The fire at the end of the tunnel

The place: The Gaza Strip. The time: This week. Marwan Issa walks in the streets undisturbed, enjoying the winter sun. Nobody on the street accosts him; nobody is even aware that the man walking toward them is Ahmed Jabari’s replacement as the head of Hamas’ military wing. Unlike Ahmed Jabari, Hamas’ previous chief of staff who was killed by the Israeli Air Force at the beginning of Operation Pillar of Defense, Issa, 47, is a man of shadows. He compartmentalizes those closest to him, allows no photographs, gives no interviews. He is almost anonymous. Few people know what he looks like. Fewer still are permitted to meet with him. But Israel’s intelligence agencies know him well. He was imprisoned in Israel for five years.

Issa was Jabari’s right hand man. He commanded the “operations against the occupation and the settlements” in Gush Katif, was one of the leaders in the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit and one of the only ones who knew where Schalit was being held captive in Gaza. He was also in on the deal in which Schalit was released. It is likely that he is already at the top of the IDF’s hit list, the next “dead man walking.” Issa knows that. He never stays in one place for more than a few hours, and he almost never comes home.

But according to Arab sources, Hamas’ leadership has emerged from below ground for now. Almost exactly a month after the cease-fire took hold, they are no longer hiding in bunkers, and allow themselves to move relatively freely above ground. For them, this is the safest window of time. They are convinced that Israel will not act against them just now.

“I’m surprised at how quiet the sector is,” GOC Southern Command Tal Russo said a week after the operation ended. “The change is extreme and the deterrence is strong. Nothing like this ever happened in similar operations in the past.” A month later, it is still quiet. The cease-fire also passed its first test: several days after Russo made that statement, a Palestinian man approached the border fence near Khan Yunis and was shot to death by an IDF soldier. Hamas fired no rockets at the southern cities in response. It protested to its Egyptian patron, President Mohammed Morsi, complaining that Israel was violating the understandings that had been reached.

“Hamas is caught in a trap,” says Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, the former head of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate. “It’s torn between the desire to control Gaza and jihadist ideology. On the one hand, its leaders have to be accountable to the residents over such things as jobs, commerce, health and sanitation. On the other hand, they are in trouble because when they restrain other organizations and tell them not to fire at Israel, they are doing the same thing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did to them — and they hated it. It’s the Palestinian version of [former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s statement] ‘Things you see from there, you don’t see from here.’”

“Hamas is relying on Egypt to do its work,” says Shlomi Eldar, a journalist and commentator on Arab affairs at Al-Monitor. Eldar is also the author of the book Lehakir et Hamas (Getting to know Hamas). “Israel’s big accomplishment in Operation Pillar of Defense is that now the government in Gaza won’t let Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees drag it back into fighting. It will put the blame on the understandings that were made with Egypt and the fear of a conflict with the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo. Hamas’ leadership will tell the other movements that firing rockets now will harm the Palestinian resistance.”

Meanwhile, now that the joyous shouts of victory in the Gaza Strip have subsided, the members of the various organizations are picking up the pieces. They have already cleared the rubble left by the Israeli Air Force bombardments, and now they are beginning to rebuild the government buildings and the rest of the institutions that were destroyed. A high-ranking intelligence official predicts that the smuggling tunnels from Egypt will be used a great deal to replenish Gaza’s supply of rockets and other weapons, including the Fajr missiles that threatened the center of Israel, most of which Hamas lost in the IDF attacks.

The Hamas government recently received hundreds of millions of dollars from Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, the emir of Qatar. This time, it is not expected to invest the entire sum in weapons, as it did after Operation Cast Lead in 2009. Its officials are going from village to village, distributing monetary aid to the needy — residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed and people whose relatives were killed. They will try to increase freedom of movement at the border crossings and expand the fishing areas.

