On Saturday morning, missiles launched from the Gaza Strip landed off the coast of Tel Aviv, in what Hamas claimed was an accident caused by lightning. Yesterday, a machinegun was fired from Gaza into an empty field in Israel; a few days beforehand, a sniper in Gaza shot an Israeli civilian near the border fence; and Hamas has been involved in numerous terrorist attacks from the West Bank in recent weeks. These incidents suggest to Amos Gilad and Michael Milshtein that Jerusalem’s strategy of issuing work permits for Gazans wishing to enter Israel and allowing Qatari funds to flow into the Strip isn’t succeeding in maintaining calm:
Israel is working to improve the economy in the Hamas-controlled enclave to make life in the Gaza Strip better, since Israeli officials believe it will give incentive to the local population to stand up against the jihadist principles promoted by Hamas and its leader Yahya Sinwar. Hamas, however, is using the ceasefire reached following the May war to rehabilitate its military power ahead of a future conflict, and endlessly threatens to renew the violence if its demands aren’t met not only with regard to developments in Gaza, but also in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and in Israel’s prisons where many Palestinian inmates are held.
Israeli policymakers [must] change their mindsets and actions when it comes to the Gaza Strip. First, it is necessary to recognize the limitations of the Western way of thinking, which assumes that good economics can counter radical ideologies. This model has failed many times over the past decades in the Middle East.
Secondly, . . . Israel’s promotion of civil gestures toward the Gaza Strip—like giving out work permits to merchants—without demanding that Hamas return fallen soldiers and civilians, and stop rearming and promoting terror in the West Bank and Jerusalem, may result in a temporary quiet in the area, but could also become a strategic challenge in the long run.
Most importantly, Israel needs to improve its ability to understand Hamas’s logic. . . . For Hamas, the wellbeing of Gaza’s residents is a consideration, not a constraint, and Israel tends to have a hard time understanding that.
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