GAZA CONFLICT

-- Another Israel-Arab war has erupted and again Western supporters of both sides have divided into predictable camps. Israel supporters cite the indisputable fact that missiles launched from Hamas-controlled Gaza have been slamming into Israeli towns at increasing distances and with increasing accuracy. Palestine supporters cite the continuing siege of the Gaza Strip, which is dependent on Israel for electricity, fuel, and even basic foods.

As far as logic can be stretched, it is reasonable for a country to retaliate against missile attack, but it would behoove a country that depends on outside aid not to bite the hand of the neighbor that feeds it. Clearly, Gaza's dependence on Israeli-supplied goods is the result of its failure to produce its own.

Is that to say that Israel is a picture of virtue?

Not at all. The timing of the Gaza invasion was dictated by Israel and no doubt, as Hamas supporters claim, the approaching Israeli elections (on Feb. 10) had something to do with it.

Lagging far behind two rival parties, the Labor Party headed by Defense Minister Ehud Barak needed to show it was "tough on terror." But is that illegitimate? Even if it was, it is certain that Hamas timed its escalation over the Christmas holidays to ensure that the Labor Party and Kadima, the centrist party with which Labor is currently allied, would fail to thwart the increasingly certain victory of the right-wing Likud, which was crushed in the last elections after it opposed Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

Hamas has done that before. After the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli extremist, the re-election of his deputy in the Labor government, Shimon Peres, was thought to be a shoo-in. But a series of especially deadly bus bombings in the weeks leading to elections in 1996 brought the Likud to power. Attacks declined, but when Labor returned to power under Barak in 1999 and he offered unprecedented concessions, the response was an uprising led by Hamas that ensured Barak's defeat in elections two months later. It was almost as though Hamas and Rabin's Jewish assassin were in cahoots.

By all accounts Yasser Arafat, leader of the secular PLO, who despite his rejection of Barak's concessions did authorize continued negotiations in the dying days of Barak's premiership, feared that he would suffer the fate of Anwar Sadat -- the Egyptian leader who made peace with Israel in 1977 and was later assassinated -- if he said yes to an irrevocable peace consisting of two states.

But why would Hamas want to prevent a peace agreement? It objects to any agreement that commits itself to recognizing the de jure right of Israel to exist. In short, it wishes to dismantle Israel and return Jews -- at best -- to minority status in an Arab, preferably Islamist, state.

I well recall a conversation with Sheikh Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, the deputy Hamas leader in Gaza in early 1995 who claimed that Israel did not want peace but only to expand.

When I pointed out that Israel had returned the entire unpopulated Sinai desert and its useful oil wells to Egypt in return for peace, he maintained that this was expansion -- because "the Zionists had spiritually annexed Egypt itself." The return of land could itself be a reason for continued war.

When Arafat appeared ready to concede the right of Israel to exist, he was threatened with assassination for becoming a "Zionist." When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 it was seen as just another way for Israel to control the destiny of the Palestinians.

True, Hamas has floated suggestions, never actually officially confirmed, that it might offer Israel a 10-year renewable cease-fire in return for its withdrawal to the borders of 1967. That is, the Islamic Wakf would remain the landlord of the Jewish national home and reserve the right of eviction. Clearly that is no basis for negotiations leading to a final peace agreement.

The failure of Hamas to renew even a brief six-month cease-fire during which it developed -- and possibly imported through tunnels -- longer-range missiles capable of striking large towns in central Israel demonstrates to what use a 10-year cease-fire might be put.

However, Hamas' blatant attempt to influence the coming Israeli election next month in favor of the Likud under Binyamin Netanyahu, who condemned the withdrawal of all Israeli troops and settlements from Gaza and was crushed in 2006 elections, seems to be understood by an increasing number of Palestinians in the West Bank as an effort to put Hamas in the position of aiding Israel's hawks in a public relations war designed to promote its own prestige as the defender of the Palestinian people.

Despite concerns at the mounting death toll, there are signs this effort is not working. Not only the PLO, forcefully ousted from Gaza by a democratically elected Hamas in 2007, but even the Islamic state of Saudi Arabia appears concerned that the Hamas-promoted tactic of encouraging individual suicide bombers is turning into a policy of national suicide.

Hamas, which would like a one-state Islamic solution, is not only intent on destroying the possibility of a viable two-state solution but could also end up creating a three-state solution that would serve Israel far better than the Palestinians. Ironically, Israel's invasion of Gaza might be the last chance to preserve the Palestinians' best interests.
Jon Immanuel was Palestinian affairs correspondent for the Jerusalem Post from 1990 to 1997. He also reported for the Associated Press from 1980 to 1986, including the Lebanon War in 1983. Immanuel lives in Israel and spent several days vacationing in Richmond last week. Contact him at .