The Guardian view on the chances of a Gaza ceasefire

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/16/guardian-view-chances-ceasefire-gaza

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When Israel last attacked in Gaza, in 2012, the result was a kind of victory for Hamas. Israel was, as usual, militarily successful in the technical sense. But Hamas defended the territory effectively and attracted international support, including strong political backing from the government of President Mohamed Morsi and generous financial aid from Qatar. It was also able to reduce its dependence on allies such as the Syrian government, Iran, and Hezbollah, a dependence that had become problematic because of the Syrian civil war.

Yet this upward turn in its fortunes did not last long. Mr Morsi was toppled, and the Egyptians shut down the tunnels that sustained Gaza's economy and provided Hamas with income and weapons. There was no more money from Qatar. The Hamas movement and administration was in a parlous state, without the means to pay its civil servants and others, at odds with Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, and with few friends in the outside world. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, on the other hand, had emerged from the slow shipwreck of American-led peace talks with a somewhat better profile than might have been expected. He was certainly not blamed internationally for that failure, which was generally seen as more the result of US secretary of state John Kerry's overoptimistic approach and Israel's inflexibility than of any obstacles thrown up by the Palestinians. Mr Abbas had already sought recognition for Palestine in various international bodies, and he was then able, from a position of relative strength, to organise a "reconciliation" with a rather desperate Hamas, which hoped the PA would rescue it from bankruptcy.

It was at this point that the personal and the tragic intersected, as they almost always do, with these dry calculations of advantage. Mr Abbas condemned the murder of three Israeli youths unequivocally and in effect suspended the reconciliation process. Hamas, which had denied responsibility, was back on its own, and it looks as though it seized on the later kidnapping and murder of a Palestinian youth as an opportunity to reassert itself and to recover support it had lost among Palestinians and abroad by staging another David and Goliath encounter with Israel. Israel obliged, unsurprisingly but also reluctantly.

The high human price was paid by Palestinians in Gaza, most of them nothing to do with Hamas's security forces. The essence now is that Hamas needs a victory. Reasonably, it wants Hamas people released by Israel and then rearrested during the searches for the killers of the abducted yeshiva students to be let out. It wants a lifting of what, again reasonably, it calls the economic siege of Gaza. Unreasonably, it wants to present any concessions on these issues as a result of its staunch defence of Gaza against Israeli attack, without admitting, as the evidence suggests, that on this occasion it provoked that attack. And it wants to benefit, in its political competition with Fatah, from its standing up to Israel, in contrast with Mr Abbas's complicity.

Israel wants an end to rocket fire, and Hamas in the past has shown it can deliver this, although not perfectly. Fewer rockets were fired from Gaza in 2013 than in any year since 2001, according to the International Crisis Group. Attempts at mediation have so far failed, but there will sooner or later be a ceasefire deal. But regression into violence will be a constant danger unless a ceasefire is embedded in a broader settlement. The now half-abandoned reconciliation government could offer a partial solution, allowing Gaza the access to the world it needs, bringing Fatah and the PLO back into Gaza politics, but with Hamas still powerful in the territory. It would be a contradictory package and difficult to manage. But Gaza cannot be rescued from its misery or from constant bouts of fighting in the future without relieving Hamas, at least to some extent, from the consequences of its isolation. That will be a bitter pill for Israel to swallow, and a big problem for the PLO, but it may be the only way forward.