By Huricihan Islamoglu
The Israel-Hamas war is dangerous for many reasons, but most significantly because neither side has a sustainable political objective. Mired in narratives of messianic conquest of promised lands, and of rights of return to the historic homeland, neither Israel nor Hamas has a vision for the resolution of their conflict except the expulsion and/or annihilation of the other.
Making this collision of non-negotiable aspirations particularly threatening is the rather precarious position of leadership cadres on both sides who increasingly see the continuation of the war as a way to stay in power, given the almost unlimited access to weapons by both parties – the U.S. willing to re-supply the Israeli army and Hamas’ so-called “weapons industry” and suppliers holding out. Fighting, then, becomes an end in itself, a theatre for voicing aspirations, without groups in the respective communities having a stake in the fighting and a subsequent peace process.
Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, by its brutal attack on Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, took the great risk of making worse the already unbearable conditions under which Palestinians lived in Gaza, an area which the Israeli blockade since 2006 had turned into an open prison. Israeli response unleashed a genocidal process in Gaza killing upward of 23,000 civilians, destroying infrastructure including hospitals, and water supplies, blocking food, and aid, and threatening famine and the spread of diseases.
Hamas, an Islamic anticolonial organization seeking an end to Israeli occupation of Palestine, was at a political impasse. The leverage it acquired following the second intifada (2000-05) or the Palestinian uprising, had led to a split in the government of occupied Palestinian territories in Gaza and the West Bank. In the elections held in Gaza in 2006, Hamas won 44% of the votes and has held power since, while the West Bank was administered by the Palestinian Authority consisting of the former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Israel also played a part in Hamas’ ascendancy to power, as it was seeking to temper the influence of the secular and Marxist PLO with Netanyahu even persuading Qatar to direct funds to Hamas.
Before Oct. 7, 2023, the support for Hamas in Gaza was declining. Could Hamas’ attack on Israel be a move to recover its former legitimacy in the eyes of Gazan Palestinians? Or was Hamas responding to an even more immediate threat of expulsion of the Gazan population under Israel’s far-right government?
No doubt, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and his extreme-right government saw in Hamas’ attack an opportunity to take direct action in Gaza. The stated objective of the military action in the Gaza Strip (40 km long and 6-12 km wide) was to annihilate Hamas.
Yet, at home, Netanyahu does not have the full backing, especially of Israeli elites and the opposition. The fact that Hamas could cross the border to attack Israel has shaken up the image of invincibility of the Israeli intelligence and army and of Netanyahu and his boast that he had Hamas under control. The economy will take a hit too: According to a survey[1] by the Start-Up Nation Policy Institute in Tel Aviv, a large proportion of the Israeli army of reservists (350,000) work in the tech industries and the economy will feel their absence if the war is prolonged.
Is a solution to this tragic condition of the two states, Israel and Palestine, possible? The political and economic compulsions have changed.
The Oslo Accords – often a wishful imagining of a step........