A terrible sense of foreboding set in when, for the first time in decades, rockets were launched on Jerusalem, a city holy to Jews and Muslims alike, on Friday. It was as if, in a country where conflict is a commonplace, a red line had been wilfully crossed. Targeting Jerusalem was more dramatic even than rockets reaching Tel Aviv the day before, setting off the first air-raid warning in Israel\u2019s great commercial and cultural metropolis since Iraqi Scud missiles were fired at the city by Saddam Hussein in 1991. Israel has reacted with brutal ferocity. There seems worse to come.<\/p>\n
It is wrong to suggest, as many have, that this is strong-man posturing got-out-of-hand by Israel\u2019s bellicose leader Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of a general election in two months time. There are parallels between now and Israel\u2019s attacks on Lebanon in 1996 and Gaza in 2008 \u2013 both on the eve of elections \u2013 but there are also differences which make things today much more dangerous.<\/p>\n
After last week\u2019s assassination by Israel of Ahmed al-Jabari, the military leader of the Palestinian faction which has controlled Gaza since 2007, a Hamas spokesman declared that \u201cthere are no more red lines\u201d with a vow to resume the suicide bombings that terrorised Israeli cities a decade or more ago. Resistance possibilities, he said, were now unlimited. The world should take that statement seriously.<\/p>\n
Something was already going on in Hamas which is said to have stockpiled 11,000 Iranian-built missiles over the past four years and yet till now used only a few of them. In 2010 just 231 rockets from Gaza hit Israeli towns, according to the Israeli Defence Force. In 2011 the figure was 627. This year that has doubled to over 1200 \u2013 a third of them in the few days since the assassination of Jabari, striking targets as far away as Dimona, the home of Israel\u2019s nuclear reactor. Israel has responded ferociously, with around 800 air and artillery strikes on Gaza.<\/p>\n
So why has Hamas upped the attacks? Some suggest that a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was being negotiated, through Egyptian intelligence; hours before he was assassinated Jabari had received a draft permanent truce agreement. But then the \u00a0Israelis decided that the Hamas leader, who had kept resistance to a token level for years, was no longer able to control the more violent Palestinian factions like Islamic Jihad in Gaza. So he was killed.<\/p>\n
Whether or not such close-focused Machiavellian detail is true what is indisputable is that massive geo-strategic influences are at work. The pieces of the complicated puzzle that is the Middle East have shifted significantly with the Arab Spring.<\/p>\n
In the old days the Arab world was divided between allies of the West \u2013 Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia and much of the Maghreb \u2013 and those resistant to US interests and influence \u2013 Iran, Syria, Iraq and Hezbollah. But the kaleidoscope has been shaken. The loudest voices of support for the Palestinians now come from US allies like Egypt and Qatar. \u201cModerate Arabs\u201d are too preoccupied with their own troubles as the Arab revolutions threaten to bring Islamists greater influence in Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
Egypt, once America\u2019s best Arab ally and Israel\u2019s least hostile neighbour, now has a president from the Muslim Brotherhood which spent decades attacking Egypt\u2019s previous leader for his peace deal with the Jewish state. The Palestinian cause is more popular than ever in the Arab world. Last month the Emir of Qatar visited Gaza. So did Egypt\u2019s prime minister on Thursday to hold the bloodied body of a young Palestinian boy killed during the fighting. The Tunisian foreign minister was due there yesterday. Hamas is newly emboldened.<\/p>\n
What adds to the volatility is the turmoil across the region. Syria is in civil war. Lebanon is unstable. Turkey is unnerved. There are protests in Jordan, the Gulf states and parts of Saudi Arabia as the febrile contagion of the Arab Spring spreads. Then there is Iran, whose nuclear programme Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly described as the biggest threat to Israel\u2019s security. Israel\u2019s army chief of staff and the director of Mossad refused to attack Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities in 2010 when Netanyahu asked them to. There are insistent rumours that there have been secret back-channel contacts between Ayatollah Khamenei\u2019s foreign affairs adviser, Ali Akbar Velayati, and Washington. That, and an Obama second term untrammelled by the need for re-election, have unnerved Netanyahu.\u00a0 But if he cannot attack Iran he can bomb Gaza instead.<\/p>\n
There is another key factor. There are power struggles within the Palestinians, between Hamas\u2019s leaders in Gaza and those in exile in Cairo, and between Hamas and the Fatah movement that controls the West Bank. Fatah, now convinced that years of endless US-led peace talks were merely a cover for Israel to continue building illegal settlements on Palestinian land, will at the end of this month apply for observer status at the United Nations for Palestine as an independent sovereign state. That would allow the Palestinians to join the International Criminal Court and bring a deluge of criminal cases against Israeli officials and soldiers. The Jewish state would then be under siege from more than missiles \u2013 and the balance of Palestinian power could switch from Hamas to Fatah.<\/p>\n
The United States and Israel are furiously lobbying to oppose Fatah\u2019s application. Britain, undecided on the issue, will consider its position when EU Foreign Ministers discuss Gaza tomorrow, but it seems likely that the Palestinians have enough support in the rest of the UN to succeed. It was against this background that the Israeli cabinet yesterday authorised the call-up of 75,000 reserve troops. Roads near the Gaza border were closed to Israeli civilians. And tanks gathered in the area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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