It is easy dealing with an implacable enemy. With Hamas in control of Palestine, Israel's options are simple. The government can remain on the good side of the world's humanitarians by providing enough food, fuel, water, and electricity to keep the population alive, but no more. The IDF tries to keep them off balance with occasional targeted killings, and nightly sweeps to collect a few more of the bad people for the swelling population of security prisoners, now said to be about 11,000.
What happens when Hamas gains control over Gaza and Fatah flees to the West Bank? Then the problems begin for Israeli policymakers.
Fatah is the party of Yassir Arafat, and his successor Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazan). These are the people who have targeted Israeli civilians since the 1960s, and provide most of Israel's security prisoners. But compared to Hamas, they have a high incidence of secular Muslims, and are willing to say that they will live in peace alongside Israel.
The latest pronouncement of Fatah policy does not mention an armed struggle against Israel. Wow. However, it does adhere to the goal of a Palestine in pre-1967 boundaries, a capital in Jerusalem, and the treatment of refugees according to United Nations decisions.
Alas, they are forced to say nice things at the present time. It is either get some assistance and protection from Israel, or face the prospect of Hamas taking over the West Bank. The folks currently holding on to the West Bank remember one colleague thrown from the roof of a 15 storey building in Gaza, and several others found guilty in street corner trials and punished very severely, very quickly.
Let's assume that the concept of pre-1967 boundaries is sufficiently flexible to give Israel the large settlements over those boundaries, and that "Jerusalem" is large enough and ambiguous enough to give them a capitol complex somewhere in what they will call al-Quds (the holy city). The stickier problems are all those United Nations General Assembly resolutions recognizing the right of return for Palestinian refugees. They are non-binding in terms of international law, but fall within what Palestinians call their non-negotiable rights.
Are we still in square one?
We are for the sizeable number of Israelis who do not trust Palestinians, reinforced by the casualties of intafada al-Aqsa, the daily news that some Fatah factions insist on continuing the armed struggle, and the expectation that Abbas will be as spineless in West Bank as he was in Gaza.
Yet a sizeable number of Israelis are always willing to give peace a chance. One of them is now the prime minister, and another the foreign minister. Other ministers have signed on to their program, and are talking about giving up substantial parts of the West Bank. Yet other ministers are expressing caution or outright skepticism.
Our leaders and the rest of us will be arguing about this for some time. Nonetheless, present gestures include the freeing of some prisoners, decisions to stop hunting Fatah militants who sign on to a peace commitment, supplying arms to Abbas' security forces in the West Bank, and continuing the hunt after Hamas militants and those Fatah militants who have not signed on to peaceful co-existence.
One awesome problem on the road to the future comes from all those Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank. The withdrawal from Gaza produced an intense mobilization of religious Zionists (modern Orthodox) against further withdrawals, reinforced by every rocket from Gaza that lands on Sderot or other towns in Israel. Tom Friedman and his friends condemn the settlements as Israel's deal breakers, and argue that the government must remove them.
No one in the government is saying they can do that now, or soon.
Our recent walks revealed a bus stop with discarded lounge chairs. Surprisingly, the neighbors who scavenge amidst the trash have not taken them. Perhaps it is their gesture in behalf of co-existence. It is a bit hot to sit outside during the day (38 C 100 F), but the evenings are pleasant enough to gather and argue about our future.