On 7 October Israel vowed to destroy Hamas. To eradicate it as an organization. To neuter it as a military force, political movement, and governing entity. More recently Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in true mob boss style, stated that he had given Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, orders to assassinate all Hamas leaders residing in exile.
Fifty days into this war, how close is Israel to achieving its objectives? The short answer is that it requires zero knowledge of military affairs to conclude that 1) Israel’s proclaimed objectives are unattainable, and 2) Israel has additionally failed to significantly degrade either Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
The elimination of Hamas is unattainable for several reasons. Most importantly, unlike for example ISIS or the European Union, Hamas has – much like the IRA/Sinn Fein or Facebook, in the decades since its establishment in 1988 become deeply rooted within society, and today exists wherever Palestinian communities are to be found. So even if Israel succeeded in eradicating Hamas from the Gaza Strip – or, more accurately, driving it underground – the organization will survive in the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan, and elsewhere. Indeed, the combined efforts of Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank since 2007 have yet to succeed in eliminating either its military, political, or social presence. FYI it is now 2023.
Previous campaigns to eradicate Palestinian movements have not only generally failed, but as a rule enhanced their stature. The scale of the current onslaught has catapulted Hamas’s stature to unprecedented levels among Palestinians, and indeed among Arabs and in the Global South more generally. That’s not a challenge that can be resolved by a fleet of F-35s armed with tons of high explosives.
Israel’s extraordinary
self-regard and capacity for self-glorification notwithstanding, the
elimination of Hamas is a non-starter, least of all at the hands of the
thoroughly mediocre Israeli military and intelligence capabilities
revealed on 7 October.
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