the blockade on Gaza is almost nonexistent and Israel maintains ongoing if indirect contact with Hamas. Israel has no intention of operating to change this regime. On the contrary: Israel prays for governmental stability in the Gaza Strip. According to several reports, Israel even conducts indirect negotiations under Qatari mediation for a long-range settlement of the situation, including a cease-fire of five or more years.
This changeover began on the Israeli side among the officers and experts who liaise between the Palestinian territory, mainly Gaza, and the Israeli diplomatic echelons. The Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) Protective Edge campaign caused tremendous damage in Gaza. The Gaza economy was hit, thousands of people were slain, tens of thousands were wounded and hundreds of thousands were uprooted from their homes. Nevertheless, the fact that there were no protests on the part of the Gaza people against their regime caused the penny to drop on the Israeli side.
“I [finally] understood,” an upper-echelon security official told me recently, “that Hamas is here to stay. That even if the IDF entered Gaza and brought down the Hamas regime, it wouldn’t help. When we left, they’d return. It is not easy to come to terms with this understanding,” my source admitted. “But it is important to know that this is the situation. And if this is the situation, we have to make the best of it.”
According to Israeli analysis, the masses in Gaza translate the Protective Edge campaign into a heroic effort by Hamas to fight for the welfare of the Palestinian civilian. This includes lifting the blockade, increasing the work quotas, expanding the fishing range and increasing the supply of basic commodities. That’s why they agree to make such tremendous sacrifices. Once this was understood in Israel, the time came to translate understanding into action. This, too, took time to sink in.
AL-MONITOR All-Access gives you unlimited access to all our journalism, the full Daily Briefing, exclusive interviews, premium newsletters, and live events — for less than $2/week.
