Reflections on Israel's response to Hamas and the future of conflict - opinion

It would appear that the terrorist atrocity committed by Hamas in Israel on October 7 has not lead to any significant change in the way that Israeli society thinks about the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The trauma is fresh and unfathomably profound.

Anger at Hamas is still intense and a strong urge to eliminate the brutal organization and all Palestinians [believed to be involved in jihad] is something shared by most Israelis; disappointment at Arab states and the Palestinian Authority’s refusal to stand on the side of basic human morality by condemning Hamas’s atrocities exacerbates the sense of existential dread that has characterized the Jewish people for so many generations.

The mass demonstrations against Israel, unprecedented in their intensity and hostility, on university campuses and in major cities across Europe and the United States, have deepened the sense among Israelis that “The whole world is against us” and that the Jewish people “shall dwell alone – am levadad yishkon.”

Once again, the Holocaust has become a means of explaining the huge blow and the massive humiliation we suffered as a clear and obvious example of antisemitism; as if nothing had changed since the days of the Holocaust and World War II, and as if the wonderful story of how the State of Israel bloomed during its 76 years of existence had never happened.

The sense of being besieged has returned and has revived old, familiar thought patterns. Israeli society is once again lining up in the same rigid ways of thinking and returning to the camps that defined it before October 7, with a clearer majority ruling out any agreement with the Palestinians than ever before.

All of this is happening at a time when Israel is the strongest nation in the region. It has strengths and capabilities that very few armies in the world possess. In the 76 years since it was established, the state has transformed, in part thanks to these capabilities. Israel’s enemies no longer threaten its existence.

In a matter of days, Israel managed to overcome a brutal surprise attack; it has, for many months, been housing and funding those of its citizens whose homes were destroyed in the Hamas attack or who were forced to leave their homes due to the proximity to the combat zones; and it has avoided a situation of mass emigration, something that is so prevalent in the reality of wars that have raged in various places in the world in recent years.

This strength, unfortunately, is also a central foundation on which Israel has based its strategy vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the past decade and a half, as the Palestinians do not pose any serious security threat to Israel. In fact, the Arab Spring forced Arab states to focus more on their domestic problems, and they started to view the Palestinian problem as a burden.

Over time, several Arab states agreed to sign normalization agreements with Israel, without preconditioning the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or Israel agreeing to the Arab Peace Initiative. This increased Israeli faith in the peace-for-peace formula, which defiantly ignores and sidelines the Palestinian issue.

The massive sense of frustration, therefore, over Israel’s failure to achieve its goals after more than almost nine months of fighting, and the heavy price we are paying in terms of fatalities, causalities, bereavement and loss, are causing sleepless nights for many Israelis. This is severely impinging on the sense of superiority that Israel felt thus far vis-à-vis the threats it faced.

What questions should we be asking?

Is it possible, therefore, that we are asking the wrong questions in our efforts to deal with the challenge we were presented with on October 7? Is it enough to focus on chasing down Hamas and looking for more targets to damage the organization more? The massacre the terrorist group perpetrated in Israel will without doubt go down as one of the most tragic and formative events in the annals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It’s not only because of the sense of humiliation it inflicted on us but also because it reinforced the understanding that the Palestinians will never abandon the path of violent struggle or their aspiration for the whole of Palestine – “From the river to the sea” – and also because of the regional, international, and global ramifications of the atrocity.

Should we wring our hands in grief at the wave of support that Hamas is enjoying among the Palestinian people and across the globe in the aftermath of the massacre that it committed? Should we argue that all the Palestinian are the same, that Fatah is Hamas and that Hamas is Fatah, thereby entrenching ourselves deeper in the sense of siege and readying ourselves for endless armed struggle?

To what extent do we analyze or are we even willing to think about Hamas’s motivation for the October 7 atrocity or what it genuinely thought that it could accomplish?

Can 3,000 or even 10,000 Hamas terrorists bring the mighty State of Israel to its knees or did Hamas have a different motive; a motive such as attrition, undermining Israel’s invincible image or sparking a process of collapse from within? Do terrorist organizations with religious motives not also pay attention to what is happening at any given time or place? Is the religious edict the ultimate value, which must be realized immediately and at any price? Or is there also room for discretion among religious fanatics?

On the other hand, the Hamas massacre also offers Israel an opportunity to bring about the end of the conflict, should the terrorist organization release all of the hostages. 

The Palestinian people – and supporters of Islamic movements across the Middle East – need to recognize that Hamas’s Islamic resistance is futile. They also need to show to the condescending and dismissive naysayers – who for years criticized the Palestinian Authority (PA) for showing signs of defeatism and undermining the Palestinian cause by recognizing Israel and signing peace treaties with it –  that it was all baseless bravado.

This can be achieved by continuing to apply military pressure against Hamas’s paramilitary and governmental infrastructure until it is completely dismantled and, at the same time, fully cooperating with the diplomatic proposals of the United States and the Arab states, including normalization and offering the Palestinians a political horizon.

In so doing, Israel would secure international and pan-Arab support, would gain legitimacy for its continued war against Hamas, would make a significant contribution to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and would reinforce the Palestinian and Arab understanding that no matter how determined the Islamist resistance is, it will never have the edge over Israel.

This is the most serious challenge that this war has created. It cannot be achieved without the full cooperation of the international channel. Answering this challenge will also go a long way to helping resolve the domestic differences within Israeli society.

The writer is a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies.