It's been a while since my Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies course, so I may not be remembering things correctly, but the current situation between Israel and Palestine doesn't fit into the normal narrative for dispute settlements. Obviously the fighting has intensified over the past few days, but earlier this week there was an attempt to calm things down, calls for a ceasefire to be negotiated by Egypt.
Normally, calls for arbitration or ceasefires are the result of a stalemate. The thinking is that the belligerents enter their conflict each expecting they will win, because why would you fight a war you think you'll lose? Once the fighting has gone on for a bit, and everyone's true military capacities are exposed on the battlefield, then the combatants realize who is likely to win the war if it continues. The losing side may call for a time-out in an attempt to save itself, and the winning side is unlikely to comply if it's winning decisively, because why would you negotiate a peace with your foe if you could just crush him? It is only, therefore, when the fighting has gone on for a bit but both sides are stalemated that you see genuine attempts at negotiated ends to the fighting. The opportunity for peace is said to be "ripe," the belligerents have accumulated some war weariness, and neither is confident that continuing to fight will pay off more than reaching a settlement.
That's not what happened earlier. We had one side, the Israelis, dominant yet pushing the hardest for a ceasefire. The Palestinians in Gaza had made no gains, but were doggedly refusing to budge until they got concessions even when all they can "offer" is days of being bombed. Evidently my course literature didn't account for suicidal combatants.
But this isn't a simple two-sided conflict, and looking a little deeper makes things make more sense, if a disturbing sort of sense.
In this case, peace, or at least an end to the current fighting, isn't necessarily the main objective, or even a shared objective. Hamas, the group controlling Gaza, has defined itself through its opposition to Israel, and has been willing to commit terrorist acts in its pursuit of a Palestinian state. It has little to show for this beyond a role in perpetuating a cycle of violence, but Hamas has at least proven popular enough to be elected to Gaza's leadership.
The problem is that there is now an alternative, an Arab, Islamist, anti-Israeli group that has actually succeeded at taking territory - the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The group has already used the Syrian civil war as a staging point for its expansion into Iraq, and there are worries that it might try and keep expanding into places like Jordan, if not further. Hamas, in short, has competition. How fortunate that someone kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teens, prompting a revenge killing that escalated into thrown stones, guerrilla warfare, and an Israeli offensive into Gaza? It's certainly convenient that Hamas has a chance to get in the news and show Palestinians that it can still fight the good fight.
But it can't win the good fight, hence Hamas' dilemma. For it to stay in power it needs to show that it can get results. Since it can't do that through an outright victory, it must reject Israel's calls for a ceasefire and provoke more fighting, in hopes of making its inevitable defeat as uncomfortable as possible, bogging the Israelis down in urban warfare, provoking riots and bombings, launching the sort of underground attacks seen today, until the hassle of dealing with Hamas brings Israel to the negotiating table and allows Hamas to wring something, anything, out of them. This is obviously a terrible spot to be in, hence Hamas' seemingly-insane attempt to get concessions before the Israeli offensive - I don't think anyone would look forward to getting blitzed by the IDF.
This tortured logic also puts Israel in a bind. If they strike back too hard, and come out of this latest conflict too victorious, there's a chance that Hamas could fall and something worse could take its place, a group more fanatical and, so far, more successful. At the same, Hamas is hardly a good neighbor, and being too generous with concessions and ceasefires runs the risk of encouraging them to provoke further conflict. And Israel can't sidestep the issue and simply cease the current fighting without antagonizing elements of its own population that want vengeance/justice for the lives lost in the conflict's most recent iteration.
Perversely, this would really be a good time for the two sides to work together. Israel could give Hamas opportunities to be seen leading the Palestinians, and hand over some slight concessions that Hamas could wave around during election season, proving that they can get results and Palestinians don't need to turn to ISIS. This would also keep Hamas from causing too much trouble, as the more havoc they stir up, the less of a loss for Israel it would be if ISIS ended up taking over. Unfortunately, if the two sides were able to find a common ground in this manner the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should have ended by now.
There are other outs, of course. A lot of Israel's issues with Gaza only apply if it intends to allow Gaza to remain an independent territory after this conflict, and while they've insisted that its latest campaign is an "incursion" and not an invasion... well, look at it this way, you're being attacked from a neighboring territory and the government controlling it is either unable to stop it or in fact encouraging it. Occupying Gaza to keep any sort of extremists, Hamas or ISIS or whatever, from running the place may start to look tempting. The obvious downside is that this would antagonize the entire region and earn Israel criticism from its allies.
Another alternative would be for the people of Gaza to ditch Hamas but pick a non-violent party to replace it, one that wouldn't have to continue this conflict to shore up its legitimacy, but I think the Israeli occupation of Gaza is more likely than that.
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