A HAMAS official on Tuesday renewed calls for a ceasefire amid mounting Israeli demands for a broad military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Writing in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Ahmed Yussef, a Hamas foreign policy advisor, called for a long-term ceasefire between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces.
‘If the people of (the southern Israeli town of) Sderot want to know why rockets continue to land around them, they should ask their own government why it has continually rejected our calls for a ceasefire and continued its policy of daily incursions and reckless targeting that put the whole population at risk,’ he wrote.
Yussef pointed out that his democratically elected movement observed a unilateral ceasefire for the nine months before it won parliamentary elections in January 2006 and for six months thereafter.
He said that Hamas was not aiming for a wider confrontation, but had a ‘political vision aimed at achieving a long truce.
‘If there were a sincere Israeli movement towards a truce, in terms of easing the siege and opening the crossings and allowing freedom of movement between the West Bank and Gaza, that would be the basis,’ Yussef said.
But ‘if Israel continues with its heavy-handed policies, the confrontation will remain open and the conflict will continue,’ he said, adding that Hamas was not seeking direct talks with Israel.
But Israel continues to claim that its attacks on Gaza are in response to the rocket and mortar attacks.
It also said that while Hamas itself may have refrained in the past from firing rockets, it did nothing to stop other militant groups from doing so.
However, the reluctance to crack down on other groups is rooted in Hamas’s core belief that armed resistance is the only way to end the Israeli occupation.
Since the democratically elected resistance movement Hamas took power in the coastal strip in June, Israel has imposed more restrictions on the already besieged Palestinian territory.
At the same time, Palestinian militants have lobbed rockets and mortar rounds at Israeli towns near the Gaza border, but rarely wounding anyone.
Most of the firing has come from smaller groups like Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees, but Hamas does not want to be seen as halting attacks against what Palestinians see as a long, brutal, and illegal Israeli occupation.
Hamas’s decision to renew rocket and mortar attacks on Israel could be aimed at securing a truce rather than a wider confrontation, analysts said on Tuesday.
‘With the escalation of rocket fire Hamas is aiming to push Israel towards a truce, not a confrontation,’ said Naji Shirab, professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza.
He added that Hamas was the only power in Gaza capable of controlling the restive territory.
The democratically elected Palestinian movement insists that the attacks on southern Israeli towns and military positions constitute ‘legitimate resistance’ against Israeli assaults on the Palestinian territory as well as Israel’s continuous occupation.
‘We want there to be a balance of terror in order to rein in Israeli aggression,’ Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said.
Hamas resumed rocket attacks on January 15, after an Israeli incursion killed 19 Gazans. Hamas had previously halted fire for several months.
‘The pressure from Sderot (a town frequently targeted) on the Israeli government comes from the strikes and the resistance,’ Barhum added.
Some analysts believe Hamas may be looking for a third party to act as midwife to some kind of agreement, perhaps involving the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier seized in June 2006 in a deadly cross-border raid.
‘Hamas knows Israel has plans prepared to eliminate it and this pushes it to look for another party like Egypt to arrive at a real calm,’ said Jihad Hamad, another Gaza-based professor.
‘There will be great pressure on Hamas in the coming weeks,’ Hamad said. ‘Hamas will try to achieve a period of calm and maybe even give positions back to the Palestinian Authority.’
Meanwhile, Israel continues to beat the drums of war at the gates of Gaza while waging a wide promotional campaign to prepare Israeli and world public opinion for a big military operation in Gaza, and continues its threats to assassinate the leaders of Hamas, especially deposed Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.
While all this is happening, Ismail Haniyeh hinted on Tuesday of his government’s readiness to study any initiative that could lead to security and peace and bring an end to the Israeli occupation.
In addition, Ahmad Yusuf stated Hamas’s readiness to start negotiating in place of Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas – according to an article that he wrote for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz.
All this casts doubts on Israel’s blind policy of threatening Hamas with escalation and assassination of its leaders and to hand over the Gaza Strip to President Mahmud Abbas.
Palestinian political analyst Talal Oukel believes that it is in Israel’s interests for Hamas to stay in power to keep the Palestinian house divided between Gaza and the West Bank and to deepen their divisions.
‘Ending Hamas’s rule or its grip on the Strip is not one of Israel’s objectives.
‘Israel wants to weaken Hamas in Gaza, and Hamas knows that no one can end its rule in Gaza except Israel.
‘But Israel will not take this step because it will mean a reoccupation of the Strip. What’s after that? What is Israel going to do after that?’ says Oukel.
He also said that Israel does not want to stop the rockets fired by Palestinian resistance factions at Israeli targets because it uses them as an excuse to achieve its main objective – which is to stop the peace process.
‘I think that Israel is succeeding in this arena and everyone must know that Israel is in control of everything according to its own plans,’ he added.
Oukel expressed his pessimism over what the future holds for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
‘Everything points towards Israel’s relentless efforts to disengage with Gaza and to link it with Egypt.
‘Hamas has already expressed its desire for this. Israel, in the meantime, is accelerating its settlement activities in the West Bank and is working to weaken the Palestinian Authority and to leave it with a small piece of land that can be linked with Jordan later on,’ Oukel added.