Hamas's Strategy of Nihilism
Blame whoever you want for the current round of fighting, but Hamas's actions are empowering the Israeli right-wing and are a disaster for the Palestinian people.
As fighting in Gaza between Israeli and Palestinian forces stretches into a second week - and Israeli leaders reject calls for a cease-fire - it’s not hard to figure out what Israel is thinking: use the current fighting as an opportunity to weaken Hamas militarily. However, I’m more focused on a different question: what is Hamas’s goal?
Hamas, which has been in political control of Gaza since 2006, initiated the current round of fighting by firing rockets against civilian areas in Israel, killing ten Israelis, and sending much of the civilian population to bomb shelters. Hamas’s actions do not, however, come in a vacuum. They are a response to heavy-handed tactics by Israeli police in Jerusalem, the looming eviction of Palestinian families from the Shiekh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, and the ongoing mistreatment and humiliation that is endemic to the Israeli occupation.
But it is worth noting that the wave of rocket attacks against Israel came as the crisis in Jerusalem seemed to be approaching some resolution. Not surprisingly, Hamas’s barrage has led to a fearsome and predictable military response from Israel, which has led to 212 civilian deaths in Gaza, including 61 children.
I’m not interested in choosing which side is to blame for the current spasm of violence. If you want a black and white take on the current state of the Israel/Palestine conflict, you can find that on social media.
What interests me more is understanding Hamas’s motivation and how it is driving the current crisis.
To that point, one stat today in the New York Times jumped out to me, “Over eight days, Hamas has fired nearly as many rockets — 3,350 so far — as it did over all of the 50-day conflict between Israel and Hamas in 2014.”
That’s an extraordinary increase in firepower - and also an incredibly pointless one. So far, Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system has knocked down an estimated 90 percent of Hamas’s rockets.
In addition, Hamas has devoted significant energy and resources to constructing tunnels across the Gaza Strip, both to move weapons and men and protect fighters from Israeli attacks. Indeed, much of the Israeli firepower is being directed at wiping out these underground passageways. So from a military standpoint, this latest round of fighting has been yet another disaster for Hamas.
However, Hamas’s rationale for its latest escalation is fundamentally political. It follows a predictable pattern - when there are tensions between Israel and the Palestinians, Hamas will often step in and use force to burnish their bonafides as a resistance force against Israel. When Israel, as it always does, responds with even more savage force, it plays directly into Hamas’s hands. It gives Israel a black eye on the international stage. It puts Hamas in a more positive domestic light, particularly vis-a-vis the Palestinian Authority, which holds power in the West Bank. That Palestinian civilians bear the brunt of the fighting seems to be of little concern to Hamas. Indeed, if anything, it is seen as a net positive because it leads to even more international condemnation of Israel.
However, this current episode is a bit different from past conflicts in two regards. First, Hamas’s initial demands to Israel had little to do with the military blockade that Israel has imposed on the Gaza Strip since Hamas took power there. Instead, Hamas is demanding Israeli concessions on Jerusalem. As a report by the International Crisis Group notes, “In so doing, Hamas appeared to be usurping leadership of the Palestinian national movement from President Abbas and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.” The recent spate of fighting also came after Abbas recently postponed legislative elections in the West Bank in which his Fatah party was expected to fare poorly. So we should view Hamas’s actions within the larger context of Palestinian politics and its ongoing competition for support with Fatah and the Palestinian Authority.
As Nathan Brown points out, Hamas’s actions, which stand in sharp contrast to the feckless response from the Palestinian Authority, have given the party a short-term political boost. Considering that until recently, Hamas’s focus on armed resistance has sparked a backlash among Palestinians, it’s hard not to see this as a win.
However, I’m still left with the same question as before - to what end? Strengthening their position vis-a-vis Fatah might be beneficial in the short-term, but what is Hamas’s long-term goal?
The Fly in the Ointment
Hamas’s current strategy of using force to burnish its reputation as the vanguard of the Palestinian resistance is one that it has utilized for nearly three decades. When PLO chief Yasir Arafat signed the Oslo Accords with Israel in 1993, it did not take long for Hamas and other extremist elements to try to undermine the move toward peace. In 1994, Hamas began using suicide bombers to attack civilian targets in Israel - a move that would continue with even deadlier force during the Second Intifada. Hamas’s goal has always been the same - prevent political reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. And the effort largely succeeded. Indeed, the wave of bombings the group unleashed on Israel in the Winter and Spring of 1996 is largely seen as a critical factor in the defeat of Labor Prime Minister Shimon Peres by his right-wing opponent, Benjamin Netanyahu, who opposed the Oslo Accords and territorial compromise with the Palestinians. Few events have done more to undermine the hopes of peace than Netanyahu’s victory, whose first premiership seemed discretely focused on, metaphorically, sticking a sharp pencil in the eyes of the Palestinians.
At the same time, Hamas’s terror attacks - and their ability to portray the Palestinian Authority as feckless and complicit in Israel’s occupation - turned them into a potent political force among the Palestinian people. It’s what helped them win elections in Gaza in 2006, and it’s what makes them a key rival of Fatah.
