Can Netanyahu muster the strength to eliminate Hamas
Can Netanyahu muster the strength to eliminate Hamas? Hours after the extremist group Hamas attacked Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu promised that the group’s response would be nothing but destruction and that he would ensure the Gaza Strip would not return to its state before October 7, the day of Hamas’s attack on Israel.
Twenty days later, on October 27, the Israeli army launched a large-scale ground offensive in the Gaza Strip aiming for the complete destruction of Hamas. As a result of these attacks, irreparable damage was inflicted on the strategic centers of this extremist group, which is also listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.
About a month later, on Friday, November 24, Israel and Hamas agreed to a four-day ceasefire and the exchange of prisoners and hostages. This agreement was extended for another three days, but ultimately, the Israeli forces resumed their attack after a week, and it continues.
According to Palestinian officials, more than 18,000 people have been killed due to the Israeli army’s attacks. This situation has sparked international dissatisfaction among human rights activists in various countries and even among the country’s allies.
Hamas in Limbo
To what extent can Israel harm Hamas? Ryan Bell, a senior Middle East analyst at the RAINN Institute in America, says Israel can achieve its core objectives of suppressing Hamas and ending missile and rocket threats from the Gaza Strip. Moreover, with the Israeli army’s actions, a repeat of a ground attack by Hamas forces, like what we witnessed on October 7, will be impossible.
However, Hamas will remain as an underground ideological movement. They have bases in Lebanon and Syria, a political office in Qatar, and also receive support from Iran. Additionally, Palestinian survey results show that support for this group has increased in the West Bank. As a result, they will have multiple geographies from which they can coordinate operations with their military wing.
Hamas officials claim that the group’s destruction will not happen. Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the group’s political office, said on December 13 that the future of Gaza without Hamas is nothing but an illusion. However, on December 10, Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his initial promise, emphasizing that this war marks the beginning of the end for Hamas.
In discussions about the feasibility of destroying Hamas, some observers emphasize the ideology and belief that is seen among Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and other Palestinian territories. According to the results of a recent survey conducted by a Palestinian institute and published by the French news agency on December 13, with the continuation of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, not only has support for the extremist group Hamas not decreased in this area, but it has even increased. Meanwhile, more than 90% of participants in this survey want Mahmoud Abbas to step down as head of the Palestinian Authority.
Kawa Hassan, an Iraqi researcher at the Stimson Institute in Brussels, tells the media that history shows us that indiscriminate bombing campaigns against cities have never been able to push people to revolt against their own government. During World War II, Allied forces’ bombings of cities like Hamburg and Darmstadt, and during the Korean and Vietnam wars, the US bombings of these countries’ cities and the destruction of infrastructure and power cuts never achieved the intended goals of those powers.
Israel and the Time Constraint
Meanwhile, opposition to Israel is also increasing and expanding over the continuation of these attacks. On December 13, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Although this resolution was not binding, it reflected the global perception of this war.
Also, on the same day, Joe Biden, in unprecedented remarks, criticized the Netanyahu government’s strategies in this war. The US president noted that Netanyahu’s right-wing cabinet opposes the two-state solution idea and added that the continuation of this trend will lead to the loss of global support for Israel.
Some Israeli officials had predicted this situation from the beginning of the crisis. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak warned on November 7 that the country only has a few weeks to destroy Hamas, and after that, global public opinion pressure and criticism in the US will make it difficult for the Israeli army.
Eli Cohen, the country’s foreign minister, also said on November 13 that the Israeli army only has two to three weeks to complete the task in the Gaza Strip because, according to him, after that, international pressure against Jerusalem will increase.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu continues to repeat, as he did from the first day, that this war will be long but will ultimately lead to the end of Hamas. In this idea, Netanyahu probably has the support of a significant portion of his citizens. The Israel Democracy Institute conducted a survey among the country’s citizens after a week-long pause in the war in November, which showed that three-quarters of Israelis said the army’s offensive should continue regardless of global pressure.
Ryan Bell says that the United States hopes this war will end before January 2024, when the presidential election campaigns for the next year begin. Given the actions the Israeli army is taking, this timeline seems quite reasonable. As a result, it can be expected that Israel’s ground operations in the Gaza Strip will end in the coming weeks.
However, after that, the gap between Jerusalem and Washington will widen and may even reach its highest point because the two sides do not agree on the future of the Gaza Strip. Israelis, including opposition members, do not believe that the Palestinian Authority is a credible entity to manage the strip, while the United States welcomes the return of this group to Gaza. Therefore, we will witness the emergence of gaps between Washington and Jerusalem on a significant scale in 2024.
The Two-State Idea Remains Disfavored by Israel
From the early days of Israel’s ground attacks on the Gaza Strip and the emphasis on the country’s declared goal of destroying Hamas, many analysts have had differing opinions on the scope and extent of this destruction. While some Israeli officials talked about the complete destruction of this group, some observers spoke of the opposite effect of this operation.
Kawa Hassan is one of them who says the only way out of this disaster is to create a political split between Hamas and the civilian population. Meanwhile, the current indiscriminate bombing campaign by Israel has precisely the opposite effect, as it will produce more terrorists than killing Hamas forces and will radicalize not only Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank but also other groups in the Middle East and North Africa.
Some military figures also believe that finding the cause of the issue is more important than anything else, and eliminating it can lead to the non-repetition of this trend. Ben Hodges, a retired general and former commander of the US Army in Europe, told CNBC that to eliminate or destroy Hamas, Israel must eliminate its reason for existence, which means Israel must accept progress towards a two-state solution and the formation of an independent Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank. Yes, Hamas cannot have a leadership role in governing Gaza, but Israel’s refusal to accept the two-state solution keeps Hamas’s motivation to destroy Israel alive.
However, Israeli officials have recently expressed their strong opposition to the idea of forming two states. Israeli President Isaac Herzog explicitly opposed the two-state solution on December 15, adding that our nation is hurt, and as long as the pain and suffering of the Hamas attack on October 7 are alive in the public mind of Israel, it is not the time to talk about creating an independent Palestinian state.
Earlier, on December 14, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, said that the possibility of forming a Palestinian state does not exist and that Israel’s allies also oppose it. Although Hotovely’s remarks, who was previously the minister of settlement in one of Israel’s previous right-wing governments, faced negative global reactions, at least within Israel’s current cabinet, none of the country’s senior officials have made statements in favor of forming a Palestinian state.
Ryan Bell on the impact that the continuation of Israel’s military attacks can have on the future of the Gaza Strip, says Israelis can control and suppress aspects of large-scale militant actions, but they will also be engaged in an endless game of hunting down individual attackers, similar to the unrest before 2005, until Israel is convinced to withdraw from Gaza once again.
In such circumstances, and as 70 days have passed since the war in Gaza began, it is clear that the Israeli army has managed to inflict irreparable damage in terms of weaponry and organization on the extremist group Hamas. However, at the same time, the high number of civilian casualties, which increasingly draws global protests, positions Israel much more as responsible and guilty in this equation than in the early days after October 7. Moreover, contrary to Israel’s hope that this process would lead to deterrence, it is likely to spark a wave of anger and hatred among Palestinian survivors.
The recent events may temporarily marginalize Hamas in the Gaza Strip, but ignoring Palestinian demands and international requests will likely turn Palestinian territories into a boiling pot again, which could set the stage for a new round of violent incidents in the region.