经济学人-Gaza crisis-老问题,新分析.doc

The Gaza crisisWill the ceasefire lead to peace?After a week-long war between Israel and the Palestinians, a temporary cessation of violence has been agreed. But can a more durable settlement be found?Nov 24th 2012 | CAIRO, GAZA AND JERUSALEM| from the print edition TweetAS THE latest war between Israel and the Palestinians threatened to spiral out of control, the airspace over Egypts capital, Cairo, seemed almost as crowded with envoys and grandees as Gazas with drones, bombs and rockets. On November 21st, a week after the violence intensified with the Israeli assassination of Hamass military commander, diplomacy seemed to prevail, as a ceasefire was agreed.After at least 140 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians, had been killed, along with five Israelis, the Gazan rockets stopped firing at Israel and the Israelis stopped pummelling Gaza from the air, sea and land. No one believed that large-scale violence between Palestinians and Israelis would cease for ever. But there was huge relief, across the region and the wider world, that this time round it had not been a lot worse.In this section Will the ceasefire lead to peace? Dome warfare Who represents us now? Trouble again in the north Fraying round the edges Where are the jobs for the boys?ReprintsRelated topics Diplomacy Political policy Foreign policy International relations Muhammad MorsiAmong others coming and going were the UN secretary-general, the American secretary of state and the foreign ministers of Turkey and Germany. But the real bargaining took place behind closed doors at the headquarters of General Muhammad Shehata, Egypts intelligence chief. There, in separate rooms, the Egyptians haggled with a legal adviser to the Israeli prime minister, and with representatives from Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that runs Gaza, and a smaller, more radical Palestinian faction, Islamic Jihad.Most notable for their lack of diplomatic input were the Palestinians globally recognised leader, Mahmoud Abbas, who hopes to win enhanced observer-state status for Palestine next week at the UN, and unusually, at least to begin with, the United States. However, Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, cutting short an Asian voyage with her president, Barack Obama, was later credited with persuading Binyamin Netanyahu, Israels prime minister, to stay his hand. Egypts new Islamist president, Muhammad Morsi, emerged for the first time as the key regional peacemaker, prodding his ideological brethren in Hamas into giving an assurance that they would stop firing rockets at Israel.Everyone knows that a single impetuous action deemed by one side to flout the agreement could set the cycle of tit-for-tat violence spinning again. The bombing of an Israeli bus in Tel Aviv on November 21st, wounding a score of people, momentarily threatened to scupper the deal. All the same, there were high hopes that a breakthrough has been achieved.The ceasefires actual terms are skimpy. It is unclear what a new monitoring system would look like. Some Palestinian and Egyptian sources at first spoke of an initial 90-day truce. The Israelis and Americans, by contrast, had preferred to talk of a “de-escalation” or brief “calming down” period. The basic agreement, in any event, is that Hamas must stop firing rockets; it will presumably stanch the flow of smuggled arms into Gaza, while Israel would stop its incursions and aerial attacks, desist from assassinating Hamas bigwigs, and loosen its stranglehold on Gaza, with its harsh restrictions on the movement of people and goods, often labelled as a cruel siege. The Palestinians also, in the long run, hope for broader international recognition.The brief war and the subsequent ceasefire has highlighted dramatic changes in the region since the previous round of all-out fighting in Gaza, which ended in January 2009. The Arab awakening has shifted the balance of power and brought in very different new actors. Moreover, Hamas, which had been aligned with Syria and Iran, has disengaged from those alliances, dismayed by the repression of Syrias largely Sunni Muslim uprising. Hamas is believed to have stopped getting Iranian aid last spring, after it abandoned its headquarters in Syrias capital, Damascus, and declared that it would not fight on Irans side in any conflict with Israel. Its new best friends are Egypt, Qatar and Turkey.Hamass reorientation has raised its hopes of gaining wider international legitimacy. A recent procession of grand visitors to Gaza, before and during the week-long war, bolstered such hopes. Turkeys foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, burst into tears at Gazas main hospital on November 20th during a joint visit alongside the Arab Leagues chief, Nabil al-Arabi. “Your pain is our pain,” he declared. “Your destiny is our destiny and your future is our future.” Yet an intemperate outburst by his prime ministerial boss, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who called Israel a “terrorist state”, eroded the chances of restoring Turkeys once-warm relations with Israel, reducing its usefulness as a mediator.Hamas puts its highest hopes on Egypt, whose Muslim Brothers have for decades posed as comrades-in-arms to the Palestinians. But in practice, as part of an unspoken deal with the Egyptian army and the “deep state” of the security services that helped clinch Mr Morsis installation as president, Egypts new government may yet let the old foreign-policy establishment, dominated by intelligence people, continue to set policy. Egypts government may still treat Hamas quite warily. In particular, Egypt does not want to give Israel a pretext for fulfilling its longstanding wish to sever Gaza from the rump Palestinian state on the West Bank and dump it on Egypt. Hence Egypt has resisted popular pressure to open its border with Gaza fully. This, however, may have to change.Further weakening Egypts role as an ally, Mr Morsi has been increasingly beleaguered within. His government has only just, after 18 months of talks, signed a deal with the IMF for a loan of $4.8 billion sorely needed to shore up a faltering economy. That should free a lot more Western aid, but it will be contingent on Egypts continuing behaviour as a force for moderation in the region, including Palestine.Another big change has been the lower profile, at least initially, of the United States. Burned by failed early attempts to promote a Palestinian-Israeli peace, Mr Obama haduntil Mrs Clintons rushed visit taken a hands-off approach to the latest strife over Gaza, bar a standard reiteration that Israel had a right to defend itself and that Hamas, which he still shuns as a terrorist organisation, was to blame for the surge of violence. The Americans plainly now have to acknowledge Mr Morsi, of whom they were initially suspicious, as the key mediator between the two old enemies. “We appreciate his personal leadership,” said Mrs Clinton in Jerusalem on November 20th. “Egypt has the opportunity and responsibility to continue playing a crucial and constructive role.” Mr Obama is belatedly forging warmer relations with his Egyptian counterpart, who realises that Americas clout is also still vital.So Mr Morsis conduct offers a gleam of hope. His government will be closely involved in monitoring Gazas borders. That could also augur well for conciliation between the rival Palestinian groups, for a broader Palestinian dialogue with Israel, and also for Egypts relations with America. “This is Morsis first test,” says Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a former Israeli defence minister who for a long time served as a conduit to Hosni Mubarak before he was deposed as Egypts president last year after keeping the peace with Israel for 30 years. “Is he an Islamist or is he a statesman, too?”For Hamas, the ceasefire will be hailed as a victory, especially if it leads to the lifting of the siege and to a wider acceptance of the movements role. Still proscribed by Israel and in most Western countries as a terrorist organisation, it cited the urgent advent of Mrs Clinton, of Ban Ki-moon, the UNs secretary-general, and of an array of Arab and European foreign ministers, as a harbinger of success. Its altercation with mighty Israel was a bit less lopsided than in 2009. This time Hamas rockets, some home-made and some Iranian-supplied, reached as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, nearly 80km (50 miles) miles from the Gaza Strip. Many Israelis were shaken.Mr Netanyahu will also make a strong claim to have won the day, now that the rockets have stopped and Israeli voters resume their deliberations ahead of a general election on January 22nd. The main purpose, he proclaimed at the outset, was to reassert Israels deterrence against Hamas. If the ceasefire holds, he can say he has achieved it. He has also exulted in the assassination of Ahmed Jabari, the Hamass military commander, which was followed up by a series of strikes