HOPE IN THE MIDDLE EAST: Why Hamas Needs Its Cease-Fire with Israel

From the booth: consider that this piece was written by a Swiss reporter for a German newspaper. It takes the writer almost half the article to mention rockets on top of civilians in Israel and never mentions that the Hamas terrorists hide behind civilians and launch their terror attacks from within populated areas. The conclusions, however, are hopeful; I'm not holding my breath.

Randy Shiner.

HOPE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Why Hamas Needs Its Cease-Fire with Israel
By Pierre Heumann in Tel Aviv

Hamas and Israeli negotiators have agreed to a cease-fire that could ring in a new era. Instead of fighting, they want to lay down their weapons.


Getty Images
A female Hamas fighter: Hope for a cease-fire

It is now official: The cease-fire between Hamas and the Israelis will begin on Thursday, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev confirmed on Wednesday morning in Jerusalem. The deal, brokered by Egypt in Cairo, will bring to an end more than a year of fighting between the Palestinian extremist group and the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip -- a conflict which has cost the lives of more than 400 Palestinians and seven Israelis. Should the agreement manage to bring the fighting to a stop, Israel could lift the blockade of the Gaza Strip as early as next week.

It is a moment the 1.4 million Gaza Strip residents have long been waiting for. For months, Palestinians there have been faced with empty store shelves and widespread shortages of everything from fuel to food. It will also mean an end to Israeli bombing runs and military activities in the densely populated region. Israelis, meanwhile, are hoping the deal will stop the steady stream of homemade rockets fired across the border -- though on Tuesday evening, after the deal was announced, yet more rockets sailed into Israel.


REPRINTS
Find out how you can reprint this SPIEGEL ONLINE article in your publication. The negotiations have been underway for months. Finally, though, the Egyptian middlemen were able to find common ground between the two sides. It is an impressive success which saw Hamas move a long way from its original list of demands. In the beginning, for example, the extremist Islamist group wanted the cease-fire to also extend to the West Bank. There, moderate Palestinians with the Fatah movement under Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are in power -- and Israel has a free hand to hunt down Hamas terror cells. Securing the right to continue such searches was vital to the Israelis. The two sides agreed to leave the issue of the West Bank for future negotiations.

A Hamas Climb-Down

The climb-down on the part of Hamas shows that they are dependent on a cease-fire. Israel has sharply cut supplies to the Gaza Strip in reaction to the rockets which are regularly fired at the south of Israel from the Hamas-controlled territory. As a result, the 1.6 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are currently experiencing one of the territory's worst-ever crises. The harsh Israeli economic sanctions have now brought Hamas to their knees. In accordance with the international boycott which has been in effect since Hamas seized power one year ago, Israel only allows the Gaza Strip to receive just enough fuel, food, construction material and medicine that is necessary for people to survive -- but not enough, however, to make modern life possible.


DER SPIEGEL
Graphic: The Palestinian Territories at a glance (click to enlarge).

The Israeli government had been hoping that protests on the part of the Palestinian population against their catastrophic living conditions would be enough to bring about regime change -- in other words, to bring Hamas down. It's true that these hopes have not been fulfilled. But within the population there have been signs of resistance against the policies of Hamas which are bringing the Gaza Strip into ruin. According to Palestinian political scientist Mkhaimar Abu Sada from Al-Azhar University in the Gaza Strip, Hamas is using the crisis to win political capital for itself and to drive citizens to acts of desperation against Israel. "Hamas is putting the blame for the misery on Israel," he says. "But fewer and fewer Palestinians are convinced that that is the case."

A Statesman-Like Hamas?

After a year of being in control of the Gaza Strip, Hamas is now showing its statesman-like side. Hamas strategists hope that improving supplies to the territory will help to strengthen the Islamist group's standing among Palestinians -- which would then lead to a further consolidation of their position in the Gaza Strip. In the process, they want to resolve the internal split among Palestinians in their favor.

But it is precisely in this point that Hamas has to prove that it can push through its policies and that it is willing to use force against its Palestinian allies. It will soon become clear if Hamas will act to stop the various militant splinter groups in the Gaza Strip from breaking the cease-fire. That is set to be a difficult test. Some radical groups have already announced that Hamas' agreement to a cease-fire does not apply to them.

The stakes for Hamas are considerable. In the coming weeks, it will seek to push its agenda forward -- and not just on the militarily front, but most of all in terms of its political and social goals. One of its key aims is the Islamization of Palestinian society in Gaza.

Hamas won't have much time to do so, though, because Israel will be unwilling to accept any disruptions to the cease-fire, according to sources in the Defense Ministry. From Jerusalem's perspective, it is Hamas' responsibility to put an end to the rocket attacks. Israeli politicians and military officers are extremely skeptical that the cease-fire can hold.


