The Atlantic
Five observations about the Gaza conflict, including praise
for an ex-president's insight into the particular nature of Hamas' evil
A scene from a Hamas rally in March (Mohammed Salem/Reuters)
1. We can thank former President Bill Clinton for perfect clarity in his comments about the chaos and horror of Gaza. In an interview
on Indian television, Clinton—who told us in his memoir that
Palestinian self-destructiveness (in the form of Yasir Arafat’s various
delusions and prevarications) undid his effort to bring about a
two-state solution to the Middle East conflict—blames the Muslim
Brotherhood’s Gaza affiliate, Hamas, for adopting a policy of deliberate
self-murder in order to present Israel with a set of impossible
dilemmas. “Hamas was perfectly well aware of what would happen if they
started raining rockets in Israel,” Clinton said. “They fired a thousand
of them. And they have a strategy designed to force Israel to kill
their own civilians so that the rest of the world will condemn them.”
2. We can thank Hamas for bringing its own form of clarity to this
situation. This is the manner in which Hamas works: It builds reinforced
bunkers for its leaders (under hospitals and other must-avoid targets)
but purposefully neglects to build bomb shelters for the civilians in
its putative care. From their bunkers, the leaders order rocket teams to
target Israeli civilians. Hamas, which was responsible for the deaths
of several hundred Israeli civilians during the second Palestinian
uprising alone, has lately been less effective at killing Israelis, but
nevertheless, the rockets keep launching. When you repeatedly fire
rockets at civilian targets in a neighboring country, that country
usually responds militarily. Civilians get killed during the Israeli
response in part because Hamas rocket teams operate from sites that are
among Gaza's most densely populated, and in part because Hamas stores
its weapons in schools and mosques.
The goal of Hamas—the actual, overarching goal—is to terrorize the
Jews of Israel, through mass murder, into abandoning their country. If
generations of Palestinians have to be sacrificed to that goal, well,
Hamas believes such sacrifices are theologically justified.
3. Bill Clinton is far from the only Western leader to understand
Hamas' strategy. President Obama himself has spoken strongly about
Israel's right to self-defense. Here is what he said Wednesday: "As I’ve
said repeatedly, Israel has a right to defend itself from rocket
attacks that terrorize the Israeli people. There is no country on Earth
that can be expected to live under a daily barrage of rockets."
Not everyone understands this principle. I am not talking about
anti-Jewish propagandists such as Turkey's Tayyip Recep Erdogan, a
serial human rights violator who cynically accuses Israel of committing
"genocide." I think he understands the principle discussed by Obama and
rejects it because Obama is applying it to a Jewish country. I'm talking
now about the myopia of otherwise well-meaning people. The United
Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the institution that cares for
Palestinians but whose actual raison d'être is the perpetuation of the stateless status of the descendants of refugees from 1948, recently tweeted this thought to its followers: “Palestinian children in #Gaza
are experiencing severe trauma for the 3rd time in 5 years. The effects
are lasting.” Entirely, miserably, true. An alternative to this current
horrible reality presented itself in 2005, when the Israeli
government—after years of foolish and destructive colonization—expelled
thousands of Jewish settlers from Gaza and then withdrew its army. The
Palestinian leadership could have taken the opportunity created by the Israeli withdrawal
to build the nucleus of a state. Instead, Gaza was converted into a
rocket-manufacturing and -launching facility. But here’s a bit of good
news: The people of Gaza, who suffer from Hamas rule, appear to be tired
of it. In a recent Pew poll,
63 percent of Gazans surveyed disapproved of Hamas. Perhaps this is
because the people have come to realize that Hamas has brought them
nothing but grief, sloganeering, and military defeat.
4. Hamas is not only isolated inside Gaza. This latest round of the
Hamas-Israel fight is notable for two reasons: The first is the seeming
success of the Israeli-developed, American-funded Iron Dome anti-rocket
system, which has helped thwart Hamas' plan to terrorize and murder
civilians in Israel. The second reason is that Hamas has been shown to
be almost entirely friendless in the region. The Egyptian government
blames Hamas for this conflict, as do commentators across the Gulf.
Relations between Hamas and its traditional backers, the Iranians and
the Syrians, have deteriorated markedly. Hamas is in a weaker position
than it has been in years, which gives Israel an opportunity, if it
chooses to take it.
Setting back the cause of extremists is half the battle; buttressing moderates is the other half.
Setting back the cause of extremists is half the battle; buttressing moderates is the other half.
5. A ground operation by Israel to destroy the tunnels that are used
to convey terrorists under Gaza’s border and into Israel seems like a
prudent move (more prudent than aerial bombardment, which, because of
its imprecision, helps Hamas achieve its goal of creating Palestinian
martyrs). Operating against extremists committed to killing Jewish
civilians seems like a necessary part of any Israeli national security
strategy. But what happens after the inevitable ceasefire matters as
well, and we lack signs that the Netanyahu government is thinking
strategically. Setting back the cause of extremists is half the battle;
buttressing moderates is the other half. Netanyahu and his ministers are
notably inexpert at helping the more moderate Palestinian factions
strengthen their hold on the West Bank, and they specialize in putting
their collective thumb in the eye of Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the
Palestinian Authority. A clever post-conflict Israeli strategy would be
to help the Palestinian Authority extend its mandate more deeply into
Gaza (I’ll have more about the troubled P.A.-Hamas unity government
later), because there is no permanent military solution to Israel’s
rocket problem, only a political one.
Some commentators, like the excellent Shlomo Avineri,
believe that even Palestinian moderates such as Abbas are incapable of
making final-status compromises, because they are "genuinely
uninterested in a solution of two states for two peoples because they’re
unwilling to grant legitimacy to the Jewish right of
self-determination." I don't disagree that many, many Palestinians fall
into this category. But I'm not giving up yet. Where Avineri is right is
in his argument that Israel must take the interim steps, regardless of
Palestinian participation, to protect its democratic character. Israeli
moderates must "demand a complete halt to construction in the
settlements, the evacuation of illegal outposts, a reexamination—once
the current tension has ebbed—of the Israel Defense Forces’ deployment
in the West Bank, and the removal of what remains of the Gaza blockade
(possibly in coordination with Egypt after the current fighting ends)."
I'm not hopeful at all that the Netanyahu government will listen to
such advice. Because myopia has shown itself to be the enemy of
compromise and progress in Israel, and not just in Gaza.
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