After 16 years of living next door to a terrorist enclave, a badly shaken Israel is massing its forces to crush Hamas in Gaza. Palestinian civilians are caught in the crossfire — which is exactly what Hamas wants.
As it has done after provoking four previous incursions by Israeli forces, Hamas is counting on images of death and destruction in Gaza to trigger outrage throughout the Middle East and bring international pressure on Israel to stop the fighting and withdraw its forces.
The pattern is grimly familiar: Terrorists commit atrocities, then hide behind civilian populations to escape punishment. Limited incursions and ceasefires only pause the violence, allowing Hamas to regroup and set the clock ticking toward the next terrorist explosion.
And every time, ordinary Palestinians suffer as Israel strikes back at Hamas’s rocket factories, depots and elaborate network of tunnels, cuts the number of border crossings and takes other security measures that make day-to-day life for Gazans ever more difficult.
This week’s strike on a hospital in Gaza City which claimed at least 500 lives is a ghastly case in point. President Biden said it was hit by an apparently errant missile launched by Palestinian terrorists.
As a further “insurance policy” against the full weight of Israeli military retribution, Hamas has kidnapped more than 200 civilian hostages, including 13 Americans. It is threatening to kill them and broadcast ISIS-style videos of sadistic slayings on social media if Israel doesn’t stop its offensive.
Israel now faces two excruciatingly difficult questions: First, can its forces pry Gaza from Hamas’s grip without inflicting heavy casualties on civilians? Second, if they succeed, what happens next?
Using its forces discriminately and taking utmost care to minimize civilian deaths is a moral and strategic imperative for Israel. Yet this war can’t be just another punitive expedition; Israelis reeling from last week’s slaughter of approximately 1,400 people, including children and the elderly, aren’t likely to accept an outcome that leaves Hamas in charge in Gaza.
The shocking scale of last week’s barbarous assault, featuring 2,500 missiles, paragliders, armed vehicles and motorbikes, shows that the terror group has only grown stronger since seizing control of Gaza in 2007, two years after Israel withdrew from the strip.
Hamas and its Islamic Jihad affiliates get weapons and money from a shadowy network of supporters in Lebanon, Syria and other parts of the region, all bankrolled by Iran. Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh last year bragged about receiving $70 million in military aid from Tehran.
On the progressive left, there is a pernicious tendency to excuse Palestinian terrorism as an inevitable explosion of pent-up anger against Israeli occupation and “apartheid.” In a particularly grotesque example of moral pretzel logic, Students for Justice in Palestine hailed the Oct. 7 massacre as “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance.”
But the left’s “pressure cooker” rationalization doesn’t apply in Gaza. It’s occupied by Hamas, not Israel. Hamas doesn’t launch terrorist strikes in reaction to Israeli actions or to change its policies.
It’s sworn to Israel’s destruction. And like its Salafist cousins, ISIS and al Qaeda, Hamas cannot be reasoned with or appeased. It can only be defeated or suppressed by armed force.
The Hamas-Iran axis poses the chief obstacle to a just settlement of the conflict between Israel and Palestinians. Calls for negotiating a “two-state solution,” ring hollow so long as Hamas rejects Israel’s very existence and has a stranglehold on 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.
On the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority is widely recognized as a legitimate representative of Palestinian aspirations. But the authority won’t make peace with Israel for fear of plunging the West Bank into a civil war with Hamas and other extremist groups.
Terrorism only makes it harder to rally global support for the Palestinian cause. Faced with a weak Palestinian Authority led by 87-year-old Mahmoud Abbas on one side, and Hamas’s genocidal malice on the other, many Israelis also have lost hope in a political solution.
What’s more, the constant threat of terrorism has fueled Israel’s troubling shift toward ethnic nationalism and religious fundamentalism. A recent succession of rightwing governing coalitions, headed by longtime Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has empowered an aggressive settler movement that engages in state-sanctioned theft of Palestinian property.
Disarming Hamas may be the only way to arrest the drift toward political radicalization, Palestinian factionalism, terrorism and war in the Middle East. To do that, though, Israeli forces would probably have to occupy the entire strip. Then they would face the vexing question America faced in Iraq and Afghanistan: Who do we hand off to?
The Palestinian Authority today commands scant support in Gaza and is afraid to stand up to Hamas, as Abbas showed yet again this week in canceling a meeting with President Biden.
The Palestinians desperately need new leaders to arise in both the West Bank and Gaza who aren’t afraid to break with Hamas and seize the opportunity to unify their people under a single government. Such leaders would need plenty of help from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, Egypt and Jordan, as well as from the United States and the European Union.
All this seems like a very long shot. Perhaps Israel will decide instead to settle for inflicting a devastating but not mortal blow on Hamas. Lots of experienced Middle East hands counsel this course.
In either case, Americans should continue to have Israel’s back as it fights for its safety and survival.
Will Marshall is founder and CEO of the Progressive Policy Institute.