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What to do about Hamas
Israel has an array of options besides reoccupying the Gaza Strip. One alternative is to open passages linking it to Gaza, ending the damaging economic blockade. Another is to seek direct talks with Hamas. Both are preferable to long-term occupation, which Israel would be hard-pressed to end cleanly.
On December 27, 2008, Israel launched a major attack on Hamas in Gaza. The official objective was to use heavy military force—first from the air and then on the ground—to “bring about an improved and more stable security situation for residents of southern Israel over the long term.” This, as it turned out, meant battering Hamas to a point that it agreed to a cease-fire on Israel’s conditions. It also meant the closure of tunnels used to smuggle weapons through Gaza’s border with Egypt. Israel’s use of such overwhelming force was intended both to shock Hamas into accepting its conditions and to prevent Israeli military losses on the ground.
From Israel’s standpoint, the offensive initially appeared successful. It certainly constituted a tactical surprise, with the attack being launched while much of the world was busy with Christmas and New Year celebrations. The United States—still under the Bush administration—was supportive. Furthermore, Israel’s indirect peace process with Syria gave Damascus an incentive not to meddle, and Hezbollah followed suit with an eye toward the May 2009 Lebanese parliamentary elections. Egypt shared Israel’s frustration with Hamas and seemingly—through Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on the eve of the attack—gave the offensive its blessing. Many other moderate Arabs appeared to welcome a blow to the Iranian proxy. And both the Zionist left and right of the Israeli political scene were supportive, setting aside election campaigning to bolster the war effort.
Israel seemingly had little alternative but to respond militarily to Hamas rocket attacks. The Egyptian mediators between Israel and Hamas agreed that the latter had unilaterally broken the cease-fire, an assertion that was supported by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership. Hamas seemed to believe it could fire rockets at Israeli civilians with impunity, while arming and fortifying Gaza as well as flouting Egypt’s invitation to negotiate a unity government with the West Bank-based PLO. As Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal stated in Damascus some ten days into the war—in words startlingly similar to those of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah after the Lebanon War in summer 2006—the Islamist movement had indeed intended to provoke Israel, but was completely surprised by the ferocity of Israel’s response.
Yet the difficult part for Israel was to attack, achieve something, then get out. Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Israeli army chief Gabi Ashkenazi were clearly not anxious to get drawn into prolonged ground warfare that could cost Israeli and Palestinian civilian lives. Nor was the Israeli public or body politic interested in renewed, open-ended occupation of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. On the other hand, the ghost of Israel’s failed war against Hezbollah in 2006 hovered over this operation: from Israel’s standpoint, the war had to end by positioning Israel as a nation to be feared.
For several weeks the combat atmosphere was characterized by a combination of Hamas’s refusal to bend despite horrendous losses and humanitarian suffering; the Arab and international public reaction to graphic media coverage of that suffering; and concerted efforts spearheaded by Egypt to develop an acceptable cease-fire formula. Israel responded by navigating simultaneously along two channels of action. One was to cooperate with international mediation efforts in the hope of extracting satisfactory cease-fire arrangements, though it was questionable how long and to what extent Hamas would cooperate in implementing them. Reflecting the distinct possibility that Hamas would not cooperate because it hoped to leverage Gazan suffering into “victory” and deny Israel a demonstrable achievement, the other channel was for the Israeli military to push on with the offensive and quite possibly pursue it all the way to effective reoccupation of the Gaza Strip and complete destruction of Hamas. Three weeks into the war, with Israeli forces entering the heart of Gaza City, both Israel-Hamas cease-fire arrangements and Israeli-Egyptian-American provisions for preventing further arms smuggling by Hamas were accepted.
With every passing day of the war, anti-Israel sentiment was inflamed throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds, and in large parts of the West as well. Rioting across the West Bank and among Palestinian citizens of Israel had to be quashed with force. It looked like the war in Gaza would become a major setback for Israel’s regional relations—Jordan and Mauritania withdrew their ambassadors, Qatar expelled Israel’s trade delegation, and Turkey reacted hostilely—as well a divisive election issue in Israel. It certainly became Barack Obama’s first Middle Eastern presidential crisis.
In view of Hamas’s militant ideology, it is fair to say that Israel’s effort to punish the movement (and all Gazans) severely and to “quarantine” Hamas, denying it the capacity to rearm, will not lay the groundwork for any kind of long-term peace. Indeed, Israel’s military operation appeared to confirm the perception that neither Israel nor anyone else affected by Hamas, including Egypt and the PLO, entered or emerged from this conflict with a workable long-term strategy for dealing with Hamas’s presence and rule in Gaza. This gap in strategic thinking is relevant not only for Israel and its neighbors vis-à-vis Hamas, but for Hezbollah in Lebanon as well. Indeed, it is relevant for all those called upon to deal with militant groups that wield power aggressively in “black hole” territory like Gaza and southern Lebanon, removed from the sovereign control of a normal state.
