With hostages emerging from captivity, and many more hopefully soon to come, Israel’s decision-making dilemmas remain harsh and troubling. There are wars still to be won, and lost – against Hamas, for legitimacy in the global arena, for deep-rooted Zionism, for the fundamental soul of a traumatized state, and for Israel together (or not) with Palestine. But a major paradigm shift will be required to achieve Israel’s overriding objectives.
Given the underhand, barbaric, atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7, Israel is understandably determined to extirpate Hamas. But what does the wiping Hamas off the face of the earth really mean? So far, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has managed to bomb northern Gaza and sections of southern Gaza to smithereens. But it has been unable to capture the military commanders of Hamas and so far has killed fewer of those arch enemies than it had hoped.
Truly to cripple Hamas’ ability to continue warring against Israel, the IDF needs to destroy Hamas’ command structure. Thus far, despite closing off some of the tunnel hideouts beneath hospitals and schools, Hamas still exists as a terrorist organization and – despite the devastation wreaked throughout Gaza – the IDF has not eliminated Hamas fully.
Nor – probably – can it ever. Hamas gained what it wanted by the Oct. 7 raids into Israel: a lasting credibility among Palestinians. Even if its inside Gaza leaders are found and imprisoned or assassinated, Hamas will live on ideologically. It will remain a beacon for Palestinian liberation. Its political leaders have long survived in Doha and Beirut; they move freely across the Arab world and Turkey. Moreover, Israel (with Washington’s cooperation) has been unable to quench Hamas’s accumulation of financial riches. Until Israel can intercept Hamas’ access to stockpiled cash, completely marginalizing Hamas will be impossible.
According to the Economist, Hamas manipulates a small economic empire that grows by more than $1.5 billion a year; about $750 million comes from Iran and other friendly regimes, often arriving by crypto means. (Binance, recently fined, was one facilitating culprit.) Another $500 million or so consists of investment profits from such properties as a shopping mall in Sudan, skyscrapers in Sharjah, and companies in Algeria – all managed and somehow banked in Turkey with the quiet approval of its ruler. The remainder derives from taxing Gazan imports.
Such a hefty income pays Hamas’ soldiers and purchases missiles, rocket launchers, ammunition, and all manner of war materiel (much of it employed mercilessly on Oct. 7). Hamas also paid the salaries of teachers and physicians in the Gaza Strip, and enabled operatives in and out of Gaza to live much more luxuriously than the Strip’s other inhabitants.
Before Israel can hope to reduce Hamas’ influence and existence as an anti-Israeli force, it must cut its continuing streams of revenue, now multiplying because of its break-out insurgency and Israel’s hard-hitting surge on Gaza. Exactly how to deny Hamas those funds is a key problem for both Jerusalem and the Treasury Department in Washington.
With the Palestine Authority (and the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] and Fatah, its lead components), discredited because of the weakness, corruption, undemocratic practices, and incompetence of Mahmoud Abbas, its 88-year-old leader and his administration, antagonism against Israel with the Middle East and within Palestine/Israel naturally will still tilt opinion and sympathy toward Hamas – despite or because of the atrocities. If only the Palestine Authority could be a vibrant, well-regarded, counterpart for Israel.
The IDF’s bombardment and annihilation of much of Gaza is widely understood as a natural reaction to Hamas’ outrages, but its overriding purpose remains muddied until Israel can parade the Hamas hierarchy before cameras and lock them up – or until it can display their bodies. And even at that point, immense questions remain: Given the immense physical pummeling of the structures of the Gaza Strip, how and where and under what conditions are Gazans expected to live? How is Gaza going to be reconstructed? Exactly who is going to administer Gaza since Israel cannot and Egypt and other Arab countries refuse? How is Israel going to prevent Hamas from resuming control, one way or another, of Gaza? Inserting the Palestinian Authority under Abbas as Gaza’s overlord is unrealistic.
President Biden and others are promoting the long outdated two-state solution and hoping, somehow, that the PLO can extend its (compromised) control of the West Bank to Gaza, re-uniting both parts of Palestine once again under Abbas or a like-minded figure. But Hamas will live on in Gaza and might now even try to regain hands-on authority in the West Bank, ousting the PLO.
In order to recover a serious attempt to bring lasting peace to a post-Gazan Greater Palestine/Israel, the government of Israel needs to rise up from its agony and anger to seek a totally new deal in the West Bank and – later – in the Gaza Strip. What Israel now needs to do is obvious: to promise to cease allowing Israeli settlers to occupy new settlements in the West Bank and – at a minimum -- to provide the funding for improved health and educational facilities and opportunities in the West Bank (and in Gaza).
That would mean tilting toward the possibility of a meaningful two-state solution and a return to the spirit of the Oslo Accords of 1993 – before the right-wing assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. But to reach such a useful point would mean Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and others breaking decisively with the hard-right political cabal – the “all of Judea and Samaria is ours” crowd – to which Netanyahu has allied himself for his personal political and financial survival. And to expect that he will, probably is fantasy despite the pressure he is under from Washington to do just that. Netanyahu is a political survivor and political manipulator, not a statesman.
Yet, the only way forward for Israel – losing a global information war and succeeding so far only partially against Hamas -- is for the struggle against Hamas to occasion a major Israeli political paradigm shift. Doing so would justify and reinvigorate the Abraham Accords, gain understanding if not immediate support for what Israel is doing so disastrously in Gaza, and de-legitimize the Iranian drive for ascendancy within the region.
Unless and until there is such a visible paradigm shift, Israel cannot win the ultimate existential battle over Hamas, provide a meaningful future for Gazans and Palestinians, or even reunite Israelis of the left and right. Many of those innocents slaughtered by Hamas in kibbutzim near Gaza were true Zionists living and working for a bright future together with their Palestinian neighbors (and friends). Their only true memorial is a forward-looking plan where both peoples live together side-by-side in peace, and prosper together.
Netanyahu must go before any true two state solution is possible.