Can a harbour for Gaza prevent a war?

ISRAEL’S border with the Gaza Strip is tense at the best of times. But tempers are especially frayed after weeks punctuated by sporadic exchanges of fire. Israeli security chiefs are wondering how they can avert another conflict in an area that has seen, on average, a big one every two to three years.

Much of Israel’s introspection has been prompted by the release of a report by the State Comptroller on the decisions leading up to and during the war between Israel and Gaza in the summer of 2014, in which some 2,100 Palestinians and 73 Israelis died. Although much of the report dealt with the mayhem that summer, it also underscored long-standing complaints by senior officials that Israel’s government had failed to seek a long-term solution to the whole Israeli-Palestinian dispute. It noted, for instance, that although military and intelligence officers had been warning for some time that life for the 1.8m Palestinians living in Gaza was getting much worse, the cabinet was presented only with military options for confronting Hamas, a militant Islamist group, without any diplomatic alternatives.

The report has revived talk within Israeli security circles of finding ways to ease a blockade of Gaza that contributes to its economic stagnation and the frustrations that prompt some Gazans to pick up stones, knives or rockets.

Although Israel withdrew from the territory in August 2005, it continues to control access, along with Egypt, to the 365 sq km coastal enclave. Following a civil war in 2007 in which Hamas wrested power from the Palestinian Authority, Israel and Egypt have enforced a blockade of varying degrees of severity.

Surprisingly, the loudest voice within Israel’s government is that of Yisrael Katz, the intelligence minister and a hardliner in the ruling Likud Party. He has proposed building an artificial island three miles off Gaza’s shores. This could house a port and airport that would give Gaza much-needed access to the world, as well as power and desalination plants that would alleviate acute shortages of electricity and water. Putting the port offshore could allow an international security force to inspect imports and prevent the smuggling of arms to Hamas and other militant groups. Mr Katz adds that it would also entail “creating land which no side in the conflict has claim to”. (This is what passes for a joke in Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy.)

Mr Katz argues that the $5bn price would be paid by private investors and foreign donors interested in boosting Gaza’s dire economy. Building it would provide jobs for unemployed Gazans. Above all, he argues, the gateway would relieve Israel of any responsibility for Gaza. “I have no illusions regarding Hamas and its murderous ideology,” he says. “But our current policy allows them to imprison their population without any hope of development.”

Mr Katz’s proposal has widespread support within Israel’s security establishment and the tacit support of many of his cabinet colleagues, even if they are wary of saying so in public. The main obstacles remain political. Israel and Hamas, which raises most of its revenue from taxing imports to the strip, both refuse to negotiate directly. And Hamas’s testy ties with the Palestinian Authority and Egypt would further complicate efforts to reach an agreement.

Ultimately, though, the decision over whether to try rests with Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister—and he is reluctant to act. His instinct, when it comes to Gaza, is to procrastinate until there is no choice but war.