Today's Situation

Confusion on the ground -- or at the top Thursday, April 06, 2006

For the first time since the Hamas government was installed, Israeli police -- Border Police, to be precise -- arrested a Hamas minister, as he tried to travel from East Jerusalem into the West Bank. The new Minister for Jerusalem Affairs, Khaled Abu Arafa, tried to use his Israeli ID card as an East Jerusalemite, to get past an apparently pre-arranged roadblock of Border Policemen waiting for him on his way to a meeting with the outgoing Palestinian Minister for Jerusalem Affairs, Ziad Abu Ziad. Since early 2001, after the intifada broke out, Israelis are forbidden by law to enter Palestinian Authority territories.

The move came days after Israel released from detention five senior Hamas officials -- three of whom were appointed ministers in the new government, two others MPs in the newly elected Palestinian Legislative Council. And it came barely two hours after Israel Radio authoritatively reported that despite an announced Israeli policy aimed at preventing Hamas politicians from moving freely through the territories, Israel is in fact allowing Hamas politicians from the West Bank to move freely through the territory, including to sessions of the Palestinian Legislative Council and government sessions. The three freed Hamas ministers are Education Minister (and deputy premier) Nasser al Shaer, Finance Minister Omar Abdel Razeq, and Local Government Minister Issa al Jaabari. The other two Hamas leaders are parliamentarians.

Meanwhile, according to Haaretz, Israel is considering holding limited ties with Hamas government officials -- to deal with humanitarian issues. The outbreak of avian flu on both sides of the Green Line was the spark that made Israel realize that it could not maintain a total hands-off policy toward Gaza, from which it pulled out all settlers and troops last summer in a ‘disengagement’ process that its architect, Ariel Sharon, claimed ended Israel’s occupation of Gaza and therefore its responsibility for the strip. But lacking a deep sea naval port or an operating airport, Gaza relies exclusively on border crossings in and out of Israel for supplies of food, medicine, and fuel. The sole non-Israeli crossing, at Rafah into Egypt, is limited to the crossing of people, because Israel was worried that if Egypt allowed bulk goods to move through the Rafah crossing, terrorists would exploit the crossing to smuggle arms. Israel routinely closes the border crossings, citing security alerts, but the closed borders means further economic depression in Gaza, where unemployment is over 50 percent and more than 50 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day, the World Bank’s standard for poverty. The Karni junction, for example, was opened for a few hours a day for the last few weeks, then shut down because of security alerts. But it was reopened today -- largely to transport a dozen trucks laden with basic commodities personally sent by Jordan’s King Abdullah II to relieve distress in Gaza.

There seems to be a struggle inside the Hamas over moderation of its rhetoric, particularly since it discovered that the Fateh-run government it replaced left behind empty coffers. Last night PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh ordered no salaries to be paid to any of the Hamas ministers until March salaries are paid to the 140,000 employees of the PA. But as of today, all he has is a commitment for $80 million, raised in the Gulf, after the West essentially cut off direct financial aid to the PA with the installation of the Hamas government. The soft-spoken Haniyeh appears to be working hard to prove that he is no fire-breathing terrorist -- he was videotaped this week playing football (soccer) with schoolkids, and in all his speeches he emphasizes that he wants his government to be a stabilizing influence in the region. He also has essentially told his ministers that for the practical purposes of running the government and ruling the Palestinian areas, if contacts with the Israelis are necessary, then so be it.

The Hamas government is not as isolated as Israel wants it to be. While the U.S. is meanwhile boycotting it, forbidding its diplomats in the region from meeting with any Hamas official or any official subordinate to a Hamas minister, the Chinese ambassador to the PA met with PA Foreign Minister Mahmoud a Zahar, ranked among the most militant of the anti-Israel rhetoricians in the new Palestinian government. Zahar is adamantly denying that he included any reference to a two-state solution in a letter he wrote to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, seeing recognition for the Hamas government, lest such a reference be interpreted to mean Hamas recognition of Israel, a prime condition for Western recognition of the Hamas government. Zahar announced after the meeting with the Chinese diplomat that he had been invited to Beijing, something the Chinese promptly denied.

