The war will not end until major strategic issues are settled

Author: Akram Attaallah

The degree of superficiality in much of the analysis that accompanied this war cannot be separated from the prolongation of the campaign of annihilation. In this war, the Hamas movement chose to read and listen to what suited its own vision, or what comforted a leadership stunned by the fact that outcomes were being determined by military force rather than by conferences and wishes — outcomes that swept away a history of national action, swept away Gaza, and swept away the movement itself. Analyses predicting the war would end at any moment, or for external reasons, dominated major media outlets and the commentators who were summoned; they went in this direction either deliberately, or out of a superficiality that characterized the collective mindset for two years, or out of a desire to conjure hope from a darkness that was only deepening.
For Israel this was not a war like other wars, and it made no effort to hide that; from the first days it labeled it the “second War of Independence,” stating this plainly. That phrase was not treated as the most dangerous thing said in the conflict; rather, it early on defined the war’s trajectory and objectives. It required little explanation to see that this was a prime opportunity for an expansionist state surrounded by a number of enemies — a state that would not end its war without completing everything it had planned. It had at its disposal the necessary factors and capabilities: international sympathy and understanding, open weapon stockpiles, and an overwhelming military force backed by nuclear weapons and satellites.

The reality before us is that this state, accustomed to turning any crisis into an opportunity, exploited this war to pursue aims it could not previously have entertained. Policies and projects are born of political climates, and both Israel and its most shrewd prime minister recognize this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Can the war stop at this point, or will Israel complete what it has resolved to do, exploiting the circumstance that fell into its hands like Newton’s apple? Israeli planners believe that if the war stopped here, the axis opposed to them would be rebuilt, benefiting from an experience that dealt it painful blows but did not kill it; Hamas and its arsenal would remain capable of mounting a future “Al-Aqsa flood” even after decades. Why, then, would Israel accept that, particularly as what it achieved over the past two years has whetted its appetite to avoid leaving projects unresolved?

Oslo was driven by demographic anxiety — Israel’s fear of Palestinian numerical superiority that might produce an apartheid state ruled by a minority over a majority. That was a view set out by the Center for Contemporary Judaism from the 1980s, and four years later the National Security Studies Center published the intellectual outcome in a booklet titled “State of Gaza.” That scenario was realized to some extent as the number of Jews increased in the West Bank in the form of settlement blocs and populations. But political negotiations threatened the emergence of a Palestinian state by linking the West Bank and Gaza, which prompted the invention of a solution: fomenting or creating conditions for Hamas to expel the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority and take Gaza away from the authority’s umbrella and from the West Bank’s continuity.

Israel regarded this as a strategic solution, invested in it and exerted effort to sustain it; at times it even had to transfer funds to Hamas’s rule, preventing by all means any presence of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and negating any possibility of its return by exploiting Hamas’s political immaturity, emotionalism and ideological impulsiveness. But October 7 overturned everything, compelling Israel to reassert control over the Strip and its population — a population whose numbers rekindle Israel’s apartheid anxieties — in addition to Gaza’s historical role as a greenhouse for armed resistance against Israel and as a producer of militant factions.

Beyond Gaza’s Palestinian demographics, where the specter of displacement still looms and there is doubt Israel will relinquish that objective, Israel also regards Iran’s nuclear project as a decades‑long strategic threat and as an obsession of the past quarter century. It ranks alongside demographics among the threats surrounding Israel, and Israel has succeeded — exploiting circumstances — in pulling the United States toward striking the Iranian nuclear project and its reactors. Whether the wider regional war renews will depend in part on Iran’s ability to return to that project.

Could anyone have imagined a deal in which Netanyahu would renounce the deportation of Gaza’s million residents and the destruction of the city as a strategic project in exchange for ten hostages? Could anyone imagine Netanyahu would stop a war and set aside projects unresolved since 1948 — projects that exhausted Israel for years and nearly threatened it with the establishment of a Palestinian state under ideal conditions for its creation — for the sake of those hostages? After its ability to invade Gaza, Israel began to speak of control over the Strip and of guaranteeing Israel’s security for decades to come, as Gallant declared at the start of the war — would that be achieved if the war stopped now? Thus, all the analyses that encouraged Hamas and offered it superficial readings dealt it strategic harm that will not be healed. The prolongation of the war, Hamas’s failure to understand its ramifications and to act according to the realities on the ground were behind Israel’s achievements that have brought us to this impasse.

The bottom line is that Israel will not stop the war without resolving the strategic issues. This is what Hamas ought to have understood, rather than serving as the pretext for Israel’s success in settling those issues and achieving its gains.