North Korea on the Mediterranean David Isaac
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe/180817
Since March 30, when Hamas launched its first “return march” with thousands storming Israel’s border, Israel’s media pundits have said neither side wants escalation. They had it right. What’s being termed “the small arrangement” looks like a big win for Hamas, whose strategy most resembles that of North Korea.
In 1999, North Korea was in a similar situation to Hamas now. Its economy was in tatters. State rations hadn’t been distributed for five years. Control of its population was slipping. Today, Hamas can’t make payroll or provide basic services and faces staggering unemployment. One of the generally agreed reasons why Hamas whipped its people up in the first place was to distract them from their economic problems.
According to the agreement, which sources say will be signed Friday in Cairo, Hamas will accept a yearlong ceasefire in exchange for a sea lane to Cyprus, extension of its fishing waters, the opening of border crossings on the Israel and Egyptian sides of the Gaza Strip, and humanitarian projects and funding from Egypt and Qatar to pay the salaries of its public servants. Qatar will also pay Gaza’s electric bills.
Curiously, despite the nearness of a deal, Khalil al-Haya, Hamas’s deputy head, called on Gazan residents to march en masse to the border. Terrorists continue floating fire bombs into Israel. One was spotted above the skies of Netivot on Thursday. This continued aggression, too, follows North Korean strategy.
The North Korean Model
A fine description of North Korean policy is found in Dear Leader: My Escape from North Korea by Jang Jin-Sung, who was in a position to witness its formulation up close as North Korea’s former State Poet Laureate. He describes how the policy, called the “Northern Limit Line – NLL – Strategy,” began with the initiative of a left-wing South Korean government to improve ties with its northern neighbor. In 1998, South Korea introduced its “Sunshine Policy” – the name based on Aesop’s fable where a strong wind (a get-tough policy) couldn’t knock the coat off a man but sunshine (a peacemaking policy) led the man to willingly remove it.
The policy ironically served as a lifeline for the North Korean communists, who were on the ropes, facing mass starvation and economic disaster that eroded party loyalty. The North Koreans settled on a two-prong approach in response to South Korea’s outreach. First, North Korea would take the South Korean aid, enough to meet, in Jin-Sung words, the “minimum resources it needed to reverse its diminishing control over the nation.” Second, once the stream of unconditional aid was secured, North Korea would make sure that it would not need to make reciprocal concessions.
Finding a way to prevent this eventuality became acute when South Korea’s conservative opposition floated the idea that the North should be forced to give something in return for all the aid thrown its way. The solution North Korea settled on to prevent such an outcome was ingenious. It would engage in military provocations at the same time it took South Korean largesse. Jin-Sung writes in Dear Leader:
“Acts of military provocation could prevent such a scenario [making concessions] from being realized, because North Korea would acquire the bargaining chip of offering to cease provocations, as a contingency to be held in reserve. Moreover, not only would our position be strengthened if it did come to give-and-take, but once the Sunshine policy’s unconditional aid began to flow in, a lurking threat of military confrontation might even ensure the policy’s longevity.”
In order not to endanger the flow of aid on land, North Korea focused all its provocations at sea. Its first action was carried out on June 15, 1999. Everything went according to plan. South Korea played down the naval attack. “In fact, encouraged by the patient peace-making efforts of South Korea, the North decided to fix upon military provocation as the long-term basis of its foreign policy strategies … This would be carried out through the development of nuclear weapons at an international level, and through naval provocations at the inter-Korean level,” Jin-Sung writes.
He concluded: “After completing my escape to the outside world, I would later come to appreciate – from the state of inter-Korean affairs and the South’s perceptions of it – that [North Korea’s] coordinated response to the Sunshine Policy could not have been a more phenomenal success.”
It’s within the realm of possibility that North Korea even suggested Hamas undertake a variation of its strategy. Relations between North Korea and Hamas first became public in 2009. A Palestinian diplomatic mission was established in North Korea as far back as 1974.
Hamas Strategy
In 1999, North Korea breathed a sigh of relief when everything went according to plan. Hamas must be doing so now. It risked a wider military confrontation, but instead came up big. It’s going to receive international projects, an infusion of foreign aid and better access to goods through open border crossings and a shipping lane to Cyprus.
It’s no accident that the terror group’s demands centered around the Gaza Strip’s economy. Like North Korea, it must supply the minimal requirements to ensure control over its population. Thanks to this agreement, it will be able to dole out enough to prevent a popular uprising.
All this after it organized mass demonstrations which eroded Israel’s image, burned 7,000 acres of Israeli land, killed an IDF soldier and launched rocket barrages at Israeli towns, causing widespread trauma to Israel’s southern citizens.
Israeli Strategy
Quiet will be met with quiet. This formula, which has been around for years, had been repeated with increasing frequency by Israeli government officials over the last months. It’s a euphemistic warning – tangle with Israel at your peril. Unfortunately, its practical application has rendered the phrase meaningless. Israel has allowed a continuous attack on its territory for some 140 days, only responding to certain Hamas strikes. “Aggression will be met with quiet” is a more apt description.
In truth, it’s been hard to pin down Israeli policy. The government has been tight-lipped. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been content to let Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman do the talking, and Liberman has been sending mixed signals. On Monday, he said the next round of violence between Israel and Hamas “is not if, but when.” On Wednesday, he directed a Facebook post at Gazans saying that they could become like Singapore.
On Thursday, Liberman finally presented a strategy. He announced that he wants to topple Hamas, and that his method is to draw a distinction between it and the people of Gaza. “My strategy is to speak straight to the public and not to the Hamas leadership,” he said. “The public in Gaza needs to understand that only through quiet will they gain, and so long as there isn’t any will they lose. The goal is that the people will rise up and replace the government. We don’t want to conquer Gaza.”
If this is indeed Israel’s new policy, it is going about it exactly the wrong way. North Korea provides an ideal example of what happens when you take a dictatorship with a crumbling economy and inject it with foreign funding. You still have it 20 years later. If Israel wants to rid Gaza of Hamas, it should increase sanctions. The Palestinian Authority understands this, which is why it withheld salaries from Gaza’s civil servants and stopped paying Gaza’s electric bills. The goal was to wrest Gaza back from Hamas. Now Israel, Egypt, and the United Nations have stepped in and saved Hamas. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is not pleased.
The actions of Netanyahu’s administration has led to a weird realignment, with left-wing politicians attacking the government from the right. Opposition leader Tzipi Livni warned that the agreement rewards terror and strengthens Hamas, which should not be negotiated with under any circumstances.
On this point, the Israeli public seems to be with her. According to a social media survey by Channel 20, 67.3 percent said under no circumstances should Israel deal with Hamas, while another 30.3 percent said there should be no deal if it doesn’t include the return of soldiers’ remains and the destruction of Hamas’s arsenal. Only 2.4 percent approved of a deal, even if it led only to a temporary ceasefire.
It’s difficult to know if Hamas will succeed in the long run, but thanks to Israel’s policy, expect it to be with us for some time.
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