Israeli setbacks empower Hamas
By James M. Dorsey
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The Gaza war has changed that paradigm.
It has produced neither a military nor a political victory.
Adding fuel to the fire, Israel has abandoned the notion
that soft power is as important as hard power in the vein of scholar Joseph
Nye, who recently cautioned that “ignoring
or neglecting soft power is a strategic and analytic mistake.”
Credit:
Thaivision
Mr. Nye noted that “in the short run, swords are mightier
than words, but in the long run, words guide swords.”
It’s advice Israel has failed to heed. As a result, Israel is
losing two wars in Gaza, the war itself and the battle for hearts and minds.
All Hamas needs to do to declare victory is to survive.
Israel has enshrined on an altar that notion, valid for most
non-state actors battling conventional military forces, by insisting it will
destroy Hamas militarily and politically.
Israel’s problem is that Hamas is likely to survive even if
it were to kill Hamas’ Gaza leader, Yahya Sinwar. Israel’s most wanted man, Mr.
Sinwar, has eluded Israeli forces since the war erupted last October.
Israel has also failed to achieve its other war goals – the rescue
of Hamas-held hostages and ensuring Gaza does not remain a launching pad for
Palestinian resistance.
Credit: IDF
Spokesman
This weekend, Palestinians killed ten
Israeli soldiers, the highest toll in one day since January, while Israel
Defence Forces (IDF) spokesman Daniel Hagari conceded that Israeli would not
be able to militarily rescue all the remaining 116 hostages, 41 of which
are believed to have been killed in captivity during the war.
“We will not be able to return everyone home in this way,”
Mr. Hagari said.
In the battle for hearts and minds, Israel wasted no time in
destroying initial empathy in response to the brutality of Hamas’ October 7
attack that killed more than 1,100 primarily civilian Israelis and foreigners
and led to the kidnapping of 250 others.
The vast majority of more than 100 hostages who have
regained their freedom since October 7 were released in November in a prisoner
exchange with Hamas. Israel’s military has rescued only seven.
Israel’s self-inflicted defeat in the war for hearts and
minds may be more consequential than its inability to crush Hamas on the
battlefield despite severe body blows inflicted on the group.
Within a matter of months, Israel went from being able to
claim a moral high ground to a country indicted in the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) on charges of genocide and whose leaders risk the International
Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for alleged war crimes.
Israel’s 13
June 2024 raid in the West Bank town of Jenin. Credit Xinhua
Winning the war for hearts and minds would have been an
uphill battle no matter what, given the tens of thousands of
Palestinians killed and wounded by Israeli forces and the physical devastation
of Gaza’s infrastructure, not to mention stepped-up
Israeli repression on the West Bank and tacit
endorsement of vigilante settler attacks on Palestinians and aid convoys en
route to Gaza.
Israel seems bent on ensuring it ends the war as a pariah in
much of the world by hindering
the unfettered flow of humanitarian relief needed to address the
consequences of its curtailing of food, fuel, water, and electricity and
destruction of Gaza’s health sector.
Adding fuel to the fire, Israel
has shown no empathy for the plight of innocent Palestinians and no
acknowledgment that Palestinians have rights, too. Instead, Israeli leaders
have repeatedly made genocidal statements and obstructed efforts to achieve a
ceasefire.
To be sure, Hamas has displayed similar insensitivity but
that has no impact on Israel’s global standing.
Anti-war
protest in Barcelona. Credit: EPA
Israeli denunciation of mass anti-war protests across the
globe as anti-Semitic and dismissal of public opinion polls that show Western
public opinion turning against Israel has only deepened the hole Israel finds
itself in.
It’s a hole that Israel will find difficult to extricate
itself from.
Worse, Israel’s Gaza war conduct and antithetical public
relations posture, like its West Bank settlement and other policies, have
hardened positions on both sides of the divide, making a resolution of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict ever more elusive.
It risks giving currency to Hamas’ notion that a long-term
ceasefire in Gaza, and more broadly between Palestinians and Israelis, may be
the only thing that is achievable.
