Hamas Shifting Sights to Border Crossings

Hamas's latest strategy seems to have been lifted from Mel Brooks's Sheriff Bart, who threatened to shoot himself in the head if the townspeople tried to kill him. That ploy could work just as well in Gaza as it did in "Blazing Saddles." The territory's ruling faction, while keeping up its rocket attacks on the town of Sderot and other southern Israeli civilian centers, is shifting the bulk of its firepower to border crossings and other entry points for goods on which Gazans depend.

As Israelis completed their traditional spring cleaning on Saturday morning in preparation for the Passover Seder — and as President Carter engaged the commander of Hamas's military wing, Khaled Meshaal, in bizarre diplomacy in Damascus — Hamas fighters lobbed artillery at Israeli border patrols while four explosive-laden vehicles careered from inside the strip toward the Kerem Shalom crossing and then detonated, injuring 13 Israel Defense Force soldiers.

"We haven't seen such an attack since the separation plan," the army's southern district commander, General Yoav Galant, said, referring to Israel's withdrawal of troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip nearly three years ago. He added that the well-coordinated Hamas attack was designed to cause the maximum number of casualties and perhaps to seize soldiers as well.

The target — the crossing at the southern tip of Gaza, which presently serves as the main artery for goods and humanitarian assistance — was also chosen carefully, General Galant said. The attack followed a smaller-scale assault last week, in which two Israeli soldiers were killed as Palestinian Arabs attacked the main terminal for fuel delivery to Gaza from Israel, at Nahal Oz.

"These operations are the beginning of the explosions that Hamas has warned of," a Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, said, Haaretz reported. "If the parties don't intervene quickly to save Gaza and break the siege, what is coming will be greater."

So why are Palestinian Arabs attacking their own supply lines? Wouldn't such a strategy intensify Gaza's humanitarian crisis? Wouldn't it end up hurting Palestinian Arab civilians? And wouldn't it make more sense to direct their firepower at Israeli civilians instead?

The attacks against Israeli civilians in Sderot and its environs, which have terrorized residents in southern Israel, have been effective, from Hamas's point of view. But the rockets also have allowed Israel to claim legitimacy by invoking its right to self-defense. On the other hand, as it fires on the crossings, "Hamas can always shirk responsibility while it continues to complain about Israel's refusal to provide Gaza with supplies," an Israeli military analyst, Ron Ben-Yishai, wrote on the Israeli Web site Ynet last week.

Although the misery suffered by Palestinian Arabs pales in comparison to that of people in more neglected parts of Africa and Asia, one of the United Nations' largest humanitarian efforts is in Gaza and the West Bank. By declaring a "crisis" in those territories almost daily, the organization focuses on the suffering of the Palestinian Arabs far more intensely than that of their Arab brethren across the Middle East, where jobs are scarce and economies are in ruins.

And when supplies to Gaza are cut off, Israel is automatically blamed, even if military attacks from inside Gaza are specifically directed at the sources of those supplies: an electric power plant in Ashkelon, Nahal Oz's oil depot, or the Kerem Shalom crossing.

In the battlefield of public relations, the asymmetry between uniformed and non-uniformed combatants has long favored militias over regular armies. Statements by the United Nations and humanitarian nongovernmental organizations rarely make a distinction between the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs killed by the IDF — armed combatants — and the innocents hurt in the process. On the other hand, even when such statements also condemn the killing of Israeli civilians, they rarely mention the IDF casualties. Now, as Hamas spokesmen raise the rhetoric of "liberation" from Israel's choke hold on Gaza, its warriors' new tactics ensure that border controls, and supply lines, will be tightened. If Hamas truly sought to liberate Gaza, its rulers not only would attack Israelis — they also would attempt to increase domestic production to become at least somewhat self-sufficient. Under Hamas, Gaza's dependence on goods from Israel and the United Nations has only increased, which shows that its goal is more to hurt Israel than to help the Palestinian Arabs.

Now Hamas is betting that, by literally shooting itself in the foot, international sympathy for its plight will increase. Sadly, this is not a bad bet.

bavni@nysun.com