NETANYAHU IS DESTROYING GAZA, BUT NOT HAMAS

As of the declaration of the humanitarian cease-fire last Friday, several things about the current conflict are clear, and none of them are to Israel’s benefit.

Carpet bombing north Gaza with 2,000-pound bombs that destroy an entire block is creating a situation that looks more and more to the rest of the world like the Waffen SS destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. With the IDF playing the role of the Waffen SS.

Against 1,200 Israelis and others who were killed on October 7 by Hamas, the death toll in Gaza now approaches 16,000 according to informed estimates. There is no way to avoid the question of proportionality, which is crucial in legitimizing ant-terrorist operations; the U.S. response to 9/11 in the wars fought in Iraq and Afghanistan stand as stark reminders of this. Given that the overwhelming number of dead in Gaza are women, children, and the elderly, it is clear that the assault is not achieving its goal of destroying Hamas, and every dead mother, brother, sister, uncle, or grandparent leads to more opposition to those who dropped the bombs.

In less than two months, Israel has killed more civiliansin Gaza than Russia has killed in nearly two years of war in Ukraine.“Even a conservative assessment of the reported Gaza casualty figures shows that the rate of death during Israel’s assault has few precedents in this century,” The New York Times reports.

Hamas facilities have certainly been destroyed, but there is little evidence that they have included alleged “nerve centers” that Israeli leaders claim exist under the hospitals and schools that they have attacked, most notably the Al-Shifa hospital where several hundred patients died in the IDF’s attack and siege. IDF attempts to “prove” the existence of these “command centers” have failed with representatives of international media.

In the seven weeks of this war, in the face of the IDF campaign to destroy Gaza, Hamas has grown more popular in the West Bank. IDF-supported attacks by the lunatic fundamentalist (largely American) settlers there have now resulted in the deaths of over 200 Palestinians. This is the exact opposite of the political situation the Israelis want, and the current Netayahu extremist government coalition is incapable of reining in the settler crazies, since the leaders of these domestic terrorists are important members of that governing coalition, without whose support Netanyahu cannot survive in office.

“The problem they have, which is the problem that they have had from Day One, is that the Israelis don’t have a strategy for doing what they want to do that does not harm, kill and expel a lot of Palestinians from Gaza,” an advisor to the Biden administration was quoted as saying in The Washington Post,

These facts are leading directly to a situation where Israel finds itself increasingly isolated from the rest of the world. Support for the country will continue to plummet. Reuters reported a survey conducted just before Thanksgiving, showing only 32 percent of Americans now back Israel, down from 41 percent immediately after the October 7 massacre. “U.S. public support for Israel's war against Hamas militants in Gaza is eroding and most Americans think Israel should call a ceasefire to a conflict that has ballooned into a humanitarian crisis.”

While Hamas would like to extend the ceasefire, as was done for an additional two days this morning, and will likely dangle continuing hostage releases to stretch it throughout this week, the Netanyahu coalition has a goal of getting as many hostages freed as possible and then resuming the war. Israel wants to end the current ceasefire and then force hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have sought refuge in southern Gaza into a so-called “safe zone” in Muwasi, a 14 square kilometer area in the south-west of the Gaza territory. Then, they plan to carry out carpet bombing similar to that in northern Gaza. There is no place in southern Gaza - which is now filled with nearly 2 million displaced refugees from North Gaza who are mostly living in the open - where such an attack would not create a condition worse than the north.

That’s the sum total of Netanyahu’s plan to “win”: institute a bombing campaign even worse and more ineffective that what he unleashed in the north. In the aftermath of something like this, Israel could end up diplomatically isolated as countries they need on their side find themselves unable to continue such relations. Isolating themselves thus would then make Israel vulnerable to the people who really don’t want to see the Jewish state continue to exist.

In fact, there are more good arguments in favor of Israel taking advantage of the current ceasefire than there are against such action, at least for those who actually might want to see Israel survive as its better self. Turning this pause into a permanent ceasefire would be in Israel’s strategic best interest.

Israel has significantly degraded the capabilities of Hamas, but it has not destroyed Hamas. Nor is it likely that Israel can destroy Hamas.