A severe leadership crisis

Over the next several days, Hamas’ new Shura council will be meeting to appoint a new leader for the movement, the leader of its political wing. Since the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi in 2004, the strong man in the organization has been Khaled Mashaal. He will not be out of a job, though. His deputy and intended successor, Mahmoud Abu Marzouk, said this week that Mashaal may run for Palestinian Authority chairman.

Operation Pillar of Defense caught Hamas in the midst of a severe leadership crisis. Over the past year, Mashaal pushed for political change, mainly about reconciliation with Fatah. In light of the Arab Spring, he called last year to abandon the armed struggle in favor of a popular uprising. But since then, disagreements have erupted between him the Hamas leadership in Gaza, which refused to bow to his authority. A member of the political leadership, Mahmoud Zahar, went so far as to oppose his statements and criticize him in public.

Mashaal announced that he had grown tired of his position and would leave, but the latest conflict with Israel brought him back into the center of affairs. When he paid a historic visit to the Gaza Strip two weeks ago for the celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of Hamas’ founding he received a royal welcome. This was the first time Mashaal, who was born in the village of Silwad near Ramallah, had ever been to Gaza. Officials in Cairo and Doha pressured him to stay in Qatar. The Qatari emir finds it more convenient to have Mashaal keep leading Hamas from his own sovereign territory, where Mashaal is subject to his influence. Mashaal relocated to Qatar from Damascus to escape Syrian President Bashar Assad’s ongoing massacre of his citizens. His successor, Abu Marzouk, moved to Cairo.

In the midst of this crisis, Israel assassinated Ahmed Jabari, Mashaal’s man in Gaza. “Jabari was much more than a chief of staff,” says Eldar. “He was the dominant figure in Gaza, a policy-setter and a kingmaker. He would hang up the phone on Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and send people to threaten Zahar. Hamas’ military wing is a monster that turned on its creator. That was how Schalit was kidnapped without the leadership knowing about it. Neither Mashaal in Damascus nor Haniyeh in Gaza knew.”

Mashaal’s approach is winning for the moment. Hamas and Fatah appear to have grown closer; at least, it looks that way to outsiders. The administration in Gaza backed Abbas' request to the United Nations to recognize the PA as an observer state. In recent weeks, it was reported that Fatah operatives whom Hamas expelled from Gaza during its violent takeover in 2007 would be allowed to return.

Is this the dawn of a new day for Palestinian society? Not yet. The very idea that Mashaal may run for PA president is already causing tensions in the high-level bureaus. Fatah’s request to hold a rally in the Gaza Strip was turned down.

“Hamas did not collapse in the recent battle, nor was it destroyed,” said a high-ranking intelligence official. “On the strength of this ‘accomplishment,’ it is initiating an apparent reconciliation. But I don’t see these two groups getting along well for very long. It’s all very well to make declarations, but it won’t work on the ground. Hamas won’t allow Fatah’s security agencies to integrate in Gaza, nor will it allow them to do so in the West Bank.”

The next “dead men walking”

Issa, the new chief of staff, is described as the acting head of the military wing. In reality, he is the strongman. The official holder of the position is Mohammed Deif, the most wanted man in Gaza. Deif was severely wounded six years ago during an attempted assassination from the air. Now disabled, he drags his feet, lives on pills and suffers from chronic headaches and memory loss. His face remained crooked after a series of neurological operations he underwent in Egypt.

During Operation Pillar of Defense, Deif suddenly emerged from his hideout and appeared in silhouette on Hamas television. “Israel made a grave mistake by assassinating Jabari,” he said.

Eldar: “By appearing, he was conveying a message: Look, I’m coming back. I don’t think he has operational significance, but he definitely has mythical status. It’s likely that he was one of the people who decided who would replace Jabari.”

Another man who may fill a major role in Hamas’ leadership is Salah Aruri. A founder of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades who spent almost 20 years imprisoned in Israel, Aruri was released in the Schalit prisoner exchange deal and was deported to Ankara, where he rejoined Hamas’ political wing.

