The past week, the situation escalated after the occupation had tightened the siege and increased the economic pressure on the people of the Gaza Strip. The most recent incidents were reactivating popular resistance activities such as firing burning balloons and demonstrating at night near the occupied lands.

Facing such activities, the occupation targeted agricultural lands, security posts and resistance locations; this led to several injuries among Palestinian civilians and damaged properties. In addition, the occupation closed the crossings, prevented fishermen from practicing their profession, and prevented the entry of fuel and construction materials.

The General Landscape:

• The occupation has increased the tension level in the field through applying collective punishment policy. It tightened the siege, which led to disastrous results, and did not adhere to the humanitarian agreements and commitments towards the besieged Strip. Nevertheless, the resistance in the Strip insists on exercising pressure on the occupation to end the siege and allow the entry of supplies to the besieged people since 2006.
• Through raising the tension in Gaza, the occupation generally seeks to improve the reputation of its leaders within the Israeli community; especially as the dispute among the government’s constituents and political parties continues, and other issues such as the Coronavirus spread, budget draft, corruption charges against Netanyahu and the possibility of early parliament elections are still pending for solutions.
• Upon the recent escalation, political mediations rushed to prevent the situation from exploding. The Israeli occupation declared that a security Egyptian delegation will be holding meetings with Palestinians in Ramallah and Gaza to reduce the tension and reach new agreements to achieve calm. It is expected that the resistance would be asked to stop the popular demonstrations in exchange of the entry of the Qatari funds; and to approve civil projects in the Strip in exchange of preventing an escalation from erupting.

 

 

Based on the above, one of the following scenarios is expected to happen:

1. The Egyptian intelligence’ diplomatic efforts continue to calm the region in exchange of economic incentives.
2. The occupation stalls and exercises more pressure on Gaza in order to head to a larger round of escalations that would exhaust Gaza but would be followed by calm with mutual conditions.
3. The occupation refuses temporary solutions and adherence to the commitments towards Gaza and the humanitarian situation it suffers from due to the siege and collective punishment. It would initiate a new aggression that would multiply the losses and sufferings of the Gaza Strip.

The first scenario is expected to happen since this has happened before. The Egyptian mediation would most probably succeed in ending the escalation and reaching calm. This is because of Netanyahu’s unstable political status and the uncertain results of an escalation. In addition, the resistance is taking the humanitarian conditions of the Strip into consideration and is not seeking wide-range escalation. It only wants to guarantee a suitable level of humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip.