DavidsSling
BANNED
- Sep 30, 2019
- 829
- 0
- Country
- Location
Jerusalem: Hamas, the militant group that runs the Gaza Strip, has been trying for over a year to keep a lid on its conflict with Israel, to improve the abysmal quality of life for the 2 million Palestinians under its control, and to keep millions of dollars in cash coming in each month from its generous allies in Qatar.
But a nettlesome, unruly and heavily armed small group called Palestinian Islamic Jihad (IJ) has repeatedly sabotaged those plans by firing rockets at Israel, which more often than not has responded by raining down destruction on Hamas' own installations and men.
An explosion caused by Israeli air strikes in Gaza City early on Thursday.CREDIT:AP
On Tuesday, impatient with Hamas' failure to curtail the group, Israel assassinated a top IJ commander, a maverick said to be responsible for nearly every instance in the past year in which an incipient ceasefire on the Gaza-Israeli border was wrecked by violence from the Palestinian side.
The killing put Hamas in the uncomfortable position of sitting on the sidelines while its much smaller but more militant rival exchanged blows with their shared hated enemy over two long days of battle.
With IJ firing hundreds of rockets into Israel on Wednesday, and Israel answering by killing as many as 20 militants, along with several civilians, Hamas was left to watch the funeral processions roll by and ponder a difficult choice between two roles it has awkwardly balanced for more than a decade: Redouble its efforts to achieve quiet along the border? Or revert to its long history as the champion of armed resistance to Israel, and get into the fight?
"By the hour, Hamas gains more criticism from their base," said Shimrit Meir, an Israeli analyst of the Arab world. "Hamas fighters are watching this and saying, 'What about us? What have we become?'"
An Israeli Iron Dome air defence system missile intercepts rockets fired from Gaza over Sderot, southern Israel, on Wednesday.CREDIT:AP
That predicament gets to the heart of the complicated and evolving dynamic between Hamas, the de facto civilian government and 30,000-strong army in Gaza, which has dominated the coastal territory since 2007, and IJ, an even older faction that in many ways has been the untrammelled ID of the Palestinian resistance movement for some time.
Both groups are viewed as terrorist organisations by Israel and the United States. In times of all-out war, as in 2014, they team up against Israel.
But with Hamas firmly entrenched in Gaza — and Israel preferring to let things stay that way rather than see Gaza and the West Bank reunited — IJ has increasingly taken on the role of the ideological purist agitating for violent conflict with Israel, not compromise.
Israeli soldiers prepare their armoured vehicles at a gathering point near the Israel-Gaza Border on Wednesday.CREDIT:AP
As Gaza's ruler, by contrast, Hamas is responsible — like it or not — for keeping the peace, a twist from its past role.
In its early years, when Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement was the dominant Palestinian power in Gaza, Hamas itself played the same sort of tormentor's role, attacking Israeli soldiers and civilians and making itself look fierce compared to Fatah, which, through the Palestinian Authority, sought to achieve a negotiated settlement with Israel. Back then, Israel would often punish the authority for Hamas' actions.
Even today, while Hamas ridicules the Palestinian Authority for its security cooperation with Israel on the West Bank, IJ's roughly 6000 militants often accuse Hamas of doing much the same thing. Hamas, which is largely held responsible by Gaza residents for the awful conditions there, has been seeking a long-term ceasefire with Israel to ease the Israeli-Egyptian blockade and rebuild Gaza's economy.
Now it is IJ, for a change, that broached a ceasefire. In a televised interview, Ziyad al-Nakhalah, the group's Lebanon-based leader, said he was waiting for Israel to respond to his terms, which included swearing off future assassinations and stopping the use of live ammunition against Palestinian protesters along the Gaza border fence.
In the hour afterwards, rockets were fired from Gaza at the cities of Ashdod and Sderot and toward central Israel. And Israel's military disclosed a new round of airstrikes.
Then on Thursday, Israel and IJ agreed to a ceasefire in and around Gaza brokered by Egypt.
IJ spokesman Musab al-Berim said the Egyptian-brokered deal went into effect at 5.30am local time to end the two days of fighting which saw 32 Palestinians killed and nearly 100 injured.
He said the ceasefire was based on a list of demands presented by his group late Wednesday, including a halt to Israeli targeted killings of the group's leaders.
Tensions between Hamas and IJ go back decades.
