On Oct 7, Israel was hit by a human plague of epic proportions. Like a swarm of locusts descending on a rich harvest, Hamas terrorists from Palestinian Gaza invaded Israel by air, land and sea to produce the worst day in the Jewish state’s history since its founding in 1948.
The terrorists went on a destructive spree reminiscent of the primitive frenzy of medieval barbarians. They attacked peaceful settlements, homely kibbutz and a happy music festival in a scripted blitz copied from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) during its reign of terror in those two countries before it was overthrown in 2019.
Isis wanted to erase modern history by eradicating its cognitive institutions — its schools, universities and libraries where humans learned to think for themselves — and replacing them with reincarnated structures of a dying past in which humans would cherish violence, war, the subjugation of women, and the obliteration of religious minorities, all through unquestioning obedience to religious authority wearing a gun slung around its haughty shoulder.
Hamas, its comrade-in-terror, replicated the brutal techniques of Isis rule, including execution-style shootings and ritual beheadings, this month when it attacked innocent Israeli civilians.
In the words of US President Joe Biden, parents were “butchered using their bodies to try to protect their children. Stomach-turning reports of babies being killed. Entire families were slain. Young people were massacred while attending a musical festival to celebrate peace — to celebrate peace. Women were raped, assaulted, and paraded as trophies”. Hostages were taken to be used as negotiating tools. “Pure, unadulterated evil” was “unleashed on this world” by the “bloody hands of the terrorist organisation Hamas — a group whose stated purpose for being is to kill Jews”.
The unmitigated terrorist evil that was visited on Israel must be condemned unequivocally. Along with that denunciation, there must be recognition that Hamas must be destroyed. That determination was conveyed by the commanding officer of Israel’s Home Front Command, who recalled the events since the beginning of the war.
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In an article on the Israel Defence Forces’ (IDF) website posted six days after the beginning of the conflict, Major-General Rafi Milo recalled its first moments: “Despite the surprise, we were determined. We called tens of search and rescue battalions and tens of thousands of soldiers for reserve duty. The first thing we did was [to] evacuate the residents of the area surrounding Gaza. We tried to figure out how to do that in an orderly fashion, but it wasn’t a simple task due to the large number of terrorists our forces were encountering in the field. We eventually evacuated tens of thousands of civilians from 24 towns and communities.”
He acknowledged the immense challenge of restoring in Israel’s civilians a sense of security. “What happened in the area surrounding Gaza broke the trust of Israeli civilians in the IDF. We are aware that it might take some time to regain this trust. However, we will restore it.”
“There will be ups and downs”, he concluded, “but I know our strength. We are focused on the south but always looking north. I am certain that at the end of this war, there will be no Hamas.”
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That must remain the Israeli goal, and one undeterred by Hamas’ claim to be an organisation of resistance fighters. Such fighters resist oppression in the case of freedom for their people: They do not go on offensives of murder, rape and kidnappings to target innocent civilians. They protect their innocents from violence directed by forces outside.
The cause of Palestine
The Israeli occupation of Palestinian land in the West Bank and Gaza has resulted in degrees of oppression varying from occasional military attacks to peacetime punishments such as the strangulating economic siege of Gaza imposed in 2007 after Gazans elected Hamas to lead them.
Gaza has been described as the world’s largest open-air prison. In the aftermath of the terrorist incursion, Israel has responded with massive airstrikes and a tightened siege of Gaza.
Fair to both sides, The Economist put it very well when it said that the attack was “a case of the expected happening unexpectedly, and on an unprecedented scale. The preplanning was obvious, and the execution caught Israel off guard and disoriented it in ways it had arguably never experienced in the long history of the Arab-Israeli conflict... Hamas is a political movement, and speculation about its motives and aspirations is understandable. But underlying its decision to escalate is a host of grievances, and not taking these seriously threatens to lead to more disastrous consequences than have been seen so far”.
In a nutshell, Israel’s assault on Gaza, which could foretell a ground offensive leading to the occupation and eventually even the annexation of the restive Arab territory, must seek to distinguish between Hamas, which seeks to destroy Israel, and the vast majority of Palestinians, who seek to be not destroyed by Israel.
The reality in Gaza
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Operationally, making a distinction between Gazans and Hamas will not be easy. Hamas is an everyday Gazan reality. Its members are drawn from ordinary Gazan homes. Gazan civilians see them as a natural political and military extension of themselves. Habitually, Hamas hides its weapons in civilian areas, which Gazans do not view as abnormal.
Trying to take out Hamas’ arsenal would mean destroying the physical infrastructure of Gazan society. That would involve a ground offensive calling for hand-to-hand, home-to-home and street-to-street combat in which Israeli soldiers would have to confront the full resistance of people in lands that define themselves as Palestine.
Lest it be forgotten, while the population of Israel is just over nine million (20% of it Arab, by the way), 2.3 million Palestinians live in Gaza and three million in the West Bank. Demographic realities suggest that Hamas cannot be defanged and dislodged by conventional military means alone. Had that been possible, Israel would have done so long before the deadly assault that the terrorist group carried out on an unsuspecting Israeli society this month.
To regain its deterrent advantage over Hamas, Israel must prove to Palestinians in Gaza that they have a future without Hamas and a future only if it is without Hamas. This means that Israel must reestablish its military superiority over Hamas but stop short of using that advantage to inflict punitive vengeance on the Gazan population at large. Israel’s intelligence assets in Gaza are extensive enough to know the names of chief Hamas operatives, to say nothing of the senior leadership, who need to be neutralised.
The arsenal of that terrorist organisation must be dismantled or destroyed. Once Gazans see the formidable presence of Hamas in their lives disappear before their astonished eyes, they will understand the meaning of Israeli power. They will reconcile themselves to the reality of their situation and not worsen it by supporting forces that launch spectacular attacks on Israel but end up harming Palestinians themselves.
The world is watching
Although anti-Israel protests have flared across the Middle East and North Africa over a blast that killed hundreds who had taken refuge in a hospital in Gaza City, Israel insists that the explosion was caused by Islamic Jihad militants who had conducted a failed rocket launch. Whatever the origin of the attack on a hospital — a war crime — Gazans must realise that Hamas is a Middle Eastern Frankenstein whose time is over.
Palestinians must gain their fair share of control over their future. The two-state solution — consisting of two sovereign and independent entities, Israel and Palestine, living side by side — is the only feasible solution in the Middle East. It will take time, but time exists to make crucial journeys possible.
Prospects in the Middle East are bleak at the moment. The 2020 Abraham Accords promoted by the US to push for normalisation of Arab ties with Israel would have gained tremendous traction with the inclusion of Saudi Arabia, but that possibility has been subverted by the Israel-Hamas war.
Iran, which backs both Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, is basking in the diplomatic glow of its rising regional profile. Globally, there are fears over the rise in oil prices, and the possibility of shipping coming under threat should war engulf the Middle East. A full-scale ground war in Gaza and the expected mass civilian casualties would inflame religious sentiments worldwide.
The worst can only be prevented if Israel limits its retribution to Hamas, sparing Gazans.
The writer is the founder and CEO of Pereira International, a Singapore-based political and strategic advisory consulting firm. He is also a Board of International Councillors member at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. The Board is chaired by Dr Henry A. Kissinger, the former US Secretary of State and a Nobel Peace Prize Winner. The opinions expressed in this article reflect the writer’s personal views
