In the middle of the short-duration pause in Israel’s one-sided pounding of the tiny Gaza strip, aimed at securing the return of Israeli nationals (and others) kidnapped by Hamas, the country’s far right Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will probably be baffled by the most likely political outcome – a rise in Hamas’s political stature. This is expected to flow from the diabolical historical process of war Netanyahu has unleashed on Gaza’s population after the events of October 7.
Such an outcome is an irony for people around the world who came out in their hundreds of thousands to denounce the Netanyahu government’s recent actions even as their own governments carried on pampering the Israeli regime politically, militarily, and diplomatically, and through the use of blatant propaganda.
This diverse group includes young people, including those of Jewish faith in large numbers, across the US, the UK and Europe.
Out to wreak vengeance, the Israeli prime minister had vowed to destroy Hamas, which had carried out the October military attack inside Israel, the first time such a thing had happened, demoralising the Israeli public, and causing anger to its government and military and the security apparatus. It also caused some nervousness in the US government and the wider establishment, which is Israel’s sponsor and guarantor in the resource-rich and geopolitically important West Asia.
Instead of hurting Hamas in any substantial or significant way, the Israeli armed forces – as a measure of brutal collective punishment – dropped bombs all over Gaza, invaded its 300 square kilometres of territory militarily, and then had its tanks destroy the territory’s residential blocks, hospitals, and infrastructure, reducing them to rubble. As of today, nearly 16,000 Gaza residents – mostly women and children – have been killed, and three-quarters of a million rendered homeless, fending for themselves under the open sky, with no food, water, electricity, medicines.
Also read: As the World Watches, Gaza Has Become a Graveyard for Children
Hamas may have feared being cornered by the bare-knuckled assault, but the politico-military group appears to be doing just fine, politically. The Netanyahu regime was left with no choice but to negotiate with it to secure the release of its kidnapped citizens, although the negotiation was conducted through the Qatar government and others, including the US.
The civilian hostages abducted by Hamas fighters from Israel on October 7 were to be released in batches in return for relief supplies and in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. On day two of the exchange, nervousness was caused when Hamas, for many hours, suspended the release of the Israeli detainees. The process resumed only after the agreed upon quantum of relief arrived in Gaza. This underlined the group’s salience and clout.
There are some 7,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails. They are from the West Bank, the only remaining Palestinian area other than Gaza. Disregarding numerous UN resolutions with America’s and Britain’s backing, Israel has been in illegal occupation of the West Bank since 1967 and runs it under police and military administration in the harshest manner, notwithstanding the notional control of the Palestinian Authority over some of the territory.
Israel has also settled some 750,000 Jewish settlers in this occupied region, forcibly chasing away the original Palestinian owners of the land over the decades. The Jerusalem area, deemed holy by three faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, was meant to be administered internationally under the UN plan of 1947 which partitioned the land of Palestine to permit the creation of Israel. Jerusalem has since been annexed by Israel in violation of international agreements.
Gaza was also under Israel’s illegal physical occupation from 1967 to 2005 when Israel pulled out of the territory. While doing so, it imposed a severe physical blockade from land, air, and sea on this coastal enclave, turning Gaza into what’s internationally regarded as the “world’s largest open air prison”.
Given this background, West Bank residents in Israeli jails are, in reality, in the prisons of the occupiers of their lands. It is some of these prisoners who are now being set free by Israel in exchange for Israelis taken captive by Hamas during its October 7 military raid.
Many on the West Bank, including young girls, were jailed when they had not even reached their teens. Their “crime” was to throw stones at the occupation forces as a mark of resistance. What’s more, after Hamas’s October strike, Israel imprisoned around 200 West Bank residents, apprehending them from the streets, and in some cases, even from their homes. News reports say that the charges brought against them may be fabricated. This appears little different from the abduction of Israeli citizens by Hamas fighters on October 7 which was widely seen as an act of “terrorism”.
The barrier between Israel and Gaza. Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Wikimedia Commons
Hamas is a Palestinian entity from Gaza, but its stock appears to have soared in the West Bank, following the release of West Bank prisoners. On the first day of prisoner release, ordinary people on West Bank streets draped themselves in Hamas flags.
