Present and future tense
IT has been a tense week for Israel security wise. With a rare fatality on the Gaza border and growing instability in neighbouring Syria, Israelis have been asking themselves: What next?
Last Friday, a Palestinian militant infiltrated Israel from Gaza. He opened fire when Israeli soldiers spotted him. The militant shot dead Staff Sergeant Netanel Moshiashvili, an Israeli soldier from Ashkelon, before being killed by Israeli fire.
Israel retaliated with air strikes on a weapons-manufacturing site and smuggling tunnels in Gaza, and confirmed direct hits. According to Palestinian media, they resulted in at least one death and seven injuries. Gaza militants subsequently launched a rocket, which landed in Israel without causing injuries.
On Tuesday, IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz painted a bleak picture in the Knesset of what developments in Syria could mean for Israel.
“In the Golan Heights, there is an instability developing that is on the rise, as a result of events in Syria, including in the zone adjacent to the border,” he told MKs. According to Gantz: “Incidents have not reached the level of terror activity, but could get there.”
He admitted that Israel faces a “lose-lose” situation – a weak Syrian President Bashar Assad and instability, or if he falls, a danger of radicals taking over.
But Israelis need not panic. It is no surprise to the Israeli military that major threats lie across the Syrian border, and the IDF has long been well prepared to contain major situations emanating from there. And a significant flare-up on the Gaza border looks unlikely at the moment. The main reason for this, ironically, is a development on the Palestinian side that Israel strongly opposes.
Leaders of the rival Palestinian factions Fatah (which dominates the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority) and Hamas met this week to negotiate on the composition of a unity government, in a bid to push forward new reconciliation plans.
Hamas knows that stability is needed to form a unity government – when it is launching rockets into Israel and dealing with destruction by Israeli air strikes in retaliation, Gaza goes into crisis mode and broader political matters fall by the wayside. Israel fears that Fatah allying with the hardline Hamas will make negotiations impossible, which may well be correct. But in the short term, unity negotiations could yield a nice quiet summer on the Gaza-Israel border.
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