Israel’s self-dug grave will likely reinforce Hamas’
contention that a two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
should entail a long-term ‘hudna’ or armistice rather than Palestinian
recognition of the Jewish state.
Israel asserts that Hamas’ notion of a long-term ‘hudna’ or
armistice rather than Palestinian recognition of the Jewish state in the
context of two states demonstrates the group’s determination to destroy Israel
and maintain the right to armed resistance.
Unlike the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s (PLO)
recognition of Israel in the 1980s as the prelude to the creation of a
Palestinian state alongside Israel, Hamas’ 2017
amended Charter envisions two states living side-by-side without
recognising one another and, presumably, without maintaining full diplomatic
relations.
Rejecting any Israeli rights and all United Nations
resolutions and other international agreements that recognize equal national rights
for Israelis and Palestinians, the Charter stipulates that “there shall be no
recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity… Without relinquishing any
Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and
independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital, along the lines
of the 4th of June 1967…to be a formula of national consensus… Resistance and jihad for the liberation of
Palestine will remain a legitimate right, a duty, and an honour for all the
sons and daughters of our people and our Ummah,” the global Muslim community of
the faithful.
Some Hamas officials have since sought to walk back their
insistence on the right to wage armed struggle.
Ceasefire negotiator Khalil al-Hayya suggested in April that
Hamas would agree to a truce of five years or more, lay
down its weapons, and convert into a political party if an independent
Palestinian state is established along pre-1967 borders.
With support among Palestinians for a two-state resolution
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dropping dramatically, according to a recent public opinion survey,
Hamas’ position is likely to gain increased currency among Palestinians, even
if Israel rejects it out of hand.
This month’s survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and
Survey Research showed that support in Gaza for two states had almost halved
from 62 per cent in March to 32 per cent in June while remaining constant at
one-third of the West Bank population.
Azzam Tamimi, a 69-year-old scholar and journalist with
close ties to Hamas, suggested that a long-term hudna rather than a peace
agreement “is the
only way you can have disengagement; you can have a real ceasefire.”
Azzam
Tamimi. Credit: Middle East Eye
Mr. Tamimi argued that Hamas’ notion “is a de facto
recognition of the status quo, but it’s not a de jure recognition.”
Insisting that he would “never, ever accept the legitimacy
of the occupation of my mother’s house in Beersheba,” Mr. Tamimi said he “would
accept, and, I believe, most Palestinians represented by Hamas would accept,
the idea that this conflict is not delivering what either side is expecting,
and therefore it’s not a bad idea to disengage to stop fighting…for ten years,
15 years, or 30 years... During that period, people can have a respite. Then
there will be a new generation emerging and let future generations decide what
they want to do about this conflict.”
Hamas and Mr. Tamim’s notion may strike a chord with
Palestinians but is certain not to nudge Israel closer to the negotiating
table.
Leaving aside Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas and the
Netanyahu government’s rejection of a two-state solution, Israel for decades
insisted that any Palestinian counterpart would have to recognize the Jewish
state de jure and abandon armed struggle.
It also demanded the Palestinians agree to prioritisation of
Israeli security concerns even if Palestinians have equally legitimate worries.
To be sure, two states in historic Palestine irrespective of
whether they have de jure or de facto relations, would likely resemble India
and Pakistan, nations carved out of one another in 1947, that remain at
loggerheads 77 years later.
Even so, many in the West echo Italian Prime Minister
Giorgia Meloni’s belief that “Israel
has fallen into a trap, a Hamas trap that had the aim of isolating it.” Ms.
Meloni added at this weekend’s Group of Seven summit that “it seems to be
working."
Expanding on Ms. Meloni’s belief, former Israeli peace
negotiator Daniel Levy argued that “by using its force in this indiscriminate
way, from day one saying it would cut…all food, fuel, water, and electricity
from the civilian population in Gaza, this is a huge self-inflicted defeat for
Israel. Reputational, moral, legal, economic… This is going to shift the power
balance...Hamas
is going to come out of this stronger… Israel is going to come out of this
weaker… and this is of Israel’s own making.”
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior
Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of
International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.
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