The EconomistNovember 16th 2019 431T
he missilethat was launched shortly
before dawn on November 12th was just
the beginning. Around 4am that morning,
an Israeli aircraft struck a house in Gaza,
killing Baha Abu al-Ata, a commander in
the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (pij) militant
group, and his wife. The group responded
by firing hundreds of rockets at Israel
(causing no deaths). At least 34 Palestin-
ians, many of them militants, were killed
in subsequent Israeli air strikes.
There is a gloomy pattern to these re-
peated escalations, the last of which oc-
curred in May. Both sides unleash salvos of
fire for two or three days, then accept a
truce, usually brokered by their Egyptian
neighbours. pij angrily warned that this
time would be different. “We are going to
war,” said Ziad al-Nakhaleh, the group’s
leader. Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli
prime minister, “has crossed all red lines.”
Assassinations in Gaza have occasionally
led to wider conflicts. The killing of a Ha-
mas commander in 2012 set off a brief war.
For all its bluster, though, pijagreed to a
ceasefire within 48 hours of the first shot.
As the second-largest militant organisa-
tion in Gaza, pijis smaller (and less prag-
matic) than Hamas, the Islamist group that
has controlled the territory since 2007. Ha-
mas pointedly declined to join the fighting,
though it did not stop pijfrom firing rock-
ets, as it often does when smaller militant
groups attack Israel without permission.
Leaders of the two groups were co-ordinat-
ing in a so-called “operations room”. But
Hamas did not haul out—or loose off—its
own arsenal of rockets.
Hamas rose in the 1980s on a credo of re-
sistance against Israel. Since it took power
it has fought three wars against the Jewish
state. The results have been disastrous for
Gaza’s 2m people: thousands dead and tens
of thousands of homes destroyed. Since
2007 a punishing Israeli and Egyptian
blockade has paralysed the economy; tens
of thousands of young people have left,
seeking work and a future elsewhere. There
is little popular support for more war. And
though Hamas does not permit much open
dissent, many Gazans privately wish to see
the group gone altogether.
To maintain its grip on power, Hamas
would rather strike a truce with Israel in ex-change for an easing of the blockade. But
this would be unpopular with its own mil-
itant cadres. More thoughtful members of
Hamas worry about becoming, in effect, a
religious version of the Palestinian Author-
ity (pa), the feckless semi-autonomous
government in the Israeli-occupied West
Bank. The group is struggling to control
smaller factions keen on conflict with Isra-
el, many of them stocked with disillu-
sioned ex-Hamasniks. In August Israeli
soldiers killed four armed Palestinians
who were trying to cross the border.
So far Israel has refrained from clobber-
ing Hamas and risking a bigger conflict.
Moreover, leaving it in control of Gaza
meets Mr Netanyahu’s aim of keeping the
leadership of the Palestinians divided be-
tween Hamas and the pain the West Bank.
He is also thinking about domestic poli-
tics. His coalition of right-wing and reli-
gious parties lost seats in two inconclusive
elections in April and September. He has
been stuck in a temporary minority gov-
ernment for months. Though Israeli gener-
als back his claim that the timing of the as-
sassination was based wholly on
circumstances in Gaza, it was politically
fortuitous for Mr Netanyahu.
To form a new government he must
convince the centrist Blue and White party
to join him in coalition. But its leadership
has so far refused, citing the criminal in-
vestigations against the prime minister,
which are expected within weeks to culmi-
nate in bribery and fraud indictments. Mr
Netanyahu has tried to break down their re-Israel and Palestine
A kaleidoscope of possibilities
CAIRO AND JERUSALEM
The tangled politics surrounding an assassination and its aftermath in Gaza
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