Despite the lack of enthusiasm in Jerusalem, the Israelis have accepted the cease-fire. After all, a rejection of the "gentlemen's agreement" would have been a slap in the face for the Egyptian government, whose chief negotiators have served for months as middlemen between Israel and Hamas.

Israel also wants to prove that all the diplomatic options have been exhausted before it commences planned military operations in the Gaza Strip. Those operations are intended to put an end to the hail of rockets from within the Hamas-controlled territory -- assuming, of course, that the cease-fire does not hold.

Pierre Heumann is the Middle East correspondent for the Swiss newsweekly Weltwoche.

Rockets rain on Negev ahead of truce

View from the booth: That the Hamas terrorists have only their own power and control in mind, they purposely shoot at engineers and workers as well as directly at the Nahal Oz fuel plant that supplies these charming people with the gas they need to operate, and then blame Israel when it gets shut down as a result of damage to the facility. This is some kind of alternate sick reality.

Randy Shiner


Rockets rain on Negev ahead of truce


Published: 06/18/2008


Dozens of Kassam rockets hit southern Israel the day before a truce was expected to go into effect.

One of at least 40 rockets fired Wednesday from the Gaza Strip struck a house in Sderot. Another hit a greenhouse in the western Negev. Several mortars were also fired into Israel.

The attacks came shortly after the Israeli government confirmed that it accepted the terms of an Egyptian-mediated cease-fire with Hamas set to go into effect Thursday morning.

Palestinian gunmen also fired on engineers working near the border fence. In response, Israel closed the Nahal Oz fuel depot.

U.S. Jewish aid filling [Israeli Government] void in Sderot

U.S. Jewish aid filling void in Sderot
Jacob Berkman

As residents of the embattled town of Sderot say they have been abandoned by the Israeli government, the United Jewish Communities and Jewish federations in the United States have stepped in to fill the void. But this source of support could be drying up.

Published: 06/17/2008


SDEROT, Israel (JTA) -- For the past several years, Geut Argon has spent little time on the second floor of her home here in southern Israel.

With Palestinian militants in the nearby Gaza Strip regularly aiming Kassam rockets at random targets in this poor, working-class town, it just seemed too dangerous, she says in a recent interview at the Sderot Community Center.

But one afternoon about eight months ago, her son Nir, 4, and his 5-year-old friend Lior begged her to let them go upstairs to see something on the family’s computer. She relented.

Before Argon dropped off Nir and Lior at the computer, Nir headed toward the bathroom. A rocket came crashing through the roof.

“There was just one big boom and then I don’t remember,” she said.

Argon, 35, was knocked unconscious temporarily. She still recalls the horror of the moments after she came to, frantically scrambling through the rubble to find the two children. It wasn’t until she located them, relatively unscathed, that it became clear she was the one who had been wounded.

"Mommy, Mommy. Blood!" Nir screamed.

The gash in Argon's head would require several surgeries to remove shrapnel embedded in her brain.

Argon is one of the thousands of residents in Sderot and the surrounding towns on the Gaza-Israel border who has received some form of relief from the network of North American Jewish federations and the United Jewish Communities over the past year and a half.

The UJC has doled out some $26 million to its overseas partners, the Jewish Agency for Israel and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, for programs in Sderot. And though it has received some resistance from local federations of late, the UJC hopes to give slightly more than $10 million in additional aid in the coming months.

Argon has received psychological counseling though UJC-funded programming. The Jewish Agency has provided approximately $1,300 through its SOS Fund for short-term relief, but she is waiting to receive money from the Israeli government to fix her house. The Jewish Agency later gave her about $8,000 from its Victims of Terror Fund.

Since April 2001, Palestinian militants have fired an estimated 4,000 rockets and mortar shells at Sderot and the areas near the Gaza border.

The situation has worsened in the past two years, according to Israeli military officials. Nearly 2,900 attacks have come since Israel withdrew from Gaza in August 2005. Some 1,400 have come since Hamas took political control of Gaza in June 2007.

Sixteen Israelis have been killed in the Sderot region since the attacks began.

The Palestinians have increased their firepower, largely with the help of Iran, military specialists say. They have improved the range of their Kassam missiles, started to use 122 mm mortar shells and begun to employ Grad missiles that can reach Ashkelon and perhaps beyond.

As the attacks have increased, the population of Sderot -- mostly new immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Arab lands -- has dwindled. Although there is no definitive figure on the number of residents that have departed, estimates range from 25 percent to nearly 50 percent in a region that once had a population of 24,000.

Most of those who had the financial means have left, according to municipal officials, social service workers and residents. The majority of those who remain are either idealists or could not afford to leave.

