Hamas is making ground again
As pressure mounts on Israel to lift the siege, Hamas gains
(source: The Economist.com)
After three years of campaigning for Israel to lift the siege of Gaza, some of the Islamists ruling the territory are having second thoughts. This week the agriculture minister for Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza, was putting the finishing touches to a ten-year plan to wean it off dependence on Israel and make it self-sufficient in food. Israel’s ban on fertilisers had helped his plan to replace fertiliser with compost made from sewage that otherwise spills into the sea, and turn Gaza into a big organic farm. Then Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, promised to open the crossings. Some Gazans fear that Israeli merchants will sell cheap produce in Gaza, as they used to before the siege.
The minister, Muhammad al-Agha, says he is undeterred. To protect his farmers, he has told Gaza’s importers to buy licences each time they bring in Israeli foodstuffs they import. Garlic, which Gaza lacks, will be let in but no vegetables grown in Gaza. And once he realises his plan to plant a million fruit trees, he will ban fruit imports too.
But keeping Israel’s supplies out will be hard. After three years of reliance on underground smuggling from Egypt, Gaza’s merchants are again buying Israeli. Since Mr Netanyahu’s promise to ease the blockade, an eerie silence has fallen over Gaza’s border with Egypt, which hitherto echoed to the whirl of a thousand winches hauling goods to the surface. Now shopkeepers fear being lumbered with shelves of unwanted tunnel-tattered products, as Israel’s neater goods pour in. In the past, underground traffickers would have organised one of Gaza’s fighting groups to attack an Israeli position in order to provoke a closure and keep trade from Egypt flowing. But as part of its informal non-aggression deal with Israel, Hamas is policing the border and pounces on anyone operating without its consent.
