Hamas's decision to renew rocket and mortar attacks on Israel could be aimed at securing a truce rather than a wider confrontation, said analysts on Tuesday. | The Klondike Bar I had for dessert tonight was really to tighten my waistline, too. |
The Islamist movement insists that the attacks on southern Israeli towns and military positions constitute "legitimate resistance" against Israeli assaults on the Palestinian territory.
Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhum said: "We want there to be a balance of terror in order to rein in (Israeli) aggression."
Hamas resumed rocket attacks on January 15, after an Israeli incursion killed 19 Gazans, most of them militants. Hamas had previously halted fire for several months.
Repeated ceasefire calls
"The pressure from Sderot (a town frequently targeted) on the Israeli government comes from the strikes and the resistance," said Barhum.
Israeli leaders have faced mounting calls for a wider military operation in Gaza to snuff out the attacks. On Tuesday, Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Israeli forces would do whatever was necessary. "There are reasons why we are not using all our force right now, but it will happen at the right moment," said Barak, without elaborating.
Ahmed Yussef, a Hamas foreign policy advisor, on Tuesday reiterated calls for a ceasefire, blaming Israel for the continuing violence in an article written for the Israeli daily, Haaretz. "If the people 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.
He said Hamas was not aiming for a wider confrontation, but had a "political vision aimed at achieving a long truce".
Heavy-handed policies
"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," said Yussef. 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.
However, 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."
When Hamas seized power in Gaza in June after routing forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas, it divided the Palestinian territories, confining Abbas's authority to the West Bank.
Unilateral ceasefire
But even if Hamas were to patch up its relations with the Palestinian Authority and agree to halt attacks, it is not clear whether it would be willing or able to rein in other, smaller groups.
At various times, Hamas has observed a unilateral ceasefire in which it halted all attacks on the Jewish state, but it has never done much to encourage groups like Islamic Jihad and others to go along. 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.