Middle East Conflict: In Search of a Plan for Gaza

In the Middle East, violence between Israelis and Palestinians threatens to escalate again. Neither side is interested in a situation like the one in May 2021. But too many problems remain unsolved.

The sound of war is back. Like here in the south of the Gaza Strip. Palestinian militants have fired rockets at Israel in the past few days. The Israeli Air Force responded with attacks on what were probably unmanned Hamas positions.

What sounds like a war isn’t one yet. But the rocket alarms in the Israeli locations on the Gaza Strip and the Israeli air strikes bring back memories of the last armed conflict in May. Only a missile by militant Palestinians that is not intercepted by the defense system and kills people could quickly escalate.

The Palestinian political scientist Mukhaimer Abu Saida has already seen several wars between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. “Israel has no strategy on Gaza. It has only managed the conflict for many years.” Now Israel is trying to negotiate with Hamas through mediators. “You cannot just ignore the power of Hamas in Gaza,” says Saida.

Israel wants to allow humanitarian aid

Even if he phrased it differently, Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid sees things similarly. He recently spoke about his plans for the coastal strip: “The State of Israel has to ask itself a question: What do we want to do about Gaza?”

A simple question to which there are no simple answers from an Israeli perspective. Hamas has controlled the Gaza Strip for 15 years. It is classified as a terrorist organization by Israel, the USA and the EU. But Hamas is also a political and social movement and has been consolidated in Gaza since the last armed conflict in May.

Israel, which is largely cordoning off the Gaza Strip, wants to allow humanitarian aid for Gaza without Hamas benefiting from it. It’s almost impossible. Lapid tries anyway in his plan. “In a first stage there will be a gradual humanitarian reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. In return, Hamas must commit to long-term calm,” said the Foreign Minister.

Qatar is providing Hamas with money

But Hamas is first demanding a complete lifting of the cordoning off of the coastal strip, in which Egypt is partly participating. At the moment the conflict is primarily about money. Months ago, Israel tolerated the Gulf state of Qatar supplying Hamas with suitcases full of cash. This was used to pay Hamas officials.

Israel accuses the movement, however, of using the money for rearmament. Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennet therefore only said a few days ago that suitcases full of money would no longer exist.

“Hamas is playing with fire”

“Hamas tries all the time to return to the regulations that are practical for it and for that it plays with fire – always shortly before a war,” says Nir Dvori, an analyst on Israeli TV channel 12. You can see that on the balloons Incendiary devices and the rockets that were repeatedly fired into Israel. “Israel would like to choose the time itself to move into a new military operation. That is why Bennet is now exerting the pressure to transfer the money.”

Without a clumsy suitcase of money, it is not that easy to get millions of US dollars in the coastal strip. And so there is hectic negotiations in the background. Yesterday Prime Minister Bennett met with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. As is so often the case between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, it is very difficult to say whether the situation will calm down or escalate further.