Editor’s note: This story was updated to add details about Hamas’ comments on Israeli hostages.
“Israel has the right to defend itself and its people. Full stop,” President Biden declared in a statement pledging U.S. support for its ally. “There is never justification for terrorist acts.”
“Full stop” may be a politically useful phrase, but it does not capture the complexity of modern conflict, especially in the Middle East.
Hamas does conduct unjustifiable terrorist attacks against civilians, but it does much more. It is best understood as a hybrid organization, similar in some ways to a nationalist insurgency like the Irish Republican Army and in others to a religious extremist group like ISIS.
Members of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood founded Hamas (an Arabic acronym meaning “Islamic Resistance Movement”) during the 1987 Intifada. Some analysts assert that Israel tacitly allowed and perhaps even encouraged its creation as a “counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization.”
Hamas soon attracted support from the younger generation of Palestinians frustrated by the PLO’s inability to advance their cause. It also rejected the Oslo Accords, which created the Palestinian Authority to govern autonomous areas of the West Bank and Gaza.
In 2006, Hamas won 76 of 132 seats in the Palestinian Authority’s legislative elections. In 2007 it gained control of Gaza after a brief struggle with the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas enjoys wide support among all Palestinians. A June 2021 poll revealed that 53 percent of those surveyed believed that it is “most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people.” Support is no doubt higher in Gaza and has probably risen since Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government came to power.
A group that governs territory with this degree of support cannot be dismissed as merely a terrorist organization.
However, there is no denying that Hamas has a radical agenda akin to that of ISIS. Its charter defines it as an Islamist movement committed to the destruction of Israel and its replacement with a conservative Islamic state.
Hamas has made extensive use of terror, lobbing rockets into Israel with no clear distinction between military and civilian, man, woman or child.
Saturday’s invasion was a blend of conventional operations and terrorism. Attacks on Israeli military bases are, as Netanyahu declared, an act of war. Killing civilians is murder, and taking hostages violates the law of armed conflict.
Defeating Hamas is necessary but will not bring peace to Israelis or Palestinians unless the causes of the conflict are resolved.
The attacks came after months of rising tension since the current government came to power last December. To gain the support of far-right parties Netanyahu had to reject the two-state solution and agree to expanding Israeli settlements in what Palestinians and the international community consider occupied territories.
Construction of new settlements has increased since Netanyahu took office.
The visit to the Al Aqsa Mosque compound (also referred to as “the temple mount”) last January by the new ultraconservative National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was seen by Palestinians as a deliberately provocative act. Gvir advocates ending an agreement that bans non-Muslims from praying on the site, which has been in place for nearly a century.
Hamas identified raids on the Al-Aqsa Mosque as one reason for launching its attacks.
A Haaretz Israel editorial asserts that “Netanyahu bears responsibility for this Israel-Gaza war,” not only for ignoring warning signs of the attacks but for “establishing a government of annexation and dispossession when appointing Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir to key positions while embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.”
To be perfectly clear, these actions by Israeli politicians do not justify Saturday’s attack, but they do help to explain it and point the way to resolving the conflict.
A large ground incursion into Gaza following the bombing campaign is necessary. Air action alone cannot eliminate Hamas and it will certainly kill many civilians. Cutting off supplies of food, water and electricity is an inhumane tactic that harms innocent people. Sending in troops, though, will result in vicious street-to-street fighting that will claim the lives of Israeli soldiers and militants as well as civilians caught in the crossfire.
The approximately 100 Israeli hostages taken during the attack further complicate the Israeli response. Hamas could use them as human shields and/or murder them in retaliation and has already threatened to kill them in retaliation for airstrikes.
Nonetheless, Israel has little choice but to enter Gaza. Once they do, they will be subject to the “you broke it, you bought it” rule. They will have to govern the territory they previously contained, especially since containment did not work. Governing requires providing services and economic aid for Palestinians in Gaza as well as security for Israelis living near its borders.
That will be a long and costly task, and even that by itself will not bring an end to violence. As every conflict since 1948 makes clear, nothing short of a political solution will guarantee a lasting peace.
A two-state solution offers the best chance for a resolution. The likelihood of either the current Israeli government or Hamas accepting it, however, seems remote. Hope for the future lies with moderates on both sides.
As opposition leader Yair Lapid stated in 2015, “Israel’s strategic goal needs to be a regional agreement that will lead to full and normal relations with the Arab world and the creation of a demilitarized independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.”
Reviving talks will have to wait until the current round of fighting ends. Israelis are unified in defense of their country, but when Gaza is secured and Hamas perhaps eliminated, they will have to consider a way forward.
The alternative to a lasting peace is perpetual war, repeated low-level conflicts interspersed with tense periods of relative calm, as has been the case since the first Intifada in 1987.
Tom Mockaitis is a professor of history at DePaul University and the author of “Violent Extremists: Understanding the Domestic and International Terrorist Threat.”