Further complicating matters is the annoyingly insistent spattering of Qassam rocket attacks against Israel, coming from Gaza -- and Israeli raids in the West Bank arresting suspected terrorists or their accomplices. In the last 24 hours, a Qassam hit a factory at Kibbutz Zikim, slightly wounding two people, while in the West Bank, 20 people - including a woman the IDF said was planning a suicide attack against Israelis -- were arrested overnight. Despite the high-profile detention of the Hamas minister, the vast majority of arrests in the West bank are of Islamic Jihad, Popular Front, and Fateh-affiliated rogue cells from the Tanzim and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades -- all groups that are both determined to prove that Hamas cannot rule and to prove to Israel that it can’t defeat the Palestinians ‘armed resistance.’ There are elements in the defense establishment who are pushing for a full-scale invasion of Gasza ‘to put an end, once and for all,’ to the Qassam problem, but it is difficult to believe that as long as the Qassams mostly fall harmlessly into agricultural fields, Israel will be able to find cause to do so. On the other hand, some of the companies in the industrial parks north of Gaza, where Qassams are being aimed (so far unsuccessfully) have moved sensitive chemical holding tanks out, out of concern that a Qassam might hit one of the tanks.

Meanwhile, as Prime Minister designate Ehud Olmert met with President Moshe Katsav for Olmert’s formal designation as the MP most able to to form a government, Labor’s Amir Peretz met with his new Knesset faction, saying that Olmert’s victory speech the night of the elections was the basis for the beginning of discussions of the government guidelines and that so far, no decisions have been made about ministerial portfolios -- nor about which other parties would be joining the coalition. Last night, Olmert met with his newly elected faction, emphasizing that while Labor would be the senior partner in the next government, it would not be an ‘equal partner’ to Kadima. Olmert and Peretz were quiet allies in the last three years, against Binyamin Netanyahu and his economic policies, but there is also implicit competition between them. Kadima sources are telling their favored political reporters that one of the key reasons Olmert wants to bring hardliner Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu into the government is that Kadima doesn’t trust Labor to remain in the government all four years. But no less ‘senior’ Labor sources are telling their favored political reporters that they don’t expect the Olmert government to last because Rightist parties will drop out as soon as the government either strikes a deal with the Palestinians or starts to move to implement Olmert’s plan to unilaterally draw Israel’s borders in the east. Peretz made the point today at his faction session that since the coalition negotiations only begin after Katsav formally anoints Olmert as premier-designate (giving the Kadima leader four weeks to form a government, with an extra two weeks if the four weeks aren’t enough), no decisions have been made about which other parties will be in the government. But since he isn’t the one deciding whom to invite -- that’s Olmert’s prerogative -- Peretz seemed to be indicating that he is not passively accepting Lieberman in the government. How he can prevent Olmert from brining in the Rightist party remains to be seen -- but there is pressure on Peretz to object strenuously to Lieberman, including an editorial today in Haaretz insisting that he object to Lieberman. Seemingly, Labor could argue that if Lieberman accepts the government guidelines, he’s no longer the same Lieberman. Labor is meanwhile upset about leaks from Kadima saying that Yuli Tamir, the philosophy professor who is his most loyal MK, is ‘unfit’ for the position of education minister. Peretz complained that it’s time for Kadima to stop issuing anonymous statements deriding Labor candidates for ministerial positions -- he, after all, has been the subject of such attacks concerning his suitability to be finance minister or defense minister. Olmert has already admitted to his faction that Kadima would have to give up one of the two portfolios to the Labor Party.

In other words, those who believed that it would be easy for Olmert to form a coalition are wrong. It could take all six weeks afforded him by law.

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