Gaza, Hamas Dilemma

Who will govern Gaza and what will happen to the Palestinians? This was the meaning of the ultimatum given to Netanyahu by military cabinet minister Benny Gantz. The heart of the problem is this: the manner in which Israel, the Palestinians, and the United States negotiate with the Islamist group will determine an agreement, by which to end the war and determine what the future of Gaza should be.

Eight months into the Israeli war, more than 36,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed since the Hamas massacre on October 7. The Israeli invasion has forced two million Palestinians to flee their homes and move to other areas of the Strip. Many of them are now forced to live in temporary tents in or around the southern city of Rafah. International experts warn that “famine is inevitable” in the northern sector, which has been virtually destroyed by Israel’s relentless bombardment. Children are already starting to die because they have nothing to eat. There are no longer effective hospitals, schools, universities in Gaza, and 80 percent of homes are destroyed or damaged. In short, life is impossible.

As the war continues, the way Israeli, Palestinian, and American politicians view Hamas is not a theoretical question, but a real factor on the ground, just like bullets and tanks. This is one of the elements, which determines the military strategy, the type of agreement that would be reached to end the war, and what the future of the Palestinians would be.

There are, roughly speaking, two viewpoints on what to do about Hamas. One side of this debate, composed largely of American and Israeli counterterrorism and security experts, has long believed that the group’s reason for being is its fierce hostility to Israel’s existence. From this perspective, there is nothing surprising about October 7. On the contrary, the attack demonstrated that Hamas’s true priority is the destruction of Israel and the creation of an Islamist Palestinian state in its place. Representatives of this school of thought point to Hamas’s extensive tunnel infrastructure as evidence that the group is protecting its fighters by leaving Gaza’s civilian population on the ground to fend for themselves without a bomb shelter system.

The opposing camp, which includes university professors, as well as Palestinian and Western experts, sees Hamas as a diverse and complex political organization divided into radical and moderate tendencies. They argue that Hamas is a product of the reality, in which Palestinians live, namely a brutal occupation and embargo. The problem, from this perspective, is that even when Hamas leaders have shown themselves open to moderation, Israeli policy has prevented the group from following that line without undermining its role as the last bastion of serious opposition to Israel and its occupation, which is losing credibility among Palestinians.

There is a dangerous misunderstanding hovering over this whole discussion. That is, the idea that still dominates in Israel, at least within the government, is that if the Hamas threat is eliminated, Israel will no longer have a problem with the Palestinians. But even if Hamas disappeared tomorrow, the Israeli blockade of Gaza and the West Bank would not disappear.

The prevailing tendency is to talk about the war between Israel and Hamas rather than the war between Israel and the Palestinians, as if Hamas was alien to the Palestinians and it all started on October 7, not 76 years ago with the Nakba. The difference between today and a few decades ago is the inability – not only by the Israeli side – to deal with the political motivations that inspire the Palestinians. It may be hard to accept, but any post-war agreement, which excludes Hamas, will be doomed to repeat the mistakes that led to the current conflict.

An alternative would be to incorporate Hamas and other extremist armed groups into the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which is dominated by the secular nationalist Al-Fatah party and is recognized as the sole official representative of the Palestinian people internationally. In the short term, this solution may not be feasible, because Hamas, still strong in its broad consensus, will have veto power. But in the long run, the integration of Hamas into the PLO may begin to heal the rift within the Palestinian national movement that has given Israel an excuse to refuse to engage in any negotiations. It is not an easy road, in fact it is very difficult, but if Hamas agrees to respect the agreements signed between Israel and the PLO, it will increase the chances of a lasting peace treaty.

At this point, however, as Joshua Leifer writes in a long and detailed article in the Guardian, it is unlikely that Hamas leaders in Gaza or abroad are willing to accept such a prospect. In early March, its representatives, as well as representatives of Al-Fatah and other Palestinian political factions, met in Moscow for reconciliation talks. Since the 2007 war between Hamas and Al-Fatah, there have been more than a dozen reunification attempts supported by various Arab and Muslim governments. None of them have ever resulted in a credible agreement. Netanyahu and the Israeli governments, which helped keep the Hamas administration in Gaza alive by facilitating the transfer of billions of dollars from Qatar to the Islamist group, will again play on Palestinian divisions, as they have in the past, to find no solution.