A number of commentators allege that Iran prompted the Hamas attack on Israel. Their reason is that Iran wants to disrupt the three-party negotiations of the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia to achieve an Israel-Saudi rapprochement and a United States-Saudi security arrangement. Commentators are unlikely to believe Iran’s disclaimer of involvement in the Hamas attack.
Iran’s long-time support of Hamas is well known. Iran has been generous with monetary and military assistance, including advisors. Nevertheless, Iran’s disclaimer is believable. If Iran prompted the Hamas attack, it would be concerned that U.S. intelligence learned of it, although too late to alert Israel, or might learn of it after the fact. Either way, that intelligence finding would serve to support negotiations, though perhaps deferred for a short time to placate anger in the Arab world at Israel’s “siege” of Gaza. For the U.S. would make its intelligence findings known to Saudi Arabia, with the message that they confirmed Saudi’s fears of Iranian subversion and confirmed its need for a rapprochement and security arrangement. The Iranians, fearing discovery of any involvement making that three-party negotiation more likely to achieve success, would refrain from involvement.
If this line of reasoning is plausible, it implies that Hamas acted independently and, so it appears, impulsively out of frustration and fecklessness, without any discernible military purpose, only the desire to kill or capture civilians. Hamas has been the de facto government in Gaza since 2005, when Israel withdrew. In 2006, Gazans elected Hamas, not the Palestine Authority, to represent them, but they have had no chance to change their minds. Since 2007, Hamas has governed Gaza despotically, with its primary mission the elimination of Israel and the exile or extermination of its Jewish population. The welfare of Gazan civilians is of secondary concern, with the result that Hamas military personnel and weaponries are sited amongst the civilian population. Hamas, relying on Israeli military forces’ efforts to minimize or avoid civilian casualties, risks Gazan civilian casualties in using civilians as human shields against attacks. (Those who accuse Israel of indifference to Arab lives do not acknowledge that Hamas could not use civilians as human shields if Israeli forces were indifferent to Arab lives.)
Moreover, Hamas has no Plan B, unless that simply is to engage Israeli forces in high-casualty urban warfare. Israel is unlikely to engage Hamas in this way, though it may use commando forces to attack specific targets. More likely, by attacking civilian infrastructure in a “siege”—that is, destroying shipping facilities, fuel depots, power facilities, and water purification plants, and disrupting food and perhaps medical supplies—, Israeli forces will attempt to turn the civilian population against Hamas. But the human costs will be very great and very well known to the world.
In all likelihood, pressure will once again be brought to bear on Israel to relent and return to a hostile interval deferring a repetition of hostilities to some unknowable date. What began with a bang will end with a whimper, until the cycle begins all over again. One step toward an alternative to this deadly cycle is the neutralization or elimination of Hamas as an active player in Middle East politics. How neutralization or elimination is to be achieved—that is the question. Israel’s “siege” of Gaza may or may not be the answer. Those who oppose this answer are obliged to suggest something which does not kick the can down the road, perhaps at even far greater costs in lives.
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