Subject: The United States’ position on recent Israel/Gaza situation

Issue for Decision
Israel has withdrawn its troops from the Gaza territory concluding a 22 day military offensive against Hamas. The withdrawal marks the beginning of a unilateral, one week ceasefire. Hamas, however, has declared that it will continue to fire rockets from Gaza into Israel, and fired 20 rockets over the Israel-Gaza border immediately after Israel announced the ceasefire.
Since the ceasefire, Israel has responded to the attacks with targeted bombings. In the 22 day campaign called Operation Cast Lead 1300 Palestinians are dead and 13 Israelis are dead. The total damage of the attacks is estimated to be at least $15 million. It is in the United States interest to have the conflict resolved as thoroughly and quickly as possible as continued violence will force the Arab State to side with either Israel or Hamas. Historically, Arabs will choose to side with Arabs. This will negatively affect U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the U.A.E., and Egypt.

Background
Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, is a militant political party in the Palestinian Territories of Israel. Hamas currently holds 76 seats out of the 136 seat parliament of the Palestinian Territories, and unlike Fatah, the militant party refuses to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a state. Thus the main goal of Hamas is to ensure the destruction of modern Israel and return the territory to Palestinian control in an Islamic Republic.
As one of its election platforms, Hamas declared it does not believe that Israel has the right to exist. President Jimmy Carter negotiated with Hamas in 2007 and had them agree to stop violence if the Palestinian people were given a completely autonomous Palestinian state separate from Israel and if Israel were to recede to its pre-1967 territories. However, this treaty was not ratified in the Hamas controlled parliament.
With Egypt acting as mediator, Israel and the autonomous government of Palestine, led by Hamas, were able to negotiate a six month peace treaty from June 19, 2008. The peace treaty was never really kept by Hamas as the militant organization fired roughly 50 rockets from Gaza into Israeli territory.
Options
We are currently developing policy options to address the situation. We are looking at possible humanitarian aid given directly to the Gazan people, not filtered through Hamas. This could be done through direct foreign aid from our coffers, or more strategically through non-governmental organizations such as the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders, as this would achieve our objectives without us directly being involved, letting those who would like to help to help.
We may want to send UN peacekeeping force to act as deterrents from any further violence from either side as it is quite possible that future violence will occur due to Hamas’ unrelenting position of utter opposition to Israel. Also, since Israel is our strongest ally in the Middle East, we should consider boosting military aid to Israel as this would allow Israel to replenish exhausted military resources allowing a continuance of a strong relationship which we may need in the future.


Next Steps
We will need the CIA to form a report on the political and military dynamics of the current situation so we may confirm our information that we have based our reports upon and to allow the surest decision making. The Department of Defense ought to come up with possible ways of addressing the status of the Israeli military forces and tactics used to fight Hamas and possible ways of addressing threats in a more ethical manner. The Department of State should meet with the leadership of Israel, Fatah, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan to ensure that outside rabble rousing stays at a minimum.