JERUSALEM, Dec. 5 (UPI) -- The cease-fire in and around the Gaza Strip has been holding, more or less, but remains extremely fragile as low-intensity hostilities continue.
Since it went into effect on Nov. 26, the Israeli army counted 16 Qassam rocket attacks. Most of them were fired during the cease-fire's first few hours. A military source noted they make for an average of a rocket every two days. There was an attack Monday but none recorded as of 10 p.m. Tuesday.
Fortunately these attacks have caused no injuries. This has helped Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert restrain the army and some of his ministers.
Olmert's spokeswoman, Miri Eisin, said the army's orders are not to respond to single rocket fire, "But we won't be restrained for ever." An officer in the Southern Command said there were no Israeli strikes, no tank or artillery fire, but a soldier at the border must protect himself if he feels his life is in danger.
Some Palestinians initially maintained Israel must halt its actions in the West Bank as well.
Eisin maintained the truce does not cover that area. However, the army's instructions are designed to reduce friction there. "Right now we're trying to be extra careful not to make mistakes," she said.
Two analysts, an Israeli and a Palestinian, agreed the truce is fragile because it is not coupled with a political process.
The cease-fire is slightly different this time because it is the outcome of an understanding between Israel and the Islamic Hamas movement, noted former Minister of Planning Ghassan Khatib, now co-editor of bitterlemons.org.
It was the first time that Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel, has become Israel's political and military counterpart, he noted.
Hamas entered the cease-fire following sustained involvement of its leadership abroad. It was done, "Partly to assert its strength by showing it could enforce a cease-fire," Khatib wrote. However, like previous cease-fires, it "does not look as if it will last long."
Experience has shown there can be no vacuum in Palestinian-Israeli relations. There is either confrontation or negotiations. Both sides have firm objectives they try to achieve "regardless of the context," Khatib noted.
The Palestinians want to end the occupation by hook or by crook. Sometimes they engage in armed resistance, sometimes in a political process, and they will not be dissuaded, he added.
"The siege on Gaza, which is engendering poverty and frustration, is left intact," he noted. Israel encircles the Strip, except for Gaza's southern border where there is a crossing to Egypt, but no significant trade goes through it.
The World's Bank's country director for the West Bank and Gaza, David Craig, Tuesday said at the Hebrew University's Truman Institute that, "The Palestinian economy has been in a free fall since the start of the intifada and there is no sign of it stopping."
Khatib wrote that in the West Bank arrests and "assassinations" continue, restrictions on movement are "as draconian as ever," and Jewish settlements continue to expand.
"For Palestinians, the cease-fire thus becomes a means by which Israel can continue its occupation and all measures that derive from it without paying any price," he maintained.
Israeli analyst Yossi Alpher, who had worked in the Mossad and then the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, concurred that if there is "Not even an interim process or agreement ... the cease-fire itself will not last long."
Last week Olmert expressed readiness to renew the peace process. "If a new Palestinian government will be established, will be committed to the principles of the Quartet (i.e. renounce terror, recognize Israel, accept past agreements with it) ... and bring about the release of (kidnapped Cpl.) Gilad Shalit, I will invite (President Mahmoud Abbas) ... to conduct a real, open, genuine and serious dialogue," Olmert said.
The Palestinians will be able to establish an independent and viable state, with territorial contiguity in the West Bank, with full sovereignty and defined borders, the prime minister offered.
Alpher cautioned: "The situation is not ripe for renewing negotiations, and in any case it is doubtful that Olmert has the political support to make good on his offer to cede additional West Bank territory and remove settlements."
He predicted the cease-fire would dissolve into renewed violence unless the Hamas government in Gaza stops the rocket attacks and ceases the smuggling of arms and ordnance across, or under, the Egyptian-Gazan border.
Moreover, any violent West Bank incident is liable to end the lull in Gaza, he added.
The political peace process that Olmert described, "Cannot begin to be contemplated" before the cease-fire is stabilized and expanded, prisoners are exchanged, Abbas is strengthened and a more respectable government is formed, Alpher continued. The international community largely boycotts the present Palestinian Hamas-led government since the United States and the European Union consider Hamas a terrorist organization.
Alpher mirrored Khatib's concern that Israel would take advantage of the cease-fire to entrench itself.
"For the cease-fire to be enhanced requires that Hamas signal clearly that it does not intend to exploit the relative quiet and absence of Israeli military pressure in Gaza in order to build up its own military potential there," Alpher wrote.
The Israelis believe the Palestinians have been smuggling rockets, anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, guns, and explosives into Gaza to build a military capability patterned after Hezbollah's buildup in Lebanon.
