GAZA STRIP: When will it end? One professor says soon

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After a brief cease-fire to allow for humanitarian supplies to be ferried into the region, the conflict in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas continued today. Casualties and despair mounted.

But with international pressure building, most think the conflict will end soon.

Augustus Richard Norton, right, is a professor of international relations and anthropology at Boston University. He’s also the author of half a dozen books on the Arab-Israeli conflict and a former United Nations peacekeeper in southern Lebanon.

In an interview, Norton estimated that Israel has about a week to declare some kind of victory and end the conflict.

‘There is no way that the Israeli governments want to be pummeling Gaza when [Barack] Obama is inaugurated on Jan 20,’ he said.

‘When a ceasefire is attained it will not be implemented overnight. There is likely to a be monitoring component to be put in place, the humanitarian emergency will not end instantly, and the Israeli army will not withdraw overnight. Thus, I sense that the goal is have a ceasefire by Jan. 14, or so.’

Israel’s shelling of a United Nations school allegedly used by Hamas militants that killed 30 civilians Tuesday has also increased pressure to end the fighting, drawing important figures such as U.N. Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-moon to call for a cease-fire. Today a envoy of the Pope in the Vatican called Gaza ‘a big concentration camp.’

But Norton says declaring victory requires that Israel surmount several high hurdles: Hamas has to stop firing rockets, agree to anti-smuggling procedures along the Egyptian border and submit to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas even after his term expires on Friday.

The overall outcome of the war is likely to be so complicated as to prevent President-elect Barack Obama from being able to impose any quick solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict early in his term, as Europeans and others have been pressing him to do, Norton says.

‘Remember that despite his nice visit to Israel last summer, Obama is still an unknown in Israel and there is no way there will be a president as deferential to Israeli security arguments as Bush Jr. has been,’ he said. ‘Obama’s statement on civilian casualties is already making Israel very nervous.’

Meanwhile, for Hamas not to come out a loser all it has to do is continue to exist and have the capacity to fire a couple rockets into southern Israel.

‘Hamas wins support among Palestinians for standing up to Israel, and it will resist allowing Palestinian Authority to reestablish control in Gaza,’ he said. ‘If Israel is forced to allow for a resumption of normal, or near normal shipments to Gaza, and if Hamas is still standing, this will be mean that Hamas wins one of its key demands ... This will win face for Hamas.’

Overall, Norton predicts that it will be tough for Israel to declare a decisive victory over Hamas.

‘I think it is a fair bet that the Israelis will not ‘win’ in the sense of defeating Hamas,’ he said. ‘If the polls are right, the political contestants who promoted this war will have lost their bid to win the February elections. Israel will have proven its capacity to inflict disproportionate damage and to an extent it has reestablished the deterrence that it has worried about losing after the 2006 war.’

In the long-run, the Gaza war legitimizes Israeli enemies’ ‘narrative about the need for deterring Israel,’ he said.

-- Borzou Daragahi in Beirut

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