No matter how many well-meaning observers argue that one-sided concessions by Israel will lead Hamas to moderate its positions, the reality is that Hamas is a fanatic, ruthless movement.
By YITZHAK SOKOLOFFHamas Al-Qassam Brigades terrorist with anti-tank missile(photo credit: IZZADIN AL-QASSAM BRIGADES)
For the past 15 years, the Hamas leadership has repeatedly proven that it cares not a whit for the pain and carnage that their tactics inflict on the Palestinians of Gaza, or on their own fighters and families. It is as if Israel and the Hamas are playing by two sets of rules: Israel does everything it can to protect its own population and limits its attacks to minimize destruction to Palestinian civilians in Gaza, while Hamas targets Israeli cities with glee and does everything possible to provoke Israel into killing more and more Palestinians. The time has come for Israel to change its strategy.Were it realistic to destroy Hamas without generating a bloodbath in Gaza, then a full-scale military invasion might well be a pragmatic policy for Israel. At present, an invasion is the only way to free the Palestinians who actually live under Hamas’s rule. Morally, such a move would be totally justified. Perhaps one day Israel will find itself with no other choice. Of course, it would be even better if the United Nations would take it upon itself to disarm Hamas and try its leadership for crimes against humanity.Meanwhile, the targeting of Hamas missile launchers, commanders, anti-tank squads and tunnels is necessary, but not sufficient. All of these are assets that Hamas knows it will lose in any conflict and is clearly willing to sacrifice. Therefore, on a strategic level, Israel’s military response is largely irrelevant. At best, it stands to gain a few months or even years of quiet until the next round when Hamas will not only be more lethal. But the likelihood of a general conflagration involving Hezbollah and Iran will be that much greater.Instead, Israeli strategy should be based upon a deeper understanding of the ultimate and intermediate goals of Hamas. No matter how many well-meaning observers argue that one-sided concessions by Israel will lead Hamas to moderate its positions, the reality is that Hamas is a fanatic, ruthless movement willing to inflict any cost on its followers and the 1.5 million Palestinian hostages under its control, in order to bring about the destruction of Israel. Other revolutionary movements and leaders have successfully transitioned from terrorism to responsible government (Nelson Mandela, Gerry Adams and Menachem Begin come to mind).Neither Hamas nor its Iranian benefactors fall into that category. However, fanaticism and rationality are not mutually exclusive, and Hamas is a rational movement that carefully and logically plans its steps. One needs, therefore, to ask, What was its objective in provoking a full-scale military conflict with Israel that it could only lose?To answer that question, one must ask, What is new in its latest aggression and why now? Hamas itself attributes its attack on Jerusalem to its desire to protect al-Aqsa Mosque against Israeli policy, and most international media has taken this at face value. However, the real objective of Hamas in this round has much less to do Jerusalem than with elections in Israel and the Palestinian Authority.UNTIL THIS WEEK, an Israeli offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the United Arab List (Ra’am), was on the verge of actually supporting an Israeli government; the first Arab party to do so in Israeli history! Like Hamas, the UAL has ideological roots in the Muslim Brotherhood. However, it argues that Israeli Arabs must use the political potential granted them by Israel’s political system to address their actual needs in the here and now rather than squandering it on fruitless rhetoric in support of Israel’s enemies.With this pragmatic approach the UAL became the largest Arab party in the Knesset almost overnight. On the eve of the Hamas attack, its leader, Mansour Abbas, was actually on the verge of determining the identity of Israel’s next prime minister, in exchange for a long list of benefits for the Arab community! The Hamas attack was intended to derail what its leadership saw as religious heresy and political treason on the part of Ra’am. In that it may yet succeed irrespective of what happens on the battlefield.The second set of elections that served as a catalyst for Hamas’s aggression were originally scheduled to take place in the Palestinian Authority on May 22. These were then canceled by PA President Mahmoud Abbas when it became clear that Hamas was likely to defeat the old-line Fatah leadership. The rioting on the Temple Mount and in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem simply provided Hamas with an opportunity to discredit Fatah and cast itself as the “sword and shield” of the Palestinians.The rocket attacks last week on Jerusalem were insignificant from a military perspective, but they were enormously important gestures in terms of Palestinian politics. As expected, Israel responded with air strikes; Hamas rained down thousands of rockets on Israeli cities and in turn is now being pulverized by the Israel Air Force. All as expected.
Thus far, the total damage to Israel has been less than that of a single well-executed suicide bombing. Hamas has lost dozens or perhaps hundreds of its fighters and commanders and as intended, Palestinian civilians in Gaza are once again caught in the crossfire. Israel takes whatever steps are possible to avoid causing casualties to Palestinian non-combatants, but Hamas doesn’t care, and in fact its strategy is based on causing as much damage as possible to the cities and people of Gaza. What then, might serve as an effective strategy for Israel?The answer can be found in a eulogy given for a number of Jews murdered along the road to Tiberias during the Arab Revolt in 1936. David Ben-Gurion, later to become Israel’s first prime minister, spoke at their gravesides and spoke the words below.“PEOPLE SAY to us that if the Arabs do such and such, so should we. But we say to them, the means should reflect the end. If our ends were like those of the Arabs, then their means might become ours as well. But in fact, the means of the Arabs serve their ends rather than ours. What is their purpose? To destroy any possibility of building up the land. And what is ours? We want to change the status quo, to bring multitudes of immigrants, to build and be built. We need to plant, to work the land, to produce. If we act as the Arabs do, we will not accomplish this. I believe that those who today murdered our people in an ambush were not only trying to kill a few Jews, but they intended to create a provocation, to force us into a trap, so that we would act as they do and turn this country into a blood bath.... Should we assist these destructive conspiracies?”The best way to defeat Hamas and the nihilistic hatred it embodies is to build Israel. Menachem Begin once called this “an appropriate Zionist response.” What would that mean today? It would require a policy based on exacting the ultimate price of Hamas aggression not in blood, a price Hamas is willing to accept, but in land, which it is not. Israel should act to extend its sovereignty to the territories that it is committed to keeping in the West Bank under any scenario and to launch a building program that lends permanence to that decision.At the same time Israel should reinforce its sovereignty in Jerusalem by issuing automatic citizenship to Arabs living there and by radically improving the infrastructure of the Arab neighborhoods. Israel should not annex the Palestinian cities in the West Bank, where the vast majority of Palestinians reside. They should be able to live under their own rule in peace and prosperity. Therefore, the possibility of a Palestinian state of some kind should remain on the table, but subject to conditions that guarantee that it could never turn into a version of Hamasland.Ultimately, it is in the interest of both Israel and the Palestinians to reach a workable solution. However, those who time and again adopt a strategy of violence against the Jewish state must come to understand that rockets, riots and suicide bombs are counter-productive to Palestinian aspirations. With such clarity, the Palestinians will hopefully be wise enough to reject Hamas and their ilk and embrace a pragmatic leadership in both Israel and the West Bank.There is a clear precedent for such a policy. Until 1988, the position of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) toward Israel was very similar to that of Hamas today. That changed in response to a notable expansion of settlement activity by Israel in the West Bank. Suddenly it became clear that an all-or-nothing policy would lead to nothing. Then came the Oslo Accords, wherein Israel and the PLO met for the first time to speak rather than to shoot.For the past two-and-a-half decades, the PA has based its negotiating strategy on all or nothing in the West Bank and Jerusalem, while Hamas has never had a negotiating stance at all. With its latest provocations, Hamas has reminded us that the status quo is bad for both sides. Let Israel build a better future for everyone.The writer is a political analyst and educator. He is a senior fellow of MEPIN, the Middle East Policy and Information Network.
