Nine years ago, in July 2014, Israel embarked on a campaign against Hamas. Operation Protective Edge achieved important tactical objectives, but the main goal, that is a long-term end to Hamas terror was not achieved, nor were additional campaigns more successful. The purpose of this current war is to turn tactical gain into strategic results. Although there are no end opinions about the desired status of the Gaza Strip after the war (and that may not entirely depend on us anyway), there is no real disagreement that Hamas, and particularly its leadership, must be eliminated physically and ideologically.
Israel has no interest in permanently occupying the Gaza Strip, but it will have to create a temporary military regime there to root out any possible terrorist revival in the future. In certain political circles, there are calls to renew the settlement of Gush Katif, but not only is this suggestion irrelevant and impractical, it also harms the quest for legitimacy in our war against Hamas.
Historically relevant, one may mention that at the outset of the Six Day War, defense minister Moshe Dayan’s guideline was not to occupy the Gaza Strip and leave it to the Egyptians to deal with it – only to be ignored by then-IDF chief of staff Rabin.
Global perspectives on Israel's war to wipe out Hamas in Gaza
In its attack of October 7, the main strategic goal of Hamas, in addition to returning the Palestinian issue to the front pages, was to stop the normalization process between Israel and additional Arab countries, foremost Saudi Arabia. From its point of view, arresting normalization will be an ongoing effort – and thus Israel’s counteractions must also be ongoing.
Evidently, derailing normalization was also the goal of Iran, Hamas’s patron. Whether or not it was complicit in planning the massacre, the means, the funding, the tactics – and no less the bestiality – were Iran’s.
When Jake Sullivan, the US national security advisor, spoke in September about the Biden administration’s Middle East policy, he explained that the three strands of the policy were: to promote Arab-Israeli normalization, push efforts to economic integration – and pursue diplomacy with Iran. The Hamas atrocity was still several weeks away, but attacks on American soldiers and officials in different parts of the region were increasing and so were Iran’s threats against Israel – facts which underscored the troubling duality of US policy.
As historian Walter Russell Mead wrote: “Appeasing Iran has failed. Iran, is unappeasable, but this truth is too inconvenient for the Biden Administration to admit. Administration spokesmen continue to minimize Tehran’s involvement with and responsibility for the murders. Iran thinks it will be free to advance its nuclear program while Israel tries to deal with Hamas… ”
A RECKONING by the US in this respect clearly is necessary.
Israel’s strategic goal in the current war, in addition to its aims on the battlefield, must thus be overturning the Iran-Hamas design – a goal to be shared by the United States, the strategic driving force in the push for normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel as an integral part a geopolitical realignment in our region. Broadly speaking, not only in our region – as Iran, Hamas and its other proxies in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen are on the front line of the current confrontation about the future world order between the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian axis – and the West led by the US.
US support for Israel in its current struggle, in addition to its moral and ethical aspects, is also based on clear American interests: eliminating Hamas as a threat to regional stability as part of Iran’s overall designs for the area and bolstering the successful image of the IDF. Both the perception and the reality are important to the US in the context of a future possible conflict with Iran, but also as a factor in the Abraham Accords and their hoped-for extension to Saudi Arabia. The success of American weapons – like in the Yom Kippur War – is also an important factor.
Not everyone in the United States, including parts of US President Joe Biden’s own party and as was recently revealed, even in his administration, see matters in the same light, but continued American support for Israel will also be a test of its determination in the above global struggle.
There are some, not always disinterested alarmists who warn that the Gaza War could ignite a global war but the probability of this happening is practically nil, largely because China is neither interested nor prepared for such an eventuality. If there were a potential trigger for a world conflict it would be Taiwan in China’s own backyard, not the Middle East.
Still, and though the United States does not want a regional war either, it cannot ignore the concrete regional aspects of the current hostilities, including almost day-to-day Iranian-inspired terrorist acts against its troops and interests in Syria and Iraq – leading, among other things, to upgrading its military presence in the region, much of it close to the Iranian coast.
Hamas is hated by most Arab leaders almost as much as by Israel because of its Islamist fundamentalism and its threat to their own regimes. This is also because of their interest in advancing their position as international players in the fields of geopolitics, economy, diplomacy, technology, culture, etc.
For that reason also, an Israeli military victory in Gaza – especially on the background of the negative impression created by the failure of October 7 – is important in order to rehabilitate and reinforce the pan-Arab interest in a regional framework that includes Israel.
For obvious reasons, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other Arab leaders must tread a fine line between their own countries’ national interests – and expressing popular solidarity with the people of Gaza, but eventually, one may assume, national interests will prevail.
There are some commentators who question Israel’s chances of achieving all its strategic goals; i.e. that though the Israeli army is indeed the most powerful military factor in the Middle East, it could lose the war against a murderous enemy that cares little for the lives of its own people and exploits the destruction and the lot of the victims to make the world forget the atrocities it has committed and the fate of the hostages, by replacing it with a hypocritical humane front, in the image of UN General Secretary António Guterres against what is falsely described as Israeli brutality towards women and infants in Gaza.
In spite of the large-scale anti-Israel demonstrations in some countries, most in the West have not fallen into the anti-Israel trap, but time is not on Israel’s side, nor on the side of Biden. There is no lack of sanctimonious articles in the world press which usually start with the phrase “of course Israel has the right to defend itself” – only to continue in the next paragraph that it does not.
International perceptions are indeed important, especially for Israel, but Israel must make it clear that at this point in time, it must pursue its efforts to free itself from Hamas terror and, hopefully, lay the ground for a more stable reality in its environment. In any case, there is also a more optimistic and realistic scenario.
The desired definitive outcome of the war, in spite of the difficulties, will bear no resemblance to the partial results of previous campaigns but rather to the destruction of ISIS and al-Qaeda and their leadership. The analogy, of course, is not perfect (it could never be), but there is more than one reason to expect that Hamas will suffer a similar fate.
The writer, a former MK, served as ambassador to the US from 1990-1993 and 1998-2000.