Israel’s New Elections Complicating Efforts to Reach Gaza Truce, Hamas Says

(Bloomberg) -- The Israeli government’s decision to go to new elections in September is complicating efforts to reach a long-term ceasefire arrangement in the Gaza Strip, Hamas’s chairman said Thursday.  

In a briefing for the foreign press in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh said Israel has not kept to informal understandings reached through Egyptian mediation that put an end to a flare up of violence last month. Israel, which has been run by a lame-duck government since December, says there is no formal ceasefire agreement with Hamas, but rather a general policy of relaxing restrictions on Gaza when the border is quiet.

“The understandings today are in critical condition because of the occupation’s reluctance to implement them,” Haniyeh said, referring to Israel’s military presence in the West Bank and around the Gaza Strip. He accused Israel of reneging on pledges to expand the fishing zone off the Gaza coast and improve electricity supply to the enclave.

Hamas has struggled to alleviate widespread unemployment and daily electricity rations that afflict Gaza’s population of roughly two million people. With its sources of funding drying up, its tunnels and rockets mostly stymied and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority imposing sanctions on Gaza’s Islamist rulers, Hamas has embarked on a year-long campaign of border protests to draw attention to Gaza’s plight.

Israel has expanded the fishing zone several times and then reduced it after Palestinians resumed sending arson kites and balloons across the border, where they have razed thousands of acres of Israeli farmland. Haniyeh said the incendiary devices, as well as night-time “confusion units” of Hamas activists who throw Molotov cocktails and other weapons at Israeli soldiers along the border, are examples of “peaceful” resistance protected by international law.

The Trump administration is organizing a gathering next week in Bahrain, in which officials and businessmen from several Arab countries will attend, that aims to raise tens of billions of dollars to develop the Palestinian territories. 

Palestinian leaders say the conference is a means of bribing them to give up their goal of an independent state, a sentiment Haniyeh echoed on Thursday. Trump administration officials behind the peace effort say the economic conference is just the opening step of a process that will include a detailed political plan.

Haniyeh said Hamas would not reject economic projects for Gaza that emerge from the conference, but doubted that any pledged funds would really materialize.

“We’re not against a helping hand,” he said. “But any support for the Palestinian people must be non-conditional support without any political price.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Michael S. Arnold in Tel Aviv at marnold48@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Shaji Mathew at shajimathew@bloomberg.net, Alisa Odenheimer, Yaacov Benmeleh

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