If Israel doesn’t recognize these facts on their own, they will find themselves in a worse place. A growing number of American political leaders are now calling for an immediate ceasefire, an end to attacks on hospitals and civilians, and unhindered humanitarian access. They want to condition aid to Israel, something previously unthinkable in American politics. (In fact, Israel was finally brought around to agreeing to the current ceasefire when conditioning future aid on the decision was made part of the backroom bargaining process.)

This past November 18, Senator Bernie Sanders called for conditioning the $3.8 billion Israel receives from the US each year, as well as the $14.3 billion aid package President Joe Biden wants Congress to approve, saying, “The Netanyahu government, or hopefully a new Israeli government, must understand that not one penny will be coming to Israel from the U.S. unless there is a fundamental change in their military and political positions.”

Sanders called for an end to indiscriminate bombing, the right of displaced Gazans to return to their homes; no long-term Israeli re-occupation or blockade of Gaza; an end to settler violence in the West Bank and a freeze on settlement expansion; and a commitment to broad peace talks for a two-state solution in the wake of the war.

Conditioning aid is likely the only way the Israelis will ever take steps to rein in the out-of-control fundamentalist settler movement.

Senator Chris Murphy (D.-CT) has issued his own, similar calls for conditioning aid. “I do believe that the level of civilian harm inside Gaza has been unacceptable and is unsustainable. I think there’s both a moral cost to this many civilians, innocent civilians, children often, losing their life, but I think there’s (also) a strategic cost. Ultimately, Hamas will get stronger, not weaker, in the long run if all of this civilian death allows them to recruit more effectively and ably inside Gaza.”

Such approaches offer a much better chance of bringing stability to Gaza and security for Israel. It could allow Israel to conduct targeted attacks on Hamas (as it has done for those who conducted previous terrorist attacks), allow for an extended IDF presence in Gaza but without the current levels of military attacks, and allow for a comprehensive, multi-national effort to rebuild Gaza (including rebuilding the 50 to 60 percent of Gazan housing Israel has destroyed). It could help Israel restart diplomatic relationships with its Arab neighbors, which are now in disarray.

None of this will be easy. But it is more promising that the current tactics-as-strategy approach Israel now uses.

The road to greater security for Israel may well begin with American political leaders who are courageous enough and smart enough to condition aid.

There is an additional overarching argument in favor of extending the ceasefire: both Hamas and Netanyahu will cease to exert the malign power they have jointly held over the situation.

Over the years since each became prominent political forces in their respective communities, Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas have each prospered by the other’s existence. But now that each is failing to achieve their stated goals in the current conflict, they now cannot be mistaken for other than the failures they are.

Netanyahu’s own mouthpiece, Israel Hayom, started by U.S. casino mogul Sheldon Adelson to promote Netanyahu’s ideas, said in a front page editorial in early November that Netanyahu should “lead us to victory and then go.”

The editors made clear that Netanyahu didn’t anticipate the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Anger across the political spectrum has driven Netanyahu’s support to historic lows; only 25 percent of voters now say he is the most suitable politician to be prime minister

With Hamas leaders, after directing the attack that killed at least 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, being bombed and hunted in a campaign that has drastically increased the suffering of the Palestinians they claim to lead, some Gazans have taken the rare step of publicly criticizing Hamas for the October attack and leaving civilians exposed to military onslaught.

“I’m not afraid to say it: We don’t want Hamas, and not just because of the war, but for years,” said Ahmad, 44, a pharmacist from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, is quoted as saying in a recent Washington Post story. “The lack of competent governance has left us in poverty and misery, exacerbated by this devastating war. Israel’s actions spare no one, regardless of being affiliated with Hamas or not.”

If their own supporters are beginning to turn against each of them, their respective years in the catbird seat are numbered.

Netanyahu and Hamas have been the two greatest stumbling blocks to making any sustained movement to create a peace process that can work. Sidelining both is the road toward a future for both peoples.

Extending the ceasefire and providing serious international support for renewed effort at creating the “two state solution” as it could have been in 1995 when Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli extremist, conditioning aid to both sides on continued progress toward this goal, could defang both Netanyahu and the crazy settlers, and the Hamas jihad militants. In the end, both groups of people would choose to stop killing each other if they could see a stable situation being created to the benefit of both.

Such a possibility is yet another reason the threat of Trump must be defeated in this coming year.

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