If anyone had a doubt as to what dysfunction is primarily at the root of the Israel-Palestine conflict, look no further. The two warring factions that govern the Palestinian people, the Palestinian Authority (PA) dominated by the Fatah political party and the militant organization Hamas, have reached a new peak in their feud. As usual, the ones caught in the middle are the millions of Palestinians under their rule.
The current flare up centers around the Rafah Border Crossing, the sole exit point for the two million residents of Gaza. PA employees were deployed to the Gaza border with Egypt in 2017, a move that largely opened up Rafah for two-way traffic, after Egyptian mediation led to a Palestinian reconciliation deal—a deal which has since faltered. Since May, the crossing has been operating daily after sporadic openings for many years. Reportedly, Hamas operatives have for months been harrassing PA border agents that man the vital crossing point. On Sunday, 6 January, the PA announced its pullout from Rafah, accusing Hamas of undermining its operations and detaining some of its workers. The PA agents were quickly replaced by representatives of Hamas. Brigadier-General Yehya Hammad, the Hamas-appointed director of the crossing, told international media that his men completed their deployment and were ready to operate the passage.
In response to this “change of the guard,” Egypt abruptly closed their side of the Rafah crossing. This should hardly come as a surprise to anyone. Who in their right mind would leave their front door open if an Islamist militant organization was in charge of selecting the guests? Hamas officials seemed completely oblivious to this fact. General Hammad told reporters that he hopes “the Egyptian side will open the crossing permanently as it did in the past to allow stranded patients, students, residents of third countries and humanitarian cases to travel.”
The reason Hamas has for this systematic effort against the PA goes back to the the organization’s takeover of the Gaza Strip over a decade ago. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas heads the PA and has for long imposed a series of economic sanctions on Gaza to press the group to cede power.
Yet the recent closure of Rafah, a devastating development for residents of the Strip, was hardly a solo act on Hamas’s part. The PA had its hand in bringing this about as well. Far from simply a move to protect his personnel from Hamas militants, Abbas’s decision to pull out from Rafah was part of his broader plan to undermine Hamas as a legitimate representative of Palestinians—thereby bolstering his own position of power. After a sustained period of negotiations between Hamas and Egypt, Cairo had agreed to keep open passage available for Gazans on a daily basis via Rafah. By withdrawing his employees from the border, Abbas has essentially forced the Egyptians to close the terminal again. Abbas calculated (correctly so) that the Egyptians would not be able to work with Hamas security officers who are in control of the Palestinian side of the terminal, either because they could not trust them or because Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi would not want to be seen as someone who’s cooperating with a movement that is an offshoot of his arch-rivals, the Muslim Brotherhood.
Let the dire implications of the current scenario be understood: due to the power dynamics between Egypt, Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority, there is currently a situation in which it is in the political interests of Palestinian leaders to hurt their own constituents. The PA has done this by relinquishing Rafah to Hamas, backhandedly forcing the closure. Hamas as well has affected this by asserting its authority in the Strip and forcing PA employees to cease their operations.
This dysfunctional situation is hardly new. In the recent period, Abbas’s ire at anything that would improve the state of Gazans was seen in the recent Qatar negotiations. Several months ago, the gulf state committed to $150 million in aid to the Hamas government. Abbas has vehemently objected to the arrangement, endorsed and facilitated by the current Israeli government, since its inception. “[Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu personally takes money and gives it to Hamas [via Qatari funds to Gaza], which in turn is turning the money here [in the West Bank] into weapons, equipment and funds,” Abbas said during a 22 December meeting of the PLO Executive Committee in Ramallah. While these security concerns expressed by Abbas are fair (and have been echoed by many Israeli politicians), this is far from the main reason for the PA leader’s objections. Millions of dollars of free money to Gaza would completely undo all of Abbas’s efforts to clamp down on Hamas. He would then be left with no leverage with which to force Hamas to capitulate and hand over rule of the Strip.
The final piece of this picture is Israel’s role.
Technically speaking, Israel’s perspective of the PA/Hamas schism is that it is an internal issue, one that needs to be sorted out by Palestinians. However, it is exceedingly difficult for Israel to remain completely passive, as the outcomes of Palestinian infighting ultimately have tremendous security consequences. This is why Israel has consistently offered assistance to Gaza and still supports international aid projects, as evident from the Qatar deal.
Sometimes, however, Israel is caught in the crossfire of inner-Palestinian bickering, against its will.
In response to Egypt’s closing of Rafah, Hamas demanded from Israel (yes, Israel) to get the PA off their backs or they’d be “forced” to attack them. Hamas’s most recent offensive against Israel began in over the last weekend when a large bundle of balloons laced with explosives entered Israel. These incendiary devices have wreaked havoc on Israeli properties for the past eight months. Since April, some 1,729 acres of wheat fields have been burned by incendiary kites and balloons flown over the security fence, causing millions of shekels in damage to the local agricultural sector. In response, Israel’s air force targeted several Hamas positions in the Strip. Militants in turn escalated by firing a rocket into Israeli territory that was intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system.
Thus Israel once again finds itself in the middle of a storm caused by a quarreling national leadership. It is a trend that will be difficult to break as long as the international community continues to bolster deeply flawed Palestinian administrations.