Both groups spun off from the Muslim Brotherhood: IJ was founded in 1979 by Fathi Shikaki, a Palestinian inspired by the Shiite Islamic Revolution in Iran.
https://www.theage.com.au/world/mid...amas-has-to-choose-sides-20191114-p53aml.html
But a nettlesome, unruly and heavily armed small group called Palestinian Islamic Jihad (IJ) has repeatedly sabotaged those plans by firing rockets at Israel, which more often than not has responded by raining down destruction on Hamas' own installations and men.
An explosion caused by Israeli air strikes in Gaza City early on Thursday.CREDIT:AP
On Tuesday, impatient with Hamas' failure to curtail the group, Israel assassinated a top IJ commander, a maverick said to be responsible for nearly every instance in the past year in which an incipient ceasefire on the Gaza-Israeli border was wrecked by violence from the Palestinian side.
The killing put Hamas in the uncomfortable position of sitting on the sidelines while its much smaller but more militant rival exchanged blows with their shared hated enemy over two long days of battle.
With IJ firing hundreds of rockets into Israel on Wednesday, and Israel answering by killing as many as 20 militants, along with several civilians, Hamas was left to watch the funeral processions roll by and ponder a difficult choice between two roles it has awkwardly balanced for more than a decade: Redouble its efforts to achieve quiet along the border? Or revert to its long history as the champion of armed resistance to Israel, and get into the fight?
"By the hour, Hamas gains more criticism from their base," said Shimrit Meir, an Israeli analyst of the Arab world. "Hamas fighters are watching this and saying, 'What about us? What have we become?'"
An Israeli Iron Dome air defence system missile intercepts rockets fired from Gaza over Sderot, southern Israel, on Wednesday.CREDIT:AP
That predicament gets to the heart of the complicated and evolving dynamic between Hamas, the de facto civilian government and 30,000-strong army in Gaza, which has dominated the coastal territory since 2007, and IJ, an even older faction that in many ways has been the untrammelled ID of the Palestinian resistance movement for some time.
Both groups are viewed as terrorist organisations by Israel and the United States. In times of all-out war, as in 2014, they team up against Israel.
But with Hamas firmly entrenched in Gaza — and Israel preferring to let things stay that way rather than see Gaza and the West Bank reunited — IJ has increasingly taken on the role of the ideological purist agitating for violent conflict with Israel, not compromise.
Israeli soldiers prepare their armoured vehicles at a gathering point near the Israel-Gaza Border on Wednesday.CREDIT:AP
As Gaza's ruler, by contrast, Hamas is responsible — like it or not — for keeping the peace, a twist from its past role.
In its early years, when Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement was the dominant Palestinian power in Gaza, Hamas itself played the same sort of tormentor's role, attacking Israeli soldiers and civilians and making itself look fierce compared to Fatah, which, through the Palestinian Authority, sought to achieve a negotiated settlement with Israel. Back then, Israel would often punish the authority for Hamas' actions.
Even today, while Hamas ridicules the Palestinian Authority for its security cooperation with Israel on the West Bank, IJ's roughly 6000 militants often accuse Hamas of doing much the same thing. Hamas, which is largely held responsible by Gaza residents for the awful conditions there, has been seeking a long-term ceasefire with Israel to ease the Israeli-Egyptian blockade and rebuild Gaza's economy.
Now it is IJ, for a change, that broached a ceasefire. In a televised interview, Ziyad al-Nakhalah, the group's Lebanon-based leader, said he was waiting for Israel to respond to his terms, which included swearing off future assassinations and stopping the use of live ammunition against Palestinian protesters along the Gaza border fence.
In the hour afterwards, rockets were fired from Gaza at the cities of Ashdod and Sderot and toward central Israel. And Israel's military disclosed a new round of airstrikes.
Then on Thursday, Israel and IJ agreed to a ceasefire in and around Gaza brokered by Egypt.
IJ spokesman Musab al-Berim said the Egyptian-brokered deal went into effect at 5.30am local time to end the two days of fighting which saw 32 Palestinians killed and nearly 100 injured.
He said the ceasefire was based on a list of demands presented by his group late Wednesday, including a halt to Israeli targeted killings of the group's leaders.
Tensions between Hamas and IJ go back decades.
Both groups spun off from the Muslim Brotherhood: IJ was founded in 1979 by Fathi Shikaki, a Palestinian inspired by the Shiite Islamic Revolution in Iran.
https://www.theage.com.au/world/mid...amas-has-to-choose-sides-20191114-p53aml.html
