Hamas Already Won

The massacre of October 7 left over 1400 Israelis brutally murdered. More than 200 people  have been kidnapped, including women, children, infants, elderly and infirm. These are facts, though I have seen media reports, including interviews with representatives of Hamas, the organization responsible for the massacre, that refuse to confirm these facts and call them Israeli propaganda. The Israeli military response was belated. As of this writing, it has extracted a heavy price in human lives on the Palestinian side. The numbers have been climbing every day. As of yesterday, October 27, according to Al Jazeera relying on figures provided by the Palestinian Health Ministry, 7326 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military operations, more than 18,000 have been wounded, and over a million Palestinian residents of Gaza have lost their homes and have become refugees in the sealed-off territory. Some international aid has reached the Gaza Strip, but water, fuel, and electricity are running out, including in the hospitals that care for the wounded. 

If one starts counting from 1948, when Israel declared independence as a Jewish state in Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now in its 75th year. From the beginning, this conflict was never just local and territorial, but regional, even global, and symbolic. At the same time, the price for this conflict has always been paid by human beings, that is, by fathers, mothers, and children who are Jewish, Muslim, and Christian, Arab, Druze, Bedouin, and many who identify in multiple or neither of these ways. Some communities are highly traditional in their way of life, like the Jewish Haredim, or they have lived their multi-generational lives in rural areas harassed by the needs of a military administration, like the Bedouin of the Southern Hebron Hills in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank, or they have been limited in movement and mobility, such as the Palestinians living in UNRWA-supported refugee camps, including in parts of Gaza. Meanwhile, generations of Jews from around the globe saw Israel as a haven and supported the state and its aspirations economically and spiritually, celebrating its astounding achievements while often turning a blind eye to the human cost of the ever-expanding footprint of the Jewish state in Palestine, paid by a population seen as hostile, unreasonable and ever acting against their own best interests, as conceived from afar. 

When violence erupts, early on in form of the armed struggle of the fedayeen, in the airplane abductions and terror attacks of the 1970s, in the series of wars between Israel and its neighboring states, in the first and second Intifada and, since then, in rocket attacks from Gaza or more recently in the new militarization of Palestinian youths in Jenin, world attention returns to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With the massacre of October 7, the unresolved political conflict--one that Israelis have been saying can only be managed, not resolved--has returned to the front burner. 

Many declared their solidarity with Israel. "We stand with Israel" was projected onto the Brandenburg Gate. But before the utter devastation wreaked by the Hamas brigades and others, including the Islamic Jihad, could fully sink in, world opinion turned. Almost instantaneously the brief moment of the world's sympathy with the Jewish victims was overshadowed by the Israeli military response, which highlighted the power inequilibrium between Israel and the Palestinians. Israeli attacks on Gaza, which many governments around the world have condoned as a legitimate response to the horrendous massacre, not only produced thousands of Palestinian dead and wounded, but it erased all sympathy for and interest in Israeli suffering. The seemingly effortless incursion of Hamas and its allies into Israeli territory and their ability to escape virtually unhindered, except for cases of heroic local resistance, has already shattered the myth of Israel's military prowess, the ability of the Israeli state to protect its citizens from harm, of Israel representing an island of tranquility in a sea of hostile populations. Now, with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians again on the move, desperately seeking safety from an overpowering, relentless, and unceasing attack, with houses upon houses and neighborhoods upon neighborhoods in rubble, with people taking what they could, carrying their children, elderly and infirm on their backs and trying to save their lives--all taking place in front of a global audience and broadcast live on our social media--it is 1948 all over again. 

Israel has pledged to destroy Hamas, a reasonable pledge given the threat to Israeli security that has emanated from the Islamist group not just now but repeatedly. "Mowing the lawn" -- as some have called the previous military actions in Gaza -- no longer suffices. But by attempting to destroy Hamas by overwhelming military force unloaded on the Palestinian people in Gaza, Israel has fallen into a trap, one that Hamas had set for it. A ground war on the soil of Gaza would be fought at a huge human cost on both sides, and whether Israel can achieve victory is unclear, among other reasons because there's no clear scenario as to what victory would look like. There are indications that Israel is preparing for war on multiple fronts. Iran is threatening to mobilize its regional allies. US warships have moved in place. All around, this is not a comforting scenario.

