Israel’s agreement on Gaza must come from Abbas - Al-Monitor, August 5th 2014

The war in Gaza will not necessarily be concluded with an agreement, but with an unwritten arrangement. What are the assumptions on which it should it be based? First, we need to look at the map. Gaza is at the doorstep of Israel. On two out of its sides, Gaza borders with Israel. The third border is the Sinai desert of Egypt, and the fourth is the sea. Gaza cannot be governed, in the long run, by a movement whose ideology totally opposes Israel's mere existence. The raison d'etre of this movement is the "resistance" — a euphemism for terror and violence. Given this ideology and Israel’s military might, the 1.8 million Gaza Palestinians are doomed by Hamas leaders to be permanent victims. But the geography tells us something else: As far as energy, water, environment, health care and commerce are concerned, one can't separate Gaza and Israel. There is no life for Gaza without a link to Israel. Even more than before the war, Gaza will badly need rebuilding and recovery after the war. Whoever receives the funds donated for Gaza’s reconstruction will be the real ruler there. If Qatar, Hamas’ primary monetary backer, remains Gaza's financier, Hamas will be stronger after the war than before it. (We see where the money given to Hamas since the last war went: missiles and tunnels.) Potentially, Gaza could be a pleasant place to live in and to visit. But not under the Palestinian version of the Taliban. Continuation of Hamas' control of Gaza inevitably means that its military wing will be preserved. Sooner or later it will resume its operations against Israel, while Gaza’s civilians bear the devastating consequences. Hamas' military wing will not voluntarily hand over its weapons. If Palestinian Authority (PA) soldiers, loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas, will be deployed at the Rafah border crossing with Israel, Hamas will fight them. In fact, until the brutal, merciless takeover of Gaza by Hamas in June 2007, Abbas' Presidential Guard controlled the Gaza-Israel border crossings. As deputy minister of defense in charge of relations with the Palestinians, I personally observed the Presidential Guard's activity through my binoculars. They strictly inspected the trucks heading to Israel loaded with agriculture products from Gaza. They meticulously searched for terrorists and explosives. They did so until slaughtered by Hamas' terrorists in June 2007. A fourth and critically important assumption: There is no demilitarization of Gaza without disarming Hamas. Hamas will use its military power whenever any progress in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations will be attained. I vividly remember, how, in 1994, after the Oslo peace agreement, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a proxy of Iran, waged a bloody campaign of terror in Israeli towns to disrupt the agreement. In April 1994, Hamas followed suit, conducting its own campaign of death. As Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's minister of health, I ran from one emergency room to another to comfort the victims of their terror. Clearly, demilitarization of Gaza should be the outcome of the war. Unfortunately, I don't see today any regional or international force that can implement it. The enormous suffering of the Palestinian civilian population requires a change of the reality that will enable them to rebuild their lives and secure a better future for them. It will not happen if Hamas will continue using them as human shields and maintain its ideology of hatred. With these assumptions in mind, what are the crucial elements of the post-war arrangement? There are four basic conditions. • Hamas must not be allowed a single achievement at the end of the war. Not one of Hamas' conditions can be met. If that happens, Hamas will use even one achievement to prove that launching more than 3,000 rockets and missiles into Israeli towns and cities and the horrible suffering of the population in Gaza attained a worthwhile objective. It would amount to a prize for aggression. It must not happen. • Any improvement in the lives of Gaza's population must come about via the PA. I seriously doubt that development projects are feasible at all if the Hamas regime is not dismantled. But anything that betters the Gazans' life should be under Abbas’ control. • Egypt and Israel will monitor the transfer of goods at the border crossings. Nothing that can serve Hamas' military purposes can be imported into Gaza. A special mechanism should be established for monitoring construction materials, as very large amounts will be required for the rebuilding of destroyed buildings. • Neither Turkey nor Qatar will have any role or status in the post-war arrangement. Turkey is the political sponsor of Hamas; Qatar is its main financier. These two countries are part of the problem; they cannot be any part of a solution. The role of leading the economic reconstruction of Gaza should be given to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Civilian administrations will use the reconstruction funds under strict international accounting. Hamas must no longer benefit from the money given for the well-being of the civilian population of Gaza to finance its military operations. These four conditions are indispensable. If they are met, it will be obvious that Hamas’ way of terror brought nothing but devastation and agony to the people of Gaza. But that is not enough. It also has to be demonstrated that Abbas' way — a negotiated agreement, not violence — is the way for the Palestinian people to achieve its rights. Proving this must be the mission of the next government of Israel.

8/6/2014