PHOTO: Egyptian leader Abdel Fatteh El Sisi
Last week, we published a detailed examination by Nathan Thrall, for the London Review of Books, .
In the article, Thrall explained how the Gazan leadership of Hamas was increasingly beset by economic difficulties following Israel’s decision to rely on pressure rather than negotiations after a brief war in November 2012. He noted how West Jerusalem complemented this approach with a refusal to recognize the Palestinian “unity” government — accepted by Hamas with its rival Fatah, in part because of the economic squeeze — in April and with the break-off of talks brokered by the US.
Now Adam Entous and Nicholas Casey of The Wall Street Journal add another dimension of the story: how the military leaders of Egypt’s regime, after a July 2013 coup, were even tougher than the Israelis on Hamas:
When (coup leader and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El) Sisi closed nearly all of the tunnels along Egypt’s border with Gaza but didn’t compensate for the loss of those avenues by allowing the passage above ground of needed supplies, some Israeli officials said they privately began to raise alarm bells about the severity of Cairo’s decisions.
“They actually were suffocating Gaza too much,” one Israeli official said.
In Gaza, the situation grew desperate.
At the start of the year, Hamas realized that Egypt’s campaign to destroy the tunnels was edging it toward bankruptcy.
In April, Hamas abruptly agreed to form a government of technocrats under Western-backed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, reconciling with the group that governed the West Bank after years of rivalry.
The growing dangers about Hamas’s precarious position were flagged to Washington by the U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem, Michael Ratney. He saw the pressures building in the spring and concluded that Hamas was in desperate straits, unable to pay salaries to its 40,000 government workers in Gaza, and was now reaching out to the Palestinian Authority to try to relieve the pressure.
Mr. Abbas privately told diplomats afterward that he never expected Hamas to agree to the unity deal.
Mahmoud Zahar, a top Hamas leader in Gaza, said the group’s inability to cover its monthly payroll forced it to reach out to the Palestinian Authority and Qatar, which pledged $60 million for three months. But U.S. and Israeli officials said Arab banks wouldn’t make the transfer.
At the height of Hamas’s distress, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped in the West Bank in June and subsequently found dead. Israel quickly concluded that Hamas was responsible and rounded up its activists in the West Bank, infuriating the group’s armed wing in Gaza.
After the abduction, which U.S. officials believe was carried out by Hamas members without the approval of their leaders in Gaza, Israeli intelligence officials warned policy makers that “overly pressuring Hamas will lead to a conflagration,” according to another senior Israeli official.
Palestinian officials told diplomats they were making a last-ditch effort to get the money for salaries to Gaza, believing that doing so might help defuse tensions but nothing came of it, diplomats said.
Rocket fire from Gaza escalated, and Israel began to respond with airstrikes.
U.S. officials, who tried to intervene in the initial days after the conflict broke out on July 8 to try to find a negotiated solution, soon realized that Mr. Netanyahu’s office wanted to run the show with Egypt and to keep the Americans at a distance, according to U.S., European and Israeli officials.
The Americans, in turn, felt betrayed by what they saw as a series of “mean spirited” leaks, which they interpreted as a message from Mr. Netanyahu that U.S. involvement was neither welcomed nor needed.
