JERUSALEM — The latest tit-for-tat confrontation which earlier this week pitted Israel against Islamist factions operating from the Gaza Strip follows a conditioning pattern which highlights the marginalization in the international arena of the Palestinian aspirations to freedom and independence.

The parents of a Palestinian militant mourn next to his body at the scene of an Israeli air strike in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip March 12, 2012. Israeli air strikes killed two Palestinian militants and wounded 25 civilians in the Gaza Strip on Monday, medical sources said, as cross-border hostilities continued into a fourth day. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

The cross-border hostilities adhered to a pre-scripted, inescapable template: the targeted killing by Israel of Zuhair Al Qaisi, the leader of the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), a dissident Islamist faction in Gaza, for the purpose of foiling a planned “terror attack”; PRC and Islamic Jihad (another defiant group) retaliating with rockets fired on cities in southern Israel; Israeli jets bombing Islamic Jihad and PRC targets. 

All in all, 26 Palestinians (22 militants and four civilians) were killed during the four-day escalation. Scores were wounded on both sides. About 200 rockets hit Israel’s south, more than during any previous round since the Gaza war on Hamas in 2008-9. Anti-missile ‘Iron Dome’ batteries intercepted 90 percent of the projectiles that risked hitting Israeli population centers. 

And then, as usual, Egypt stepped in, re-installed the fragile status quo ante which had prevailed since the previous round of hostilities in October 2011. The next round is probably only a matter of time, concur Israelis and Palestinians. 

Meanwhile, diplomatically-correct expressions of concern for the loss of civilian lives and calls for restraint notwithstanding, the U.N. Security Council was immersed in a quasi-academic periodic debate about the 14-month Arab awakening. Palestine is being largely ignored. 

So long as their struggle against Israeli occupation is a low-intensity, manageable conflict, Palestinians are likely to remain off the international radar, squeezed in limbo between unfulfilled diplomatic initiatives and an unresolved internal schism. 

The much-vaunted reconciliation agreement signed in May 2011 by President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority (in partial control of the West Bank) and Hamas (which rules the embattled Gaza enclave since its violent takeover in 2007) has been marred by disagreements. 

Who would be prime minister of a future national unity government has been the most recent obstacle to the internal reconciliation process. 

When Hamas Politburo Chief in exile Khaled Meshal finally agreed that Salaam Fayyad, currently the Palestinian Authority (PA) prime minister, be replaced by Abbas, his colleagues in Gaza balked at the compromise. Hamas itself is plagued with internal divisions. 

Vicissitudes due its problematic allegiance to the embattled regime of President Bashar el-Assad, and to Iran, has pushed the Islamic resistance movement to tentatively align with its original patron, the Muslim Brotherhood, now a legitimate party and the emerging power in post-revolutionary Egypt. 

Hence, during the latest escalation, Hamas cautiously remained on the fence. Supported financially and militarily by Iran, Islamic Jihad carried the brunt of retaliation on its own. Meanwhile, a dejected Abbas is torn on how to proceed in order to re-elevate Palestinian rights to prominence, a difficult task when Arabs are more preoccupied by their own freedom. 

Abbas’s September 2011 statehood bid lingers in U.N. procedural meanderings. The U.S. has threatened to wield its Security Council veto power. Under heavy pressure, the PA has refrained from approaching the General Assembly though such a vote, albeit largely symbolic, would enjoy across-the-board endorsement. 

In order to circumvent the statehood quandary, the Quartet of Mideast Peace mediators (U.N., U.S., EU, and Russia) pressed Abbas to reluctantly approve three rounds of Jordan-mediated low-level talks. The preparatory discussions held in Amman in January ended in failure, revolving around the perennial issue of an improbable Israeli settlement freeze. 

Back in September 2010, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to extend his ten-month moratorium on settlement construction pushed Abbas away from the negotiating table. Since then, settlement building continues unabated. 

Abbas’s diplomatic initiatives have produced inconclusive results. His indecisiveness in the form of recurring threats of resignation and dissolution of the PA has left his nation mired in confusion. 

The disillusioned president is now reportedly working on the formulation of a letter to be delivered to the Israeli prime minister and to the Quartet which will detail the reasons that lay behind his refusal to negotiate. 

But with international anxieties running high over a potential leakage of stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons to terrorist groups as a result of a would-be collapse of Syria; with the danger of regional atomic proliferation if suspicions over Iran’s controversial nuclear program are confirmed, demands that Israel engage in a meaningful peace process are no more than lip service. 

So, fresh from his White House visit, Netanyahu could celebrate his stern vision that the four-decade-long conflict is not the core issue that the region is required to tackle head-on. His campaign that Iran, not Palestine, is the root cause for regional tumult is gradually being endorsed, he stressed back home. 

In order not to divert attention from the “nuclear duck”, Netanyahu prudently refrained from authorizing contingency plans for an all-out war on Hamas (viewed by Israel as the responsible authority in Gaza). Israel’s military effort was thus constrained to containing Iran’s proxies. 

Besides, a remake of the war on the Muslim Brotherhood’s Gaza offshoot could inflame an already increasing anti-Israeli hostility and trigger an Egyptian reconsideration of its peace treaty with Israel. After all, post-revolutionary democratic Arab states are bound to be more responsive to public sentiment. 

Gone are the days when Israel could argue that Arab hostility towards Israel is rooted not in genuine demands for Palestinian liberation from the yoke of colonial occupation but in manipulations by Arab autocrats of their peoples as ersatz compensating for the lack of civil liberties in their own countries. 

But the demonstrative neglect of the Netanyahu government with regard to the peace prospects with the Palestinians could backfire. “It affects the U.S. ability to promote regional cooperation against the threats the moderate Arab states share with Israel,” warned the liberal Israeli daily Haaretz in an editorial, referring to Iran. 

Not only Iran is a potential threat. In recent months, confrontations with the Israeli army have been on the rise in the West Bank. 

— IPS