The right kind of ceasefire?

By Luke Akehurst

Everyone on the left should welcome the ceasefire in Gaza and hope that it becomes permanent and leads to a peace process and an end to innocent deaths in the region. But I believe we should also be glad that the ceasefire came on Israel’s terms with Israel’s objectives achieved: very heavy depletion of Hamas weapons stocks, rocket manufacturing and launching sites, infrastructure and smuggling tunnels; high number of Hamas fighters killed, including a number of senior commanders, technical experts and units who were trained in Iran; and a new international environment created with a new multilateral commitment to prevent Hamas arming itself.

There are legitimate criticisms to be made by left-of-centre voices of some of Israel’s military tactics in Gaza, and an equally legitimate case to be made against Israeli use of force to try to resolve the rocket attacks from Gaza full stop, but progressives shouldn’t lose sight of the defeat for stability and peace in the Middle East that it would have been if the outcome of this conflict had left Hamas and its allies emboldened.

Such a result would have been disastrous both for the people of the region – Palestinian and Israeli – and for Western interests in the region.

What lies at the root of the current conflict is Israel’s right to exist peacefully within its borders and the struggle between those who are ready to accept Israel’s existence as part of a two state solution – alongside a viable Palestinian state – and those committed to opposing it. The West – including the UK – must not allow Hamas, its Iranian backers and regional allies to continue to undermine the two state vision articulated by Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and the Arab Peace Initiative.

It is not an issue of occupation or border crossings. Israel withdrew from Gaza and signed the Agreement on Movement and Access with the PA in 2005. The road to normal relations between Israel and Gaza is blocked by Hamas. Israel has accepted the Palestinian right to sovereign statehood, and showed its intent with its actions on the ground by pulling out of Gaza in 2005.

The problem is that Hamas is trapped by its own belief system. It is ideologically opposed to Israel’s existence, but cannot achieve any benefits for the Palestinian people without Israeli cooperation, so it tries to push Israel back with the use of force, in this case thousands of rocket and mortar attacks over a period of years.

It was profoundly in the interests of the UK and the West as a whole to ensure that Hamas did not succeed, and that the conflict in Gaza ended on Israel’s terms. It had to be clear at the end of this conflict to Hamas and its Iranian backers and regional allies that violence and intransigence did not bring tangible benefits. The West must stick firm to a commitment that any permanent ceasefire arrangement should seriously curtail Hamas’s ability to launch attacks on Israel and perpetually threaten the normality of life in Southern Israel. It must be clear that the only path that can bring Palestinian independence and a two state solution is the moderate path of negotiations led by Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad.

Israel’s campaign was always about bringing about cessation of rocket fire on Israeli civilians. If at the end of the recent ceasefire in December, Israel had made more concessions to Hamas in response to the rocket fire, such as relaxing restrictions on border crossings, it would have been a triumph not only for the violent tactics of Hamas, but their Iranian sponsors and other allies opposed to the two state peace process.

The consequences of this war ending with a positive outcome for Hamas would have been grave. Iran and its allies would have been emboldened in their belief that Israel is powerless to stop terror, and the West lacks the will to stand up to the radical forces that oppose the peace process. The West has the right to criticize Israel’s tactics and demand it is more careful not to cause civilian casualties, and even to advise Israel to pursue a different strategy, but it has to support the principle of Israel’s right to respond to attack and defend its civilians. Israel’s success in this operation is an advance against the Iranian led radical axis not only in Israel’s interests, but the interests of the West and its Arab allies in the region.

The message to Hamas, their Iranian sponsors and other allies has to be clear: the West will not allow Iran and its allies to make good on its commitment to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ by waging a war of attrition against Israel’s civilian population. If Hamas were to remain in the position to force hundreds of thousands of Israelis into bomb shelters, those opposed to Israel’s existence will be left with the belief that Israel is indeed powerless to protect its citizens, the basic function of any state.

It is right that Israel be judged by the strictest moral principles of responsibility towards innocent civilians, but it is deep moral confusion to make demands on Israel that prevent it from taking any effective action in its own defence. The human and diplomatic cost of this war has been high because of the decisions of Hamas. They chose to return to conflict and not to sustain a ceasefire, and they chose to hide their weapons in mosques and apartment buildings.

But the cost of Israeli failure would have been greater still for Western interests and hopes for the peace process in the long term. Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, and other Western orientated Arab leaders know this well.