War is history’s accelerant. It moves the forces, the tensions underlying conflicts and pushes them into new historical epochs. The Hamas invasion of Israel on the 50th anniversary seems likely to fit this description.
Tensions between Israel and Hamas have been simmering for decades. Periodic eruptions of missiles or lone wolf suicide bombings were followed by Israeli retaliation. Some in the Israeli Defense Force referred to this as mowing the grass. Buildings in Gaza would be leveled, a number of people would be killed.
These engagements were not really wars. Israel would be publicly condemned or condoned by governments depending on their alignments and then everything carried on as if nothing happened.
When I was in Israel three months ago to make an hour long programme for BBC Radio 4 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War (or October 6th war as it is known in Egypt) I asked an Israeli contact in Tel Aviv about interviewing Palestinians. He said I could go to most any building site in the city and talk to the workers, they were all Palestinians, or go down to the Erez Crossing early in the morning and catch builders coming out of Gaza on their way to Tel Aviv.
I expressed surprise that this was going on as the last I had heard of Gaza was the last time the grass was mown, in August 2022, and I assumed the enclave was still on lockdown. But my contact explained this was normal, flare-up, anger, then back to work. Jobs in Israel are the economic lifeline of Gaza.
But it is hard to see this happening again easily because war is an accelerant and what is still going on as I write is certainly war. Although I’m not sure the modern definition of war applies to armed conflict between a nation-state and a non-state militia.
It is also hard to see what the outcome of the slaughter on both sides will be or even what the war’s objectives are. (I won’t put numbers of casualties in this post because it is too soon. One thing I’ve learned in 35 years of covering conflicts is that the first estimates of dead and wounded are always wrong.)
At this point, nothing but questions
For Hamas: what is the objective?
When Anwar Sadat launched his war against Israel it was to force the country to return the Sinai peninsula, captured in the Six-Day War. His diplomatic overtures had been ignored and so he went to war. I don’t think he expected to regain the territory by military means alone but wanted to force Israel to negotiate. He succeeded, and after a process of talks the Sinai was returned to Egypt.
Does Hamas want the same thing? To use war to coerce negotiation? For what? Hamas does not recognize the legitimacy of Israel, will not call it by name, referring to it as the “Zionist” entity or simply “entity”. It’s goal remains to eliminate Israel. Clearly that’s not going to happen.
End the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land? That’s something those sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians or who still think that there is a path to a Palestinian state via UN Resolution 242 might say. But the occupation will only end through serious negotiation, as Sadat demonstrated half a century ago. The weekend’s events are clearly not about restarting negotiations as Hamas still doesn’t recognize the legitimacy of the Oslo process (tattered as that process is).
Does Hamas want to create new martyrs to be avenged by their children? This is a brutally cynical question but Hamas is a brutal and cynical organization. A good way to keep a hold of its base of support is through the memory of martyrs and their family connections to the organization.
A reason for this invasion — not the only one — is likely that Hamas is being used by its main international supporter, Iran, in its regional competition with Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries. Saudi Arabia and Israel have been in discussions about normalizing relations. The new relationship would, in theory, give Saudi Arabia access to Israeli hi-tech surveillance and other new technologies for use in case of war with Iran.
The day the invasion was launched Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh released a statement saying,
"We say to all countries, including our Arab brothers, that this entity, which cannot protect itself in the face of resistors, cannot provide you with any protection."
The questions for the Israeli government and its vaunted security apparatus are more pointed.
How could you not expect some kind of attack to mark the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War? You know how important anniversaries are in Arab and Muslim culture. The Shi’a still mark their defeat at Karbala in 680 CE with marches and flagellation, for G-d’s sake.
How will you manage to get Israeli hostages, military and civilian, out of Gaza and still extract the blood revenge that not just your coalition partners but many ordinary Israelis will demand?
Do you understand the degree to which a sense of “humiliation” motivates those who have lived under occupation for 56 years and how this leads to eruptions of violence? It may seem a silly reason to risk death and destruction for oneself and one’s family but that humiliation is real and could be so easily addressed.
I have heard about Arabs’ sense of humiliation for decades and I understand it. I heard it again while making the BBC documentary. The Yom Kippur War and Sadat are remembered for restoring Egyptian “pride” after the “humiliation” of the Six-Day War.
There will be other things to comment on in the days and weeks to come as we sketcout this first draft of the history of the 2023 Hamas/Israel War. But here’s one last thing from the documentary: Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told me a story about the last time he negotiated with PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat. What is the alternative to reaching an agreement, Barak asked Arafat? More wars, more dead.
And your cemeteries will be bigger than ours.
That is still the only thing that is certain when Hamas and Israel fight.
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Those living in Gaza and the West Bank are done with the status quo. As would any thinking person. It’s obvious that death not what Palestinians fears but continuing the subhuman existence the west and Israel have unilaterally imposed upon peoples whose homes were taken and given to Europeans. An act of colonialism anyone? Israeli’s believing they have some right from an old book is the true crime.