On the other hand, the Fatah faction of what’s now the disintegrated Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), led by the once redoubtable Yasser Arafat, enjoys only nominal authority now, and evidently little public esteem.
Technically, it still runs the Palestinian Authority (PA). But the question is: Where is the PA when the West Bank and Jerusalem are under Israeli jackboots? The PA appeared to be pretty much somnolent after the watershed incident of October 7, although to their credit, the PA ambassadors in London and New Delhi forcefully conveyed the anguish of the Palestinian people and the colonial brutality of Israel even when the media set out to seek from them a condemnation of Hamas as a “terrorist” outfit.
Watch | Everything You Need to Know About Hamas
The Israeli prime minister’s commitment to the “elimination” of Hamas made it clear that the brief pause and the resulting hostages and prisoners exchange, was not going to lead to a comprehensive ceasefire and the cessation of hostilities by the Netanhayu government, paving the way for peace formulations.
That said, the Israeli government’s goal is clearly ill-conceived as it is impossible to accomplish. Powerful ideas, such as the fight against colonial oppression and foreign occupation, live through generations.
In the wake of the relentless bombardment of Gaza, including its most important hospitals, the Israeli state is now being questioned on moral grounds. People around the world have refused to accept false Israeli propaganda – that Hamas was using the famous al-Shifa hospital as a military command and control centre – as a justification for its targeting.
Netanyahu has to be a schmuck not to see this.
Leading governments of the South, such as Brazil and South Africa, and several others, have downgraded or even cut off diplomatic ties with Israel. However, India, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is an exception among non-Western powers. It has demonstrated unquestioning support for the Netanyahu regime and its relentless military assault on Gaza.
In influential Western circles, particularly in the US, it is being posited that Israel has placed itself on the same plane as Hamas – which is decried as “terrorist” – by bombarding the unarmed civilian population of Gaza. US President Joe Biden, standing four-square behind the Israeli action, has not only discredited himself but, quite possibly, ensured the loss of support in the large constituency of the young in the 2024 presidential election.
Arab governments that were until recently moving toward an economic and political rapprochement with Israel under US inducement and facilitation, leaving the Palestine question hanging fire, are showing signs of holding back. They are only too keenly aware of the strong anti-Israel and anti-US sentiment sweeping through public opinion in their countries.
On the Palestinian side, it is Hamas which is now at the centre of things, not Fatah or the Palestinian Authority of President Abbas, in spite of the recent best efforts of Israel and the US to bring the PA into play. While Hamas appears to have emerged as the new hope of the Palestinians, the political star of Netanyahu can fairly be said to be in decline. There is, in fact, weighty speculation in Israel that the prime minister can hold his position only so long as the “war” (a strange language for a one-sided attack on millions of civilians) lasts, as it is impolitic to dump the national leader in the middle of a military campaign.
Also read: Resisting the Zionist Revisionism of Gandhi
The Sheikh Redwan neighbourhood of Gaza city, October 8, 2023. Photo: Bashar Taleb/UN
A high stakes game for Israel
The much-touted mission of eliminating Hamas is incapable of being realised. Even if the Gaza-based Hamas leaders are all killed, new ones will emerge elsewhere. The killing or destruction of an idea can only be called a fool’s errand. In reality, if not today, then some other day, it is Hamas with which those interested in eventually negotiating the complex Palestinian question will have to deal. This includes Israel, the US, and the prominent Arab countries – Netanyahu or no Netanyahu, Biden or no Biden.
Indeed, Israel’s so-called objective of eliminating Hamas is a red herring. The real, hidden aim behind keeping up the military attack appears to be to drive out the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip – giving effect to a second naqba. The first naqba was in 1948 when Palestinians were driven out of their land upon the creation of the state of Israel. And now they are to be driven out of the lands to which they were forced to flee.
It mocks history when the Israel leadership, and echoing with them the North Americans and the West Europeans and their current allies, the Indians, says it has the “right to defend itself”. The question is from whom? From the people whose land it has occupied?
Anand K. Sahay is a political commentator in New Delhi.
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