Endgame in Gaza

As the relentless assault on Gaza approaches the end of its third week, it is beginning to look as though the Israeli government is flirting with the possibility of regime change – the eradication of Hamas from Gaza and the occupied territories. That is a delusion. What is needed now is an exit strategy to end the current crisis.

The need for a ceasefire to end the humanitarian disaster engulfing 1.5m Gazans is paramount. In order to secure one, both Israel and Hamas also need to be able to show that ceasefires have a purpose.

It is difficult to exaggerate the damage to Israel’s (and America’s) reputation among Arabs, Muslims and vast swathes of international opinion who increasingly see what is happening as more a war on Gaza than a campaign against Hamas. How could it be otherwise? After (by Israel’s count) 2,300 air strikes and daily pounding from land and sea, Gaza lies in ruins and around 1,000 Palestinians, more than 300 of them children, have been killed.

Mosques, schools and police stations, the finance, education, interior, foreign, justice, public works, labour and culture ministries, the parliament and every public building of significance, have been pulverised. Gaza is being reduced to Somalia, with no institutional basis left for anyone to be able to govern.

It is also a fantasy that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president whose Fatah party was routed at the polls by Hamas and driven violently out of Gaza, can be restored to power there by Israeli tanks.

Hamas is still there, its popular support going up, even if the number of rockets being fired into southern Israel is sharply down. Now is the time to stop the fighting.

Israel’s leaders, who face off against each other in elections next month, need to be able to show they have dealt with the rocket threat. Hamas needs Israel to lift the long blockade of Gaza. The Franco-Egyptian plan to halt the fighting offers a way forward. A truce would be followed by a ceasefire, internationally monitored (possibly by Turkey) to stop Hamas from replenishing its arsenal. Israel would reopen Gaza’s border crossings and lift the siege.

After that, Fatah and Hamas need to enter national unity talks, or to fight it out at elections, to decide who speaks for the Palestinians in the next stage: final status talks with Israel on a Palestinian state to put an end to this conflict once and for all. That places huge responsibility on Palestinian leaders who have yet to show themselves worthy of the name. But also on Israel to cease this disproportionate violence against people it will still have to live with once the shooting stops.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009