Of course, it’s also had another effect: Every time Hamas fires rockets into Israel, it might build their support among Palestinians, but it plays directly into the hands of right-wingers in Israel who say that it’s impossible to negotiate with the Palestinians and they can’t be trusted, etc. Moreover, Hamas’s efforts fundamentally weaken those Palestinians and Israelis who still hold on to the tenuous hope of a two-state solution.
Suppose tomorrow Israel had a Prime Minister genuinely interested in negotiating a political solution to the conflict (and it doesn’t have one today). Even in that case, it’s increasingly difficult to see how it would work with Hamas still in power in Gaza.
Let’s say the two sides came to an agreement: it would likely only cover the West Bank. Moreover, if there was a Palestinian state in that territory, what if one day Hamas took over the nation’s political leadership? Then Israel would have a state on its border that refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist and consistently uses force as a political tool. The optimistic would argue that if Hamas took power in the West Bank, they’d have the incentive to focus less on fighting and more on governing. That scenario has played out with other Islamic movements that have taken power in the Arab world. But that certainly hasn’t been the case in Gaza since 2006. At the very least, Hamas’s use of political violence bolsters the arguments of those in Israel who argue that it’s pointless to make concessions for peace.
So Hamas’s actions make a long-term resolution even more difficult, which is, of course, the group’s goal. They reject Israel’s right to exist, and they don’t appear to want a political settlement to the conflict. But then what? Little of what they’re doing is having a definable impact on Israel or helping the long-term cause of the Palestinian people.
After 2014 and the last Gaza War, the two sides worked out a cease-fire, and Hamas was seen to have won a political victory. Yet, in the seven years since that war, Israel has watched its economy improve and terrorist attacks decline. It’s achieved normalization with key Arab countries, and the plight of the Palestinians is largely being forgotten. While Israel receives far greater condemnation from the West and has lost support among key constituencies in the United States, these are hardly grievous blows. Instead, the country’s occupation of the West Bank has, for the most part, become normalized, and various commentators have taken turns shoveling dirt on the two-state solution. Again, this plays directly into the hands of the country’s right-wing extremists, who have no interest in territorial compromise.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the suffering of the Palestinians has grown worse under a stifling Israeli blockade. This is practically the definition of a Pyrrhic victory.
Some might argue that considering Israel’s behavior — it’s ratcheting up of settlement construction, the daily humiliations it doles out to Palestinians in the occupied territories, and its blockade on Gaza — what choice do Palestinians have? They’re damned if they do and if damned if they don’t. There’s some truth to this. There’s hardly any guarantee that a pledge to renounce violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist would have any noticeable impact on Israel’s behavior vis-a-vis the occupied territories and Gaza. However, I can say with greater certainty that a continued policy of armed resistance is not going to change anything.
What Next?
It would be nice to sum this up by pointing to a policy option that might lead to an end to the bloodletting, but it’s hard to see one. If Hamas’s goal is a perpetual conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, they have been more than successful in achieving that goal. If they aim to ensure that the Palestinians have no partner for peace in Israel, they can check that box too. If Hamas is interested in moderating their behavior or even going down the path of negotiations with Israel, it’s hard to find much evidence to support that view. The very fact that Hamas spent the interim years since the last war strengthening their military capabilities - only to have them wiped out practically overnight - would suggest that reconciliation or the plight of those in Gaza is not high on their agenda.
Before you start sending angry emails, keep in mind that I’m not excusing Israel for its conduct. Netanyahu and his political allies have no interest in a political settlement, and there is little appetite for one inside of Israel. The pro-peace forces are largely wiped out. Heavy-handed tactics in Jerusalem and West Bank, combined with continued settlement building and eviction of Palestinian families, enshrines Israeli rule and inflames Palestinian public opinion. Israel does not have clean hands here, and to a large extent, by acting so brutishly toward Palestinians in Jerusalem, including police throwing stun grenades inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque, they laid the groundwork for the current violence.
It could not be more clear that Israel has no long-term strategy for dealing with Hamas in Gaza, and those chickens are coming home to roost - as a bloody conflict between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs is now unfolding in Israel’s streets. Nonetheless, Israel can weather the current storm. It can survive, even prosper, by maintaining the status quo, even if the status quo means that Israel becomes, in effect, an apartheid state. That’s not true of the Palestinians, particularly those in Gaza.
Even in the best of circumstances, with a pro-peace government in Israel, it’s hard to see any path to peace as long as Hamas firmly rejects acceptance of Israel and the normalization of relations. The result is more fighting, more dying, and less optimism for the future … and it seems Hamas doesn’t want it any other way.
Correction
In Friday’s newsletter, I wrote the following:
“Generally speaking, I’m not a big believer in miracles, but the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines is testing my lack of faith. This stat from yesterday blew my mind:
“Of the more than 117 million people in the U.S. who have been fully vaccinated, 9,245 later tested positive for Covid-19. Those illnesses have generally been mild.”
That’s a positivity rate of 0.000079 percent.”
It’s not. It’s a positivity rate of .0079 percent, which is still pretty low. Thanks to the numerous readers who pointed out my mistake.
Musical Interlude
This video for The Clash’s “Rock the Casbah” seems like an obvious pick for today’s musical selection.