Elsewhere in the world, Israeli and American Jewish philanthropy has focused on removing Jews from endangered areas. But for Israel, the flight from Sderot is troubling -- both militarily, as the country's border could essentially be pushed back, and for national morale, as Israelis see themselves fleeing.

Most of the UJC allocations to the Sderot region have gone to helping the residents endure, giving them respite and offering incentives to others to move to the embattled area. The federation system has allocated some $2.9 million in scholarships for Sapir College in Sderot and more then $5 million to take children in Sderot and Ashkelon out of harm's way for summer camp.

In sharp contrast to the UJC's funding strategy up north, where it has directed about $35 million to economic development, less than $1 million of the funds from the federation system has been spent that way in the Sderot area. Lodge said that's because most of the economic development funding up north was in the form of loan guarantees issued after the conflict with Hezbollah. Such measures, he added, are seen by the UJC as a poor investment during a time of active conflict like the one plaguing Sderot.

The UJC has spent more than $2 million on programs to treat trauma and stress among Sderot residents, as well to promote “resiliency" in coping with the constant threat of rockets. The rate of post-traumatic stress disorder is high among the residents.

The JDC has helped seven of Sderot’s eight elementary schools build “havens of calm,” fortified rooms where students come for alternative therapy sessions in managing their stress. Yoga and pet therapy are among the approaches incorporated into the sessions.

Until recently, aid coming into the region has been slow, especially from the government. Much of the assistance in Sderot from the UJC's partners thus far has come from the $360 million raised by the North American federations to rebuild Israel's north in the aftermath of the 2006 war with Hezbollah.

Other than the One Family Fund, which has been helping the people of Sderot since 2004 -- it has given more than $1 million in the past year alone -- the situation garnered little attention from Israeli society and nonprofits, according to Pini Rabinovich, the coordinator for the organization's activities in the Jerusalem area and southern Israel.

Sderot's plight also has been largely ignored by the Israeli public, and the town's story has been misplayed -- and in some cases flat-out missed -- by the Israeli media, according to Tal Samuel-Azran, a media specialist at Ben Gurion University.

It's a turn of events that has frustrated Sderot residents like Argon. Much of the frustration is with the Israeli government, which has provided tax cuts to the region's residents but has left a void that private organizations such as the UJC have increasingly had to fill.

Argon estimates that the Kassam that hit her house caused $30,000 in damages. The UJC and Jewish Agency assistance was needed because “the government doesn’t want to pay for it."

“The government? They keep forgetting them, otherwise why do you need so many organizations?” Rabinovich asked at the Sderot center, where the organization’s founder, Mark Belzberg, was distributing books and toys to area children.

When asked about such complaints, the Israeli Consulate in New York noted that the Israeli government has spent about $172 million since 2003 in civilian assistance to residents of Sderot and the western Negev.

“These figures include direct assistance by means of 50% reductions in property tax, 25% reductions of income tax, the highest subsidies for daycare centers, and scholarships for students, among others,” the consulate said in a statement. “The unemployment rate in Sderot is one of the lowest in the country due to government incentives given to investors and entrepreneurs. These figures also includes aid on a regional level by means of upgrading industrial areas; preference for defense ministry contracts; funding communities' security expenses; aid for agriculture, new immigrants, and large families; investments in neighborhood refurbishment, infrastructure, sewage, roads, and water systems; funding cultural events, increasing school hours, new ambulances, treating psychological trauma, creating new employment opportunities, and many other projects.”

At the same time that residents bemoan what they see as their government's failures, those on the ground see a new momentum in Sderot-related philanthropy.

“Now it is very popular, it is in,” Rabinovich told JTA.

Argon, for instance, receives aid from four organizations: the UJC, the Jewish Agency, the One Family Fund and another called Chibbuk.

Nachman Shai, the senior vice president of the UJC and director general of UJC Israel, says the Jewish community is starting to recognize the problem in the Sderot region.

At the same time, the UJC has had issues of late raising money for the cause.

The organization largely has been rebuffed in its efforts to raise another $13.6 million from local Jewish federations in North America for helping Sderot, Ashkelon and the surrounding cities, said a UJC official.

The UJC approved an allocation for that amount in March to cover additional Sderot programming, then sent a letter from its leadership to the federations making a soft pitch for money. But the federations have been slow to react, according to Jim Lodge, the UJC’s vice president for Israel and overseas issues.

So far, the federations have given roughly $2.25 million, which the UJC has allocated to five projects. Further projects are on hold until the federations come through with more aid.

“I hope they will respond,” Shai told JTA.

Argon, though, sees hope that the Jewish world is starting to pay attention.

"People know more now I think," she said. "I don’t think they really knew what was going on until now."

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