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July 25, 2003/Tamuz 25 5763, Vol. 55, No. 48
Tenuous coexistence maintained in Gaza
MATTHEW GUTMAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
GAZA CITY - The reality of the Gaza Strip, it appears, is in the eye of the beholder.
Some officers of the Israel Defense Forces and the Palestinian Authority security organizations think it's a simmering cauldron bound, sooner or later, to boil over.
Others call it a model of how Israelis and Palestinians can live adjacent but separate lives.
While it's the center of a burgeoning cottage industry of arms building and smuggling, Gaza has produced no suicide bombers, Israeli security sources say - primarily because a fence around the area prevents bombers from crossing into Israel.
For its part, the Palestinian Authority is searching wildly for ways to include rejectionist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad - which are strongest in the Gaza Strip - without having to confront them in armed clashes.
In the meantime, Israel bites its nails while it waits for the end of the three-month hudna, or cease-fire, that the main Palestinian terrorist groups have declared. The cease-fire is due to expire in late September - at which time, as one IDF officer put it, "the real show begins."
Hamas reportedly is using the cover of the cease-fire to build an arsenal of 1,000 Kassam rockets that can fly a greater distance and carry a warhead, a senior IDF officer told JTA.
That has sparked concern that, should hostilities resume, "the opening of the next phase in the conflict will be much more violent," an IDF brigade commander in Gaza said.
Israel demands that the Palestinian Authority disarm the terrorist groups, destroy the Kassam lathes and arrest militants, as called for under the "road map" peace plan. For years it has said that the P.A. security forces are strong enough to do the job.
That perception increasingly is being challenged. Asked whether the balance of weapons in the Gaza Strip tilts towards the rejectionist groups or the Palestinian Authority, an IDF brigade commander hesitated for a moment, then noted that - given the accelerated weapons smuggling believed to be underway during the cease-fire - the rejectionist groups might well achieve the upper hand.
The P.A.'s National Security Service, or NSS, the apparatus tasked with disarming Hamas and Islamic Jihad, is aware of the challenge.
"It's impossible to disarm Hamas," said Brig. Gen. Sa'eb Ajez of the NSS.
At least, the cease-fire has brought some respite for Palestinian motorists who now are able to travel on the Tancher road without being detained for hours at checkpoints, Ajez said.
The most startling development is occurring in towns next to Gaza's border with Israel: In Rafah last week, Ajez said, local residents pummeled terrorists who were attempting to set up a mortar to fire into Israel. Mortar attacks often bring an Israeli military response against the launching area.
For now, the Israeli brigade commander says, a tenuous coexistence reigns in the strip. Motioning toward the traffic flow along the Tancher road at the Katif junction, he called it "a great example of how to implement separation."
Israeli settlers travel on a bridge that bypasses the road, reducing friction between settlers and Palestinians almost to nothing.
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