Change is inevitable because of the severity of Hamas’ crimes. . than 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians, including many women and children, were murdered in their homes, on the streets, in kibbutzim, at a music festival. Perhaps 150 more were dragged into Gaza and locked up in makeshift dungeons. Israel’s belief that it could contain Palestinian hostility indefinitely with money and airstrikes crumbled early on October 7, when the first Hamas bulldozer breached the security fence. Hamas has chosen mass murder and there is no way back.
Gaza now awaits a major Israeli ground offensive. Its scale and success will determine the legacy of Hamas’ bloody attack. This also applies to the fundamental choice that Israeli politicians face in the wake of the worst catastrophe in their country’s history: do they unite or continue to exploit divisions for their own benefit? A third factor is the choices of Israel’s neighbors in the Middle East, including Iran.
In the coming weeks and months, Israeli leaders bear a heavy responsibility to temper their understandable desire for fire and retaliation with a sober calculation of their country’s long-term interests and an unwavering respect for the rules of war. They left their people vulnerable by failing to foresee Hamas’s impending attack. They must not compound their mistake by failing to look ahead clearly for the second time.
The need for vision starts with the upcoming ground offensive. The Israeli army will rightly attack Hamas deeply and hard. But how deep and how hard? Israel will be tempted to unleash a wave of briefly satisfying violence. The defense minister has called Hamas fighters “human animals” and announced a blockade of food, water and energy. Israeli officials — and President Joe Biden — have taken to comparing Hamas to the Islamic State, or ISIS, an Islamist group that America has vowed to eradicate.
That comparison is dangerous because, while Hamas deserves to be eradicated, achieving that goal in an enclave of two million poor people with nowhere to run will be impossible. A better comparison than ISIS is the attacks of September 11, 2001, not only because of Israel’s suffering, but also because the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq show how steep the costs of an invasion are – and that is precisely Hamas’s calculation .
At such a moment, self-control is more important than ever. It is in Israel’s interest, because street fighting is life-threatening and the hostages are defenseless. It makes the operation militarily sustainable and maintains international support. It avoids playing into the hands of enemies who assume that dead Palestinian women and children will further their cause. By clinging to its identity as a state that values human life, Israel becomes stronger.
Restraint in the ground offensive depends on the choices of Israeli politicians. Before the war, they were tearing the country apart over a new law that the Supreme Court was restricting. For now, sadness and horror have brought people together again, but the left blames the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, for poisoning relations with the military and security services through the courts, and neglecting security in Gaza because of a fixation with helping Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The right-wing reactions to the call for civil disobedience from senior officials opposed to Netanyahu were a green light for Hamas.
Mr Netanyahu should try to use his new war cabinet, announced this week, to unite Israel. Only by healing its own politics will the country be able to deal with Gaza. Mr Netanyahu will not want to help his most plausible rivals come to power. Yet he was the man in charge when Hamas struck and his political career ended. After a lifetime of seeking power at any cost, he would finally have to put his country before himself.
A unified, centrist government would also be better placed to deal with the latest set of challenges: the politics of the Middle East. Israel will be in grave danger if the war in Gaza spreads to its northern border with Lebanon, where tensions with Hezbollah, a formidably armed militia, are already growing ominously. The longer and bloodier the fighting in Gaza, the more Hezbollah will feel that it must be seen as supporting its brothers. There is also the possibility of war with Iran, which has replaced Arab governments as sponsors of Palestinian violence. Even the Iranian hawks in the West should not wish that.
A broader war would destroy the détente built on the Abraham Accords between Israel and its Arab neighbors, including Bahrain, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and possibly Saudi Arabia. This group stands for a new Middle East that is pragmatic and focused on economic development rather than ideology. It’s still in its infancy, but has the potential to become a force for moderation — and possibly even security.
By simply surviving, the Abraham Accords could emerge stronger from this crisis. However, Hamas has shown that the signatories’ neglect of Palestinians is a mistake. Israel and its Arab partners need a new, optimistic vision for Gaza and the West Bank, as an alternative to Iran’s cult of violence and murder.
And that leads back to the fighting in Gaza. How will it end? Israel has no good options: the occupation is unsustainable, a Hamas government is unacceptable; the rule of its rival Fatah is untenable; an Arab peacekeeping force is out of reach; and a puppet government is unthinkable. If Israel destroys Hamas in Gaza and withdraws, who knows what destructive forces will fill the vacuum left behind?
Israeli strategists must therefore start thinking about how to create the conditions for life alongside the Palestinians, no matter how far away that may seem today. All these elements could be at play: a brief period of martial law in Gaza, a search for Palestinian leaders acceptable to both sides, and the good offices of Arab intermediaries. The only way to eradicate Hamas is for Israel and its Arab allies to create stability – and one day peace.
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