One Palestinian analyst warned me 14 years ago of the dangers of what he referred to as Israel’s plan for the “Afghanistanisation” of Gaza and the West Bank.
If Hamas can avoid the "ceasefire" tripwire of the near-impossible task of tracking down all the Israeli captives' bodies, it will then be required to lay down its weapons. This is being presented as a pre-condition for “peace”. But the one certainty is that, even were Hamas to disarm, peace would not be the outcome.
This week, in his usual stye, Trump made undefined threats.
“If they [Hamas] don’t disarm,” he said, “we will disarm them”. He added that, if the US got involved, “it will happen quickly and perhaps violently. But they will disarm.”
This intentionally puts Hamas and others pursuing armed resistance against Israel’s occupation – a right recognised in international law – in a double bind.
First, a disarmed population in Gaza will be even more defenceless in the face of Israeli attacks.
Whatever the rights or wrongs of Hamas’ military strategy, it is hard to ignore the fact that the prolonged toll of fighting on Israeli troops – in terms of psychological trauma and casualty figures – has served as some sort of countervailing pressure.
Large numbers of Israelis have taken to the streets to oppose Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza – but not, as polls show, because most care about the hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed Palestinians there.
Rather, their protests have been driven by concerns about the plight of Israeli captives in Gaza and about the toll on Israeli soldiers.
Hamas, and many of Gaza’s population, will worry that disarmament would swing the cost-benefit analysis among Israelis even further towards continued genocide. It risks more bloodletting by Israel, not peace.
Second, Hamas is unlikely to agree to disarm when there are criminal clans, armed and backed by Israel, and some of them linked to Islamic State, roaming Gaza’s streets.
Palestinians have long understood that Israel’s ambition is to undermine the Palestinians’ major national liberation movements – whether Hamas or Fatah – by promoting in their place feudal warlords.
One Palestinian analyst warned me 14 years ago of the dangers of what he referred to as Israel’s plan for the “Afghanistanisation” of Gaza and the West Bank.
Israel’s ultimate divide-and-rule strategy would involve promoting rival clan leaders who focus on protecting their own small fiefdoms and fighting each other, rather than try to resist the illegal occupation and seek a unified Palestinian state.
At the height of the genocide, the clans proved how dangerous such a development could be for ordinary Palestinians. Aided by Israel, and with Hamas pinned down in their tunnels, these gangs looted aid trucks, stole aid from weaker families, then took that food for their own families and sold the rest at extortionate prices few could afford. Everyone else starved.
If Hamas disarms, these clans will have free rein, propped up by Israel. Neither Hamas nor most people in Gaza want to see that happen again. That is not a path to peace, but to continuing brutal Israeli occupation, subcontracted in part to local warlords.
Confusingly, Trump seems to grasp some of this. On Tuesday, he said Hamas “took out a couple of gangs that were very bad… they killed a number of gang members. That didn’t bother me much, to be honest. That’s okay.”
What then does Trump imagine will happen if Hamas lays down its arms, as he and Israel have insisted they do? Will these “very bad gangs” not re-emerge?
That is precisely the lose-lose conundrum Israel wants Hamas, and Gaza, plunged into.
This is an extract from my latest article It was never a Gaza 'war'. The 'ceasefire' is a lie cut from the same cloth. A link to the article is posted in the reply 
posted by Satish Sharma at
05:05
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