In the fog of war, alternative strategies may be harder than ever to contemplate. Yet they are worth recalling, if only in the hope of avoiding the next crisis. One alternative strategy is for Israel to open up the passages linking its territory and Gaza, and cease inflicting ineffective economic and humanitarian collective punishment on 1.5 million Gazans. This would make clear that Israel’s quarrel is only with the Hamas military and political leadership in Gaza and beyond, and not with the Palestinian people. Israel has to recognize that economic warfare has only pushed Gazans further into the lap of Hamas.
The reopening of the passages was a key Hamas condition for a new cease-fire. Israel and Egypt talked of doing this under PLO supervision, in accordance with the 2005 agreement that accompanied Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. But, given the totally counterproductive nature of Israel’s prolonged economic siege of the strip (carried out, it must be noted, with Quartet, Egyptian, and PLO backing), Israel must consider opening the passages even if Hamas rejects a PLO presence—as long as someone maintains order on the Palestinian side. Israel’s prolonged economic siege of Gaza prior to the war impoverished all Gazans, alienated them from Israel, and resulted in greater support for Hamas. Moreover, it contributed to the humanitarian crisis generated by the war, insofar as Gazans had no reserves of food and medicine with which to weather the fighting.
Egypt, too, should open the Rafah crossing linking its territory to Gaza, but only if all arms smuggling under that border ends in a verifiable manner. Some in Israel will also have to abandon their pipe dream—yet another failed Israeli strategy—that by blocking Israeli commerce with Gaza, Egypt could be compelled to function as the source of Gaza’s economic sustenance and Gaza would become “Egypt’s problem.” Gaza is part of Palestine; its economic future lies with Israel and the West Bank. Even talk of such a strategy has proven counterproductive to Israeli-Egyptian relations. On the other hand, as this war has demonstrated, Egypt’s relationship with Israel is key to dealing with Hamas. It is startling to note that after years of Israeli frustration it took a war to persuade Cairo to take Hamas arms smuggling seriously.
A second, related strategic option for Israel is to seek direct talks with Hamas, on the assumption that the movement is here to stay and cannot be ignored forever. This is not simple: most (but not all) Hamas leaders do not want to talk to Israel, and those who do have a limited and problematic agenda that does not include recognition of Israel or peace. Israel also has to be careful not to undercut the leadership of West Bank-based Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who does recognize Israel and does want peace. Still, this option should find a place on Israel’s strategic agenda, if only through informal, unofficial contacts. Ultimately, for lack of a better alternative, Israel may have to consider Hamas’s offer of a long-term truce or hudna (the Arabic term) without peace or recognition, if Hamas’s conditions can be softened; currently, they parallel PLO conditions, but the PLO at least is offering Israel peace.
Finally, if nothing else works—but only if every option, including a new cease-fire and new anti-smuggling measures, is tried—and considering that Israeli vulnerability to Hamas rockets is expanding, Israel may indeed end up with the option it fears the most: reoccupying all or part of the Strip with the intention of militarily eliminating Hamas. The price would be heavy losses on both sides, international condemnation, and an open-ended occupation without an exit strategy. Everyone would condemn Israel, though the moderate Sunni Arab leaders would quietly welcome the defeat of a militant Islamist ally of Iran.
Still, nobody would volunteer to take Gaza off Israel’s hands. The international community would not easily be persuaded to take over under some sort of joint peacekeeping mission and become caught in the crossfire between Israelis and Gazan guerilla fighters. The PLO would certainly not agree to return to Gaza and cooperate, not to say collaborate, with Israel. Hamas might actually be replaced by an even more hard-line group.
Precisely because Israel has no obvious exit strategy once it has reoccupied the Strip, Hamas has been counting on it to do just that. This scenario has the real potential to set the Middle East back by 40 years. Israel would do well to examine the other alternatives first.
*A version of this article appeared on www.bitterlemons.org.
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YOSSI ALPHER, geb. 1942, war Direktor des Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies der Universität Tel Aviv und Berater des ehemaligen israelischen Ministerpräsidenten Ehud Barak. Er ist Initiator des israelischpalästinensischen Internetforums www.bitterlemons. org.
YOSSI ALPHER is co-editor of the bitterlemons.org family of internet publications, and the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.
