Gaza (Palestinian Territories) (AFP)
Rockets fired on one side, armed reprisals on the other, and rain of dollars delivered by Qatar: the Gaza Strip is the scene of an intriguing and dangerous military ping-pong in the run-up to the elections in Israel.
Last Thursday, in Gaza City, on the seaside terraces, between the echoes of Arab pop a subject for more serious discussions is needed: suitcases full of banknotes that must flood the Palestinian enclave in the next hours or days .
Under a truce agreement brokered by UN and Egyptian officials, Qatar, a Gulf emirate with special ties to Hamas and contacts with Israel, delivers millions of dollars worth help every month to Gazans. But Israel was late in approving the entry of money into Gaza.
To raise the pressure without breaking the truce, rockets were fired from Gaza without the Islamist Hamas movement claiming them, experts say.
"Hamas wants to send a message to Israel to put the agreement in place and also send a message to Qatar and Egypt to put pressure on Israel," said Jamal al-Fadi, a professor at AFP. political science at the University of Gaza.
After a month of calm, rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip, home to two million Palestinians under Israeli blockade and infusion of international aid, have resumed in mid-August since the Hamas-controlled Palestinian enclave. that neither the movement nor its ally of Islamic Jihad claims them.
Added to these shots are attempts to infiltrate armed Palestinians into Israel, sometimes even rocket launchers.
Each time, Israel retorts, either by opening fire on the men who try to cross the security fence, or by bombing "sites" of Hamas, which he holds responsible for firing rockets as a master of Gaza .
"It's the game of the cat and the mouse," said Al-Fadi, for whom both Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu need to keep the truce.
The former want to use the elections to speed up the implementation of the truce agreement, which includes measures to extend the fishing zone of Gazans in the Mediterranean and the delivery of electricity. The second wants to ensure stability relative to the approach of the legislative elections of September 17 while maintaining the idea of a threat to Gaza, he said.
- "Dangerous game" -
Qatar's special envoy, Mohammed el-Emadi, arrived in Gaza this weekend with the equivalent of ten million dollars, he told AFP. As early as Sunday, thousands of Gazans lined up in front of Gaza post offices, where the unemployment rate exceeds 50 percent, to receive each of the $ 100 bills.
The distribution ended, the rockets did not, however, kill themselves.
In the night of Sunday to Monday, three rockets were fired from Gaza, according to the Israeli army. Two were intercepted by the "Iron Dome" missile shield, but one fell without a casualty on a vacant lot near Sderot, forcing the cancellation of a concert.
"It's a dangerous game," said Dr. Baser Naim, a Hamas executive. "If there is a wounded or dead on the Israeli side, the situation could change" and lead to escalation, he told AFP in Gaza.
If Hamas only seeks to raise the stakes, the motives of his ally Islamic Jihad seem more bellicose, say the Israeli authorities.
Some "elements" "are trying to trigger a war (...), the Islamic Jihad, which is in the service of Iran, is once again trying to destabilize the region," said Monday Kamil Abu Rukun General, head of the Coordination Unit for Israeli Government Activities in the Palestinian Territories (Cogat).
In the aftermath of the shooting, Israel halved fuel deliveries by half, which will mean a reduction in the number of hours of electricity available in Gaza, where the current was already limited to 10 hours a day.
© 2019 AFP