Israeli war planes on Thursday night struck different areas of Gaza in the north, middle and south, leaving three Palestinian tunnel workers dead.
The raids were carried following a new round of rockets launched by militants from the Gaza Strip, with one of them reaching the south of Ashkelon.
Even before the air raids, on Thursday morning, many Gazans were in a state of panic as thousands of leaflets dropped from Israeli fighter jets warned Palestinians not to get within 300 metres of the buffer zone with Israel.
The same leaflets, written in Arabic and including a map, exhort Palestinians to rise up against tunnel smugglers and provides an email and telephone number where they could snitch on them.
“Terrorists, tunnel owners, and the smugglers of military equipment know for certain that the continuation of terrorist attacks, the smuggling of military equipment, and the digging of tunnels will be targeted by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), but they continue to work in your residential areas and seek refuge among you,” the flier said. “The digging (of) tunnels under your houses and the smuggling of military equipment into Gaza constitutes a threat to your lives, the lives of your children, and family, and your property ... Do not stay idle and let the terrorists use you. They will not stand beside you when harm is done to you and your property. ... Take responsibility for your future.”
Few if any Gazans take the calls by the Israeli army to tell on their compatriots seriously, but the warnings reminded many of the same experience during the war on Gaza a year ago, when they were warned to evacuate their neighbourhoods while nowhere was spared the air strikes and ground offensive. Entire families were shot at precisely as they were evacuating their buildings – upon orders from Israeli forces – carrying white flags.
Fears of a new military attack on Gaza are widespread among Palestinians, although Israel is unlikely to repeat a ground offensive, which would be too risky to justify after Operation Cast Lead. Yet the new wave of rockets launched from Gaza and the immediate heavy air response – including strikes on Gaza City – were preceded by a training exercise by the Israeli military which was reportedly in preparation for a new assault on Gaza.
Israel says its Iron Dome missile defense system, meant to intercept Qassam, Grad and Katyusha rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, is ready to be installed. At the same time, Hamas itself says it wants to stop rockets from being fired into Israel, but resistance movements are still getting their way – especially the Palestinian Resistance Committees and the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Hamas is caught in a dilemma. It cannot afford another bloody assault on Gaza, which would liquidate any popularity it might have at the moment but at the same time it cannot alienate its grassroots by doing what it accuses the Palestinian Authority of doing: weeding out the resistance. The alienation of Hamas’s own grassroots is a real problem when some of the rank and file are believed to be defecting to hard-line salafist groups that condemn Hamas for not being truly Islamic.
Another front has been developing at a shocking pace over the last days: Egypt. Since the Egyptian government was caught building an iron wall in Rafah, aimed at stopping tunnel smuggling, events at the border have escalated and may be indicative of more trouble yet to come for Gaza.
Initial reactions and demonstrations launched by Hamas at the border were peaceful, but when international attention was arriving in the form of around 1,400 activists for the Gaza Freedom March, the Egyptian government would have none of it.
As things were still all heated up, British MP George Galloway arrived with his Viva Palestina convoy in the Egyptian port town of El Arish. Events there unfolded dramatically, with police and activists clashing violently as Galloway was ordered to divert a good part of the convoy through Israel, which he refused. “It is completely unconscionable that 25 per cent of our convoy should go to Israel and never arrive in Gaza. Because nothing that ever goes to Israel, ever arrives in Gaza,” the maverick British legislator said.
In the clashes, one Egyptian soldier was killed by a Palestinian in a cross-border shoot-out. Galloway was eventually allowed to enter Gaza for 48 hours with his convoy on Wednesday. He was deported from Egypt soon after he got out of Gaza on Friday morning and banned from ever returning.
Hamas is meanwhile further embarrassing Egypt in rejecting its reconciliation efforts with Fatah. Cairo must be losing its patience, and cutting down the smuggling route seems to be its first offensive on Gaza. Still, many Gazans believe Egypt is indeed generous with them and that Mubarak’s regime needs to take care of its own internal security. “If they wanted to cut smuggling, they could blow up all the tunnels in one day,” is the common response to the question about Egypt’s intentions.
Meanwhile ordinary people in Gaza speak of a ‘double occupation’. Besides the Israeli one, they are now under Hamas, which just like Fatah in the West Bank, arrest their opponents, torture dissidents and ban political events held by Fatah, such as the anniversary of Fatah’s anniversary on 1 January.
As things stand, Hamas stands to lose a lot in the forthcoming scenarios. It lacks legitimacy, which it craves for, and its mandate in government will expire by the end of this month. At the same time, its security forces, Izz Ad Din Al Qassam Brigades and exiled political leadership stand to lose everything if they had to agree to a power-sharing agreement with Fatah.
With the Shalit deal put yet again on the backburner and the new round of rocket launches, all the border crossings with Israel have been closed, leaving the tunnels as the only umbilical cord feeding the 1.5 million residents of the Gaza Strip. If that is cut off too, the unthinkable may happen.
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