Despite Israel's crimes in West Bank, Gaza is not ready for a new war: analysts

Despite the significant increase in the endless Israeli crimes in the Palestinian-occupied West Bank, the besieged coastal enclave of the Gaza Strip is not ready to get involved in a new round of military war with Israel, Palestinian political experts said on Monday. 

In separate interviews with The New Arab, political analysts argue that "the current political and economic conditions in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip prevent both Hamas and Israel from heading to a new round of fighting easily."

On Saturday, Israeli warplanes struck military sites belonging to the Islamic Hamas movement in response to rockets fired from the Gaza Strip into Israeli cities. 

The Israeli army reported on Saturday evening a rocket had been fired from the Gaza Strip toward Israel, the first attack in a month.

The attack came as one of Gaza's larger armed factions, Islamic Jihad, threatened to retaliate after Israeli troops killed two of its leaders in the occupied West Bank town of Jenin on Thursday.

"However, the situation will not go beyond the scope of premeditated action and reaction between Hamas and Israel at the current time," Mustafa Ibrahim, a Gaza-based analyst, told TNA. 

"Hamas knew very well that if it will turn the conflict to Gaza, it means that the confrontation between the Palestinians and Israelis will be ended without achieving any goals on the ground," he said.

He believes Hamas is doing its best to keep action concentrated in the West Bank and maintain the situation stability in the coastal enclave, stressing, "Israel also needs to keep the situation here (Gaza) stability." 

However, he explains, the Islamic movement allows from time to time other small groups to fire rockets at Israel during critical conditions that occurred in the West Bank, like killing many Palestinians on the same day, noting that "it could drag Gaza into a limited escalation." 

Hussam al-Dajani, another Gaza-based political analyst, told TNA that "based on easing the political and economic situation in the Strip, Israel is seeking to neutralize the resistance in Gaza from the tensions in the West Bank." 

Nevertheless, he says, even though Israel will provide more and more facilities to Gaza, the occurrence of any major field development or serious Israeli crime in the West Bank may prompt the armed factions to respond militarily as did in 2021. 

"I expect the Palestinian territories, in general, to move towards military and field escalation, and the ball may roll to the Gaza Strip," Dajani added. 

"The Israeli government bears full responsibility for the tense situation in the region, especially in light of the formation of a new, extreme right-wing government led by Benjamin Netanyahu that does not believe in negotiations or political solutions," he explained. 

"We are facing a fascist government, so I think we have a golden opportunity to agree on a unified resistance program to confront the occupation and stop its crimes," he stressed.

Since the beginning of this year 2022, the occupied West Bank has become a deadly battleground between Palestinians and the Israeli army, killing at least 200 Palestinians and 27 Israelis. 

"The West Bank was a place for dozens of Israeli field assassinations against Palestinian adults, mostly in their 20s and 30s (...) in the past, such crimes would really escalate the situation in Gaza, but now the conditions have completely changed," Ahmed Rafiq Awad, a Ramallah-based political analyst, told TNA. 

"The behaviours of both Hamas and Israel are governed by their economic and political conditions," he said.

"Israel well knew that any confrontation with Gaza would paralyze the economy and tourism within its territory and embarrass it militarily," Awad added.

Moreover, he believes that it [Israel] will gain any political or security achievements. Instead, it will return to the insecurity condition it was in 2020, pointing out that it prefers to provide more facilities to Gaza to ensure security for its residents. 

"The Hamas situation is not much different from Israel," Awad said. "It is busy collecting financial funds to rebuild the infrastructure and buildings that were destroyed during the Israeli wars."