Understanding the Hamas Israeli War

A family member recently asked my opinion about the Israeli/Hamas conflict. I was at dinner, so I gave a glib response and returned to my meal. My glib answer bothers me. This conflict is important and merits more thought.

I am horrified by the carnage on both sides of the conflict. Though the hand-to-hand carnage of the initial Hamas attack has more visceral impact with its rapes and beheadings, the large scale, mechanized carnage by Israel is also horrific. Both sides have left us with hundreds of maimed and dead babies, children, and old people. Corpses look pretty much the same and stink about the same whether they are created by hand, up close and personal, or by bombing, remote and mechanically.

Of course, like most modern people in the West, my sympathies tilt mostly toward Israel in this specific case. Hamas attacked first, stealthily and brutally, catching Israel off guard. They attacked mostly defenseless civilians. They not only killed but mutilated in an orgy of senseless violence. They exposed the people they are supposed to represent to unimaginable retaliation by a superior military while the Hamas leaders live abroad, mostly in Qatar, safe from immediate danger. Their attack had no military benefit; rather, it appears to have been motivated by rage and perhaps some kind of political advantage both within Palestine and within the larger Arab world. To my mind, Hamas has abandoned any legitimacy as a political organization that Israel can negotiate with, and I understand Israel's effort to destroy Hamas.

While violence is always destructive, and my impulse is to oppose it, I know that sometimes violence is the only answer to continued violence. Sometimes, it takes violence to stop violence. Hamas exists to destroy Israel; thus, Israel has little choice but to use violence to stop violence. I think most of the Western world agrees with this position.

That said, use of violence puts Israel at greater risks, similar to the situation of the US after the 9/11 attack. The US was right to go after Osama bin Laden, but as history shows me, the US was wrong to try to militarily change Afghanistan into a Western-style, capitalistic society. After 9/11, the world largely supported the US, but after 20 years of war in Afghanistan, the world largely opposed the war. I think the world was right. The US should have learned in Vietnam that we can't win over a country by bombing it into submission. I don't care how much people dislike their present government, they NEVER appreciate another country coming in and bombing them, killing their women, children, and old people. That has never worked. Violence is destructive, not creative. Violence can stop violence, but it cannot create peace.

Peace is in Israel's best interest. I believe that destroying Hamas can lead to peace for Israel; however, destroying Gaza does not lead to peace. I know that many Israelis such as Maj. Nir Avishai Cohen of the Israeli Defense Force also believe this:

At the end, after all of the dead Israelis and Palestinians are buried, after we have finished washing away the rivers of blood, the people who share a home in this land will have to understand that there is no other choice but to follow the path of peace. That is where true victory lies. ("I’m Going to War for Israel. Palestinians Are Not My Enemy", The New York Times, 13 Oct 2023)

This puts Israel on a tightrope. I have very little faith in Netanyahu's right-wing government to skillfully walk that tightrope. As Hamas official Abu Marzouk notes in a recent New Yorker article "What Was Hamas Thinking?": 

Israel’s government had become increasingly right-wing … [some Israeli officials] had been encouraging an expanded Jewish presence at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque—one of the holiest sites in both Islam and Judaism, and a symbol of Palestinian national identity. The Israeli government had also extended new levels of support and recognition to Jewish settlements across the West Bank. The growing permanence of those settlements had turned Palestinians’ desire for a contiguous state across that territory into an impossible fantasy. Settler violence against Palestinians was rising, and clashes with Israeli security forces in the West Bank had resulted in the deaths of more than two hundred Palestinians this year. Meanwhile, Israeli authorities enforced tightened restrictions on Palestinian prisoners. “We spoke to the Americans, Europeans, and all of the people in order to achieve the Palestinian people’s rights, without any benefit,” Abu Marzouk said. “Nothing has been achieved toward the idea of two states, from 1948 until today. We are a people under occupation.” (Adam Rasgon and David D. Kilpatrick, 13 Oct 2023)

Though this assessment of the Israeli government comes from Hamas and ignores the many ways that Israel has tried to establish peace, I think it is largely accurate. More importantly, it reflects how Hamas views the situation, which partly explains why they might be motivated to such an extreme attack. And note that I say explain, not excuse. There is no excuse for the recent attack by Hamas.

Neither is there any excuse for Israel's systematic stranglehold on the Palestinians. A reasonable review of the history of Israeli/Palestinian conflict since the establishment of Israel by the Brits in 1948 shows plenty of tit-for-tat offenses on both sides, but the long arc of the struggle shows a steady herding of the Palestinian people into smaller areas of land that reminds me of how the US herded the native Indians onto reservations, eventually destroying Indian culture and homeland. Today, indigenous Americans are a sad and sorry lot with almost no identity or relevance to American culture. I think this is what Israel is attempting to do with the Palestinians, and I think the Palestinians sense that. I'm not surprised that they want to resist annihilation.

So is there a path to peace for Israel and Palestine? I think so. According to a recent post by Bo Rothstein, senior professor of political science at Sweden's University of Gothenburg, in 2014, the European Union proposed a solution that compensated Palestinians for their lost lands in exchange for a commitment to give up any claim to a Palestinian state. This would have been outrageously expensive, Rothstein notes, but "that cost must be weighed against fighting a war every five years." This plan would effectively eliminate Palestine, a win for Israel, but it gives those Palestinians who want to stay in Israel money to rebuild their lives and those who want to emigrate will be more attractive to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and others who currently don't want to take in an impoverished group of refugees.

Of course, any such large-scale plan is bound to have issues, and this may not be the correct plan, but I am confident that workable plans exist with enough political will. Along with an intent to destroy Hamas, I would like to see from Israel an intent to pursue peace. I don't think such a plan will come from the Netanyahu government.