Losers all

As the violence soars in Gaza the prospect for any "political" Israeli withdrawal recedes, writes Graham Usher in Jerusalem

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Almost a week after double suicide bombings left 16 Israelis dead in Beersheba Israel exacted revenge in Gaza. At around midnight on Tuesday Israeli helicopters launched two salvos of rockets at land adjoining the Sheikh Ahmed Yassin community centre in Gaza City, a "scouts camp" by day, military training ground by night. Fourteen Hamas fighters were slain, all in their late teens or early 20s, most dressed in fatigues. It was the deadliest single blow inflicted on the Islamist movement by Israel in 16 years of conflict.

Both combatants tried to cast the killings by their own light. For Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon the deaths were "an integral part of the IDF's ongoing pursuit of terrorist leaders". Hamas spokesperson in Gaza, Mushir Al-Masri, shrugged off the carnage as "an ongoing war. One day for us and one day for them".

Accurate descriptions they are. Ever since Sharon unveiled his plan to "disengage" from Gaza last December he and Hamas have been locked in a mortal combat to determine its political meaning. For Hamas the aim is to cast the withdrawal as a south Lebanon-like flight. For Israel it is an exercise of military and political precedence in which future borders will be unilaterally determined and "defensible" rather than negotiated or imposed by international law.

Nine months on neither side can claim to be winning. True, Israel has scored successes. Through its assassination of such leaders as Yassin and Abdel-Aziz Al-Rantisi, Israel has forced Hamas political leadership in the occupied territories underground. Through its intelligence and network of informers -- aided by the lack of care shown by cadres "training" in a known Hamas centre -- it has caused damage to Hamas military wing, especially in the West Bank.

But such victories have done nothing to staunch Hamas rising esteem in Palestinian opinion or disable its social organisation. Were there to be local or national elections in the Palestinian areas, polls show Hamas would win at least a third of the vote and perhaps more. And while Israel's offensive has hindered Hamas's military capability it has not ended it, neither in Israel (as the Beersheba attacks showed) nor on settlements and Israeli towns in and around Gaza.

It was in anticipation of new rounds of mortar attacks on these that the Israeli army invaded northern Gaza on Wednesday morning. The purpose -- again -- is to flush out the launchers and punish those towns and refugee camps that shield them. But the latest incursion is likely to be no more successful than was the re-occupation of Beit Hanoun that ended a month ago. For Israel to thoroughly cleanse Gaza of weapons would require a full-scale conquest at a cost of hundreds of Palestinian lives and dozens of Israeli ones, a scenario neither domestic nor international opinion would tolerate.

This is why there was such regional alarm when, following the Beersheba attacks, Israel's defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, announced that their "terrorist headquarters" were not in Gaza but Damascus. Faced with a military impasse in Gaza nothing would be more typical for Sharon and Mofaz than to lash out at Syria in the form of the assassination of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders based there, turning a local conflict into a regional one.

Under warnings from Egypt and European Union, Israel -- for now -- appears to have stepped back from that brink. But few would deny this remains a live threat especially as an Islamic Jihad statement warned after the Gaza killings "the enemy will pay a price for its crimes ... in the streets of Al-Quds, Bet Lid, Dizengoff and Hadera." The last three are cities in Israel and sites of previous suicide operations.

This is why Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei responded to the killings in Gaza with absolute pessimism. "For sure there will be retaliation, and the retaliation will be justified if it happens," he shrugged on Tuesday.

He was speaking one day after Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit and Intelligence chief Omar Suleiman met in Ramallah with Yasser Arafat to discuss the PA's role in the disengagement plan. There appears little to talk about. Israel has made it clear it will not be a party to any new Palestinian cease-fire in Gaza, that it will not re- open the PA airport in Rafah and that the re- establishment of the territorial passage between Gaza and the West Bank is "beyond the scope" of the plan. Clearly for Sharon "disengagement" is less about Israel's withdrawal from Gaza than Gaza's final severance from the West Bank.

Faced with such obstruction, Arafat has little incentive to do anything with "disengagement" except hedge and await the outcomes of the US presidential elections in November and Sharon coalition travails. In the interregnum -- and in the political vacuum -- the ongoing war in Gaza will continue, "one day for us and one day for them".