Israel rightly ended the Gaza blockade, though belatedly

Israel rightly ended the Gaza blockade, though belatedly

nd its three-year blockade of civilian goods entering the Gaza Strip is a welcome move. Sadly, it came about a year too late, and its timing and circumstances benefited the wrong parties. That’s because the Netanyahu government (in all fairness, like many of its predecessors) seems to do the right thing only under heavy pressure.

The move is welcome because the blockade was plainly counterproductive. The stated objectives of the blockade – which varied from time to time – were to oblige Hamas to moderate its policies or otherwise to weaken or depose that Islamist movement, and to force a prisoner exchange for Gilad Shalit on terms acceptable to Israel. Had the blockade achieved any of these objectives, it might have been defensible to impose collective punishment on 1.5 million Gazans. Instead, Hamas grew stronger, while the more moderate Gazan business and agrarian sectors that depend on trade with and via Israel grew weaker. Shalit is still a prisoner of Hamas. The failure of the blockade was obvious at least a year ago. Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly allowed that he recognized the counterproductive nature of the economic warfare waged against Gaza soon after taking office.

The Netanyahu government did not invent this strategy, but rather inherited it from the Olmert government which in turn inherited a partial and occasional blockade from the Sharon government. Sharon’s initial reliance on economic warfare against Gaza is instructive: upon carrying out Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the territory in the summer of 2005, Sharon threatened far-reaching military measures if, following withdrawal, Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli civilian targets continued. When, within weeks of the withdrawal, the attacks were renewed, Sharon, followed soon by Olmert, responded not with massive military force but with economic warfare, including the dismantling of the entire economic incentive structure put in place by the international community to take advantage of the withdrawal.

But Sharon’s economic punishment did not stop the Qassams. Consequently, Israel’s deterrent image was badly damaged. Hamas escalated its attacks until Israel finally did respond with overwhelming force in late 2008 and early 2009. In this sense, the past five years of dealing with Hamas in Gaza have been illustrative of the difficulty Israel has in finding strategies to deal with a militant Islamist non-state neighbor that rejects Israel’s existence, would welcome an Israeli invasion and is prepared for its population to be martyred.

Israel did not embark alone on the blockade. Three years ago, when Hamas took over Gaza in a violent coup against Fatah, the decision to punish the territory until Hamas agreed to renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept the Oslo framework was made collectively by the Olmert government together with the Quartet, Egypt and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. With the passage of time, and as the counterproductive nature of the blockade became increasingly obvious, Israel’s partners publicly took their distance, though privately some continued to encourage Israel to continue.



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