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Crafting a Constructive Gaza Policy
(RealClearPolitics) Peter Berkowitz - Hamas continues to seek missiles to bombard Israeli civilians and to construct cross-border tunnels to perpetrate atrocities. That's the reason Israel must maintain its blockade and has undertaken three major military incursions into Gaza over the last 10 years. Hamas continues to transform Gaza's cities into battlefields by positioning military headquarters, weapons caches, and rocket launchers near, in, or under civilian buildings. That's the reason the fighting has injured and killed Palestinian noncombatants. Hamas continues to foment hatred of Israel through the media and schools, to persuade Gazans that what is now Israel rightfully belongs to them and will someday, through force of arms, be theirs. That's the reason Israel must safeguard its borders and prevent its territory from going up in flames. Were it not for Hamas' acts of war, Gazans would not face today an appalling scarcity of electricity and potable water; rivers of untreated sewage polluting beaches and ground water and spreading parasites; and a decimated economy. The Center for a New American Security and the Brookings Institution published a report this month, "Ending Gaza's Perpetual Crisis: A New U.S. Approach." It calls for stabilizing Gaza through humanitarian relief and reintegrating it into the Palestinian Authority in order to establish an independent state through "vigorous diplomacy." Yet despite its ambition to break with the mistakes of the past, the report embodies the old approach. First, by offering anodyne formulations about the "cycle of violence" that blur the difference between Hamas' desire to destroy Israel and Israel's desire to be left alone, the report obscures the abiding sources of Gaza's humanitarian crisis. Second, it is doubtful that the Palestinian Authority leadership - which rejected peace proposals advanced by President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000, by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008, and by Secretary of State John Kerry in 2013-14 - will cooperate with the elaborate scheme. Third, the report blames the Trump administration for damaging relations with the PA by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, moving the American embassy there, and cutting aid to the PA and to UNRWA. But Jerusalem is Israel's capital. Pretending otherwise encourages Palestinians to indulge unrealistic expectations and advance extravagant demands. As for coddling the PA and overlooking UNRWA's corruption and anti-Israel propagandizing, disincentivizing bad conduct offers the prospect of reducing it. The writer, a political scientist and former law professor, is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.