But Hamas already won. They won when they breached the border with thousands of militants and returned largely unscathed. And they won again, when Israel acted with overwhelming force, ignoring the fate of the kidnapped, and effectively collapsing the difference between Hamas and the Palestinians. Israel has conferred a legitimacy on Hamas that it never enjoyed before. This is evident from the -- admittedly simplistic -- campaigns of solidarity with the Palestinians all around the globe. There is no longer a clear difference between a legitimate target of Israeli military operations and the Palestinian people. People therefore choose sides, and they are increasingly choosing the side of the Palestinian people victimized by Israel. Hamas won this one, too. The over 1400 dead and however many wounded and kidnapped Israeli men, women, and children are forgotten. The kidnapped are even forgotten by the Israeli government, which refuses to enter into a humanitarian ceasefire for the sake of hostage negotiations, while Hamas earns points by releasing a few captives. 

The emotions of various publics are triggered and stirred in various directions. There is the righteous anger: at one's own government that's on the wrong side of history; at those who just don't understand; at the eternal enemy. There is utter confusion: what sources of information can be trusted? Who is right? There is despair and frustration: why can't we/they just get along? There are the protests and the counter-protests: spontaneous, manufactured, for or against, repressed and disrupted. Mostly, the public watches helplessly, speechlessly, overwhelmed by the many things that seem to be going wrong at the same time. People feel (and are in fact) canceled and placed on the defensive for speaking their truth; we can barely listen to one another without the sense that the abyss of violent conflict will also destroy our friendships and personal relationships. Campuses are erupting. Categories are slipping and differences are obscured. The first victim in a war, someone said, is the truth. Another one seems to be nuance, the ability to distinguish and to differentiate, to hold more than one truth in one's head at the same time.

As to the regional context playing out, one usually forgotten when one thinks of the Israel-Palestine conflict as a match between two (equal or unequal) sides, the ongoing warming of relations between Israel and its Sunni-Arab neighbors, an uneasy alliance, but one that seems to hold for now, has those neighbors watch and see how Israel responds. The governments of Egypt, the Emirates, and Saudi Arabia--governed by repressive regimes, to put it mildly--while always claiming to speak on behalf of the Palestinians, are really interested--self-interested--in how Israel responds; after all the Sunni-Arab/Israeli détente is really about Iran and its allies: can Israel continue to serve as a buffer and a military counterweight to Iran or will it cave? It is this silent government to government language of regional diplomacy, aimed at maintaining a mutual deterrence that will keep the current regimes relevant and in place, that -- aside from other reasons -- the Israeli government's military response to the Hamas massacre is speaking to. The international community's demand--as expressed by the recent non-binding UN General Assembly call for a humanitarian ceasefire--will fall on deaf ears as long as the regional powers are expecting a strong military action, or as long as the newly formed emergency cabinet believes that that is what is expected of it.

Analysis such as offered here is cold comfort to people who just want the violence to stop. It is cold comfort to me. I want the violence to stop. I want the kidnapped to be returned. I want the Palestinian and Israeli communities to recover from this terrible moment and return to the negotiating table with the utmost seriousness and urgency. I want there to be a lasting peace and cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians, whatever the political form of such a collaboration. I know that it can be done, if only there is the political will to do it. Right now, the war mongers have the upper hand. Once again, the forces of evil have prevailed over the forces of good. The Israeli civil society that has been on the streets to prevent Israel from turning into just another authoritarian regime has been stabbed in the back by an alliance of the worst on both sides. Settler rampaging continues in the West Bank. Palestinian lives and livelihoods are being suffocated, starved, dishonored, insulted and destroyed on a daily basis. This must stop, and it could stop immediately. And yet, perhaps we must also remember, at the same time, that Israel, though militarily the stronger party, is not the only party. We must not allow Hamas to win the war of public opinion either. Netanyahu and his government do not represent Israel or the Jewish people. Neither does Hamas represent the Palestinian people, though right now it seems--for better or worse--that they do.