Hamas’ leaders hid in large bunkers that had been carefully constructed since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in 2007. “Today, Hamas is an actual army,” says Professor Eyal Zisser of Tel Aviv University. “They prepared operational plans for a crisis situation and carried them out when the crisis occurred. Even though Jabari is out of the picture, there was no vacuum. Hamas was able to act, fight and fire rockets.”

Maj. Gen. (res.) Yadlin: “Hamas’ leaders were very surprised by the Israeli strike. They thought we would never dare do anything to Hamas. They expected to strike Tel Aviv with dozens of rockets and operate their drones. They were defeated in both areas, and I think that was Israel’s greatest accomplishment in the operation.”

As with Operation Cast Lead four years ago, all the Palestinian organizations — Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees and Islamic Jihad — ran a joint operations room. It was because of this war room that the fighting on last day of the operation was as intensive as it was on the first.

According to Eldar, tilting the balance in the fight against Hamas depends on getting its political echelon into the Israeli Air Force’s sights. “Israel’s policy of targeted killings doesn’t really change the situation. As the assassination of Jabari proved, every member of the operational echelon has a replacement. Hamas’ big crisis happened after the killings of Yassin and Rantissi. They felt the whole movement was in danger.”

Between a rock and a hard place

Hamas has become embroiled in the war that the Sunnis and the Shiites are waging over the Muslim world. When the civil war in Syria erupted last year, Hamas, forced to take sides, abandoned its original Shiite camp. “Hamas distanced itself from Syria. It can’t identify with Syria because the Alawite infidels are massacring the devout Muslims,” says the intelligence official. That doesn’t mean Hamas has decided to say goodbye to Iran, however. At the end of Operation Pillar of Defense, Hamas publicly thanked the Iranians, for the first time, for their support.

Professor Zisser: “They’re trying to straddle the fence. Today, Hamas is on the side of Egypt and Qatar, but hasn’t broken off its connection with Iran. Even though there are disagreements about Syria, cooperation hasn’t been destroyed and the cease-fire continues. This stems from the Iranians’ pragmatic decision not to give up an outpost like the one they have in Gaza.”

Hamas officials were convinced that once the Muslim Brotherhood came to power in Egypt, they would be on excellent terms. Three months ago, Haniyeh visited Cairo after stating, “We’re a branch of the Brothers in Gaza.” He intended to ask Morsi to open the Rafiah crossing. Morsi’s response came as a complete surprise.

“God help you if we find your fingerprints on the terror attack in Sinai,” Morsi said, referring to the attack last summer in which 16 Egyptian police officers were killed. According to reports in the Arab press, the Egyptians intervened to prevent the appointment of Raed el-Atar as Hamas’ chief of staff because of his involvement in that attack, and even demanded his extradition.

Now it seems that the relationship has been repaired, at least partially, in the wake of Operation Pillar of Defense. But the high-ranking intelligence official says, “The Egyptians don’t want the fighting resumed because of their own interests, and they also have an incentive to stop weapons from being smuggled into Gaza.” Does this mean the Egyptians will try to stop arms smuggling to Gaza? It is doubtful, and it is even more doubtful that they will succeed. Zisser says, “Egypt is busy with its own burning issues. They’re not bothered about arms being smuggled into Gaza.”

The picture Hamas is showing the inhabitants of Gaza is completely different from the way things look on the ground. Hamas boasts of its strikes at the heart of Tel Aviv and Ramat Hasharon and its rocket fire at the Knesset in Jerusalem, and brags of having shot down an F-16 fighter jet. “If Hamas’s leaders have gotten to the point where they’re lying, that means they know there’s a problem,” Yadlin quips.

Meanwhile, Hamas takes pride in having brought millions more Israelis into rocket range. “If you come back to Gaza, we’ll come back to Tel Aviv,” Hamas officials have said in the media over the past two weeks. Their message is clear: the peak of the last round of fighting will be the starting point of the next.

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