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A Gaza-Israel truce: an opportunity for Egypt to shine

.: July 14, 2014

In this article published by I24news, Yoav Stern analyses the impact of Egypt on the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

What can Hamas and Israel give each other within the framework of a new truce? Very little. One can assume that the main sections of the unwritten agreement that the parties might reach with great effort in the coming days will include a commitment by Hamas to stop firing rockets toward Israel, while Israel might agree to stop the air raids and other military action against Hamas and the Gaza Strip. The parties might deal with the question of what would be the width of the buffer zone adjacent to the security fence between Gaza and Israel that Palestinians are not allowed to enter, and the area where fishermen can fish off Gaza. One can also assume that Kerem Shalom, the only commercial crossing into Gaza, will return to normal functioning. But beyond these points, which are more concerned with border skirmishes between the parties and less with finding avenues of cooperation, the two sides cannot and do not want to give anything. The more interesting points of the next truce have to do with other regional players.

Egypt is, as always, the only significant mediator between Israel and Hamas. This is no longer the Egypt of Presidents Mubarak or Morsi, but the Egypt of President al-Sissi, who for the first time has to manage a crisis brought to his doorstep by his neighbors. Egyptians, as usual, will take advantage of the situation to upgrade their regional diplomatic status, and prove that there is no substitute to the Nile country in regional politics.

But Egypt will be required to do its part in reaching a solution: opening the Rafah crossing with Gaza is just one example, and putting an end to Operation Protective Edge (which Islamic Jihad calls “the uprising of the tenth day of Ramadan”) may be a turning point in relations between Cairo and Gaza.

Cairo holds the keys to Hamas’ lifeline in its hands and there is no limit to the steps it can take to devastate the movement or make its life easier. If Cairo in recent months was very cool towards Hamas, viewing it as a subsidiary movement of the Muslim Brotherhood which was outlawed in Egypt, Hamas may now be able to achieve an improvement in ties as well as concrete benefits such as permission to transfer money and raw materials, as well as a tacit agreement by Egypt to turn a blind eye to weapons smuggling through tunnels into Gaza, and much more.

Egypt has already received the "tax" it levied in the public sphere, the region and the world: Photos of Sissi meeting with Tony Blair have graced Arab news pages, indicating that work on ending the bloodshed may have begun, that Cairo maintains its important regional status, that in Cairo’s Presidential palace sits a figure one can rely on. It is necessary for Sisi to out his country back on the track of growth, development and stability. It is also necessary for him in the streets as it is there that the horrors of the Israeli attacks in Gaza are watched, and Egypt is expected to contribute its part to end the crisis.

The Palestinian Authority will certainly have to relax its principles. The recent conflict broke out when the government of national consensus of Hamas and Fatah was unable and unwilling to pay tens of thousands of Hamas officials in Gaza. Such a step would have brought down the PA financially. Hamas officials, clerks and others were outraged that they did not receive salaries for months before Ramadan, and stormed the banks in what was called the War of the ATMs. Now, one can assume, the Authority will compromise, and agree to pay, at least in part, with the assistance of Qatar and others. In return, it will, perhaps, be allowed to deploy its forces at the border with Egypt for the first time since the Hamas coup in Gaza seven years ago.

Like many of the agreements in the Middle East, the importance is not in the actual signing. There won’t be someone to sign it on either side, and the articulated points will not be formulated in the form of an international agreement, but rather a point of reference. In practice, the mutual hostilities will ensure that the understandings will be violated the moment it is convenient for one of the parties to do so. A few months later, a year or maybe two, we will go back to the familiar pattern of a round of bloodletting.

Yoav STERN © I24news (Israêl)

The author is an Israeli businessman, a former journalist and an expert on the Arab world

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