Israel and Hamas have been fighting since shortly after Hamas was founded in 1987, and since then they have fought several times. The current war began on the West Bank on June 10th with the kidnapping of three Israeli students, who were subsequently found dead. Israel blamed Hamas and arrested several Hamas members. Israel then hit the Gaza with airstrikes, and Palestinian militant groups fired back rockets into Israel.
Hamas, an Islamist political faction, took control of Gaza in 2007, splitting the Palestinian leadership Fatah, a more moderate political party that controlled the West Bank. Recently, a Palestinian boy in Jerusalem was killed, allegedly by Israel extremists for taking revenge for the murder of the students; consequently, Israel put many Palestinians in jail where they were purportedly beaten and tortured. As a result Hamas started launching a wave of rockets into Israel, and then Israel fired strikes on Gaza, escalating the Israel- Palestinian War.
In the past, Hamas did not recognize Israel as a state, considering it instead a political foe. Israel has blockaded Gaza and limited the movement of the inhabitants of Gaza. It is generally known that Hamas maintains several extensive tunnels to smuggle goods and weapons. Most of the tunnels cross to the Egyptian side of the border with Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu claims that they have found the tunnels that burrow into Israel, perhaps to justify the ground invasion in order to damage the underground tunnels constructed by the Hamas or other factions.
The main goal of Israel is to destroy all of Hamas’ infrastructures and supply tunnels and to make Hamas passive. Without former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi in power, Hamas has lost a very important political and financial partner, as well as access to smuggling routes and cash flows from Qatar. Israel did not recognize the unity government agreement and provoked Hamas to return to the old way of doing business–launching missiles into Israel. Hamas will be more popular after this invasion and will be more powerful with its people.
The Israeli government keeps saying that it will not negotiate with those who engage in violence, but at the same time Israel negotiated with Hamas and released more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one Israel soldier. The Israeli government is not sincere about peace with Palestine and keeps giving excuses. This strategy will not be very helpful for the future of Israel. Even though the West and the United States symbolically support Israel’s invasion, the western people on the streets do not support their leaders in the response attacks. Israel has placed America in a hard position; even if President Obama publically states his support for Israel, behind closed doors he does not view Israeli policies the same as he claims.
Sometimes a government can accomplish its objectives and win public support, but sometimes it commits crimes. For example, in 1999 when Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power, Russia lost the war to Chechnya in 1994-1996 because many Russians people did not want their children to die, so they were against the war. In order for President Putin to justify the war in Chechnya, his government planted a bomb that detonated on civilians in the center of Moscow at one of the buildings, killing hundreds of people. Although the Chechens claimed no responsibility, Russia undertook a full scale war with Chechnya, having the complete support of the Russian people. In spite of Hamas’ not claiming responsibility for the murder of the three Jewish students, Netanyahu maintained that Hamas killed them and thereby justified the ground invasion of Gaza. I am not claiming Hamas is a legitimate organization. I also grant that Hamas did kill lots of Jewish civilians, and furthermore, that Hamas is the biggest obstacle to independence of the Palestinian State, because in the end Hamas did not accept Israel as the state of the Jewish people. That does not mean that Israel must punish all Palestinians. The same is true for Hamas; the more Hamas denies Israel as the Jewish state, the more it gives power to Israel to delay Palestinians’ having their own state. In addition, Hamas has lost its international support.
Israel will never win the war by bombing Gaza or by destroying the tunnels. Hamas will never get legitimacy by using violence against Israel. Without addressing the root causes, the more Israel destroys, the more Hamas will build. Instead, the war creates more hate and more violence. It is another useless war, one in which hundreds of innocent civilians will be killed, one that serves only to exasperate and radicalize, and one that further enhances Hamas’ interests and makes it thrive longer. If Hamas and Israel want real peace, want two states to live beside each other, and want to prevent another war in the future, things must change. The question is what will this war achieve. Israel launched military campaigns in 2008 and 2012 to eliminate Hamas’ power. Yet, Hamas is still in control of the Gaza and still owns the rockets. Israel cannot have peace with the Palestinian just to destroy Hamas’ power and capacities. Unless both sides address the underlying causes, which is a an independent of Palestinian State and end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land as well as Hamas’ continued targeting of Israeli civilians.
I do believe Hamas has damaged the Palestinian cause more than Israel. The more Hamas denies the existence of the state of Israel, the more it serves a clear purpose for Israel. Both Israel and Hamas play ongoing games by which Israel can repeatedly refuse the Palestinian sovereign state under the excuse of a national threat. The more a genuine peace process is delayed, the more extremism rises on both sides, escalating the racism, bigotry, violence, and hate. It is classic game theory.
The Palestinian conflict is a shame for the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world as well. Most of the Muslim countries use the Palestinian cause as a political tool. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned Israel for invading Gaza and accused Israel of seeking a systematic genocide of the Palestinian people. Prime Minster Erdogan blamed the western world for remaining silent, as does the Islamic world. The Turkish Prime Minister called on the Islamic world, “I am asking the Islamic world, ‘isn’t your heart shattered Palestine should forget about the West; if your family does not embrace you, would others do that? The Prime Minister insists that as long as he is in power, there can no be normalization as long as the massacres continue.
Israel has managed to get Qatar to freeze payments to forty thousand of Hamas’ employees in Gaza, and the Egyptian President, whom Hamas considers an enemy, has sealed its border with Gaza. If there is no peace, the consequence is clear: violence will follow on both sides and neither will seek to establish a genuine, viable two-state solution. In game theory, one player makes a decision based on the course of actions he anticipates that the other participant will make. In thinking about his choices, the decision maker recognizes that the other player is thinking about his choices as well. Israel and Palestine are entrapped in this interactive decision-making, and one has to break out of the dilemma.
Dr. Aland Mizell is President of the MCI and a regular contributor to Mindanao Times. You may email the author at:aland_mizell2@hotmail.com