Guest Post: "The bombs come from Israel, but Gaza's misery is due to Gaza's rulers"

Israeli forces strike Gaza (Source: AP) 

Adam Taylor

As a Canadian living in Israel for many years, I’ve worked hard to try and maintain a balanced perspective in a place where opinions often come one-sided and red hot. When so much is at stake, it often serves the interest of parties to conflate and exaggerate their side of the narrative to help sway opinion both on the street and in the halls of power.

The Israeli-Arab conflict is complex, multi-faceted and reaches far back into history. Writing about it cannot and should not be undertaken lightly – but unfortunately headlines regarding the conflict sell papers and push traffic to websites and the result is often the blunt, biased and uninformed articles that are commonplace. 

The Israeli government is currently selling the war based on the transparent reason of 'protecting citizens from rocket fire'. While protecting citizens and the integrity of its borders is no doubt a factor, I’d suggest that at the least the government drew Hamas into the conflict. This can be seen as part of a policy response of spoiling the new Hamas tactic, based on the organization’s flying success with the Shalit negotiations, of winning concessions by kidnapping Israelis.

You may remember that Israel arrested hundreds of Hamas members following the kidnapping of the three Israeli teenagers - including hundreds that had been freed as part of the Shalit deal – and this was part of that same policy response. This part at least, I'm sure, was part of a well-formulated strategy that Israel would have promulgated after they released 1000 Palestinians in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011.

Moreover, the Israeli government may have welcomed the coming conflict with Hamas on a different level.

Hamas is politically very weak these days (more on that below) and Israel could be seeking to take advantage of their weakness to do some 'pruning' around Gaza - destroy rocket launchers, kill a few leaders, keep the organization in some disarray and generally avail themselves of the favorable political climate that Israel currently finds itself in.

Just as importantly, Israel probably also welcomed the conflict as an opportunity to further weaken Hamas and the reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah. It could do this by showing Hamas as violent and disruptive,  in stark contrast to the mostly quiet relations between Israel and the Palestinians that is du jour in the West Bank.

Further, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu seems most comfortable operating under the dictum that his citizenry can be best controlled by keeping them afraid while selling them security, and it's quite possible that he's slipped into the conflict because it’s familiar territory and an easy place to fend off challenges from the right wing -- where his coalition is weakest -- and garner support among the populace for the next election. Support for the conflict in Israel is high, despite people's unease with Palestinian casualties.

I've always said that Netanyahu is a masterful politician, if a reprehensible human being. 

Now for Hamas.

As mentioned, they're isolated - Iran hasn't transferred funds as it's cross with them for failing to support Assad in Syria. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood - Hamas' ally and organization from which it originated - is a rival to the current Egyptian government, has been declared illegal and has gone underground. Many of its leaders have been jailed.

Under normal circumstances during a conflict with Israel, Hamas could count on pressure from Hezballah on Israel’s northern border, but this time around Hezballah is spread too thin in efforts to help prop up President Assad in Syria and fending off the threat from ISIS (or IS, or whatever they are now), whose presence has finally begun to be felt in Beirut. Imagine Hezballah as the moderate fending off a threat from a more extreme Islamic group!

Hamas' decision to launch rockets from Gaza might be a last ditch effort to show the world that it's the only real resistance to 'the Zionist entity'. In that respect, it still enjoys wide-spread support on the Arab street, from what I've seen. So it's an attempt to gain support, increase relevancy, and (as I saw one journalist put it) 'reshuffle the deck' to perhaps stave off its own coming demise. I've also read that the reconciliation agreement itself was also a last ditch attempt to stave off its own demise. 

In fact, they don't really have any options besides portraying themselves as 'the resistance'. Friendless and penniless, they're in a corner. In a very real sense, all they've got left is their rockets in the basement.

This lack of options, and their lack of anything resembling any sort of 'victory' in the current fighting, explains their rejection of Monday’s ceasefire - accepting it would simply validate the idea that they led Gazans to another costly, miserable war with nothing to show for it - a complete surrender, essentially. That would not likely help their position, already perilous, in the months to come. 

On the other hand, if Hamas can lure Israelis into more strikes and even a ground assault, it might be able to paint Israel in the 'best' negative light by playing up Gazan casualties.

In this regard we can be sure: Hamas wants as many Gazan deaths as possible, the more the merrier, as it's the only way they can hope to gain a victory: by swinging the international narrative towards Gaza as poor and repressed and Israel as mighty and terrible and murderous -- even as they domestically try and bolster resistance by saying that all Gazans welcome death and martyrdom.

It's worth noting the absurdity here: Israel has an incentive to limit casualties for moral reasons. In fact, as an article in Business Insider last week suggested, Israel has raised moral standards in its efforts to warn civilians of impending attacks.

Israel also wants to minimize casualties because of the PR war - Israel needs as few deaths in Gaza as possible while Hamas needs as many as possible.

The Israel Defence Force's activity on Twitter is putting a lot of energy into showing how it is protecting civilian life in Gaza. Meanwhile, Hamas is playing up the body count, asking civilians to go to rooftops when air strikes are incoming, as well as asking civilians to ignore Israeli pamphlets requesting that they flee their homes for their own safety.

Perversely, Israel's incredible Iron Dome missile defense system, which has mostly keep Israelis safe, makes it easier for Hamas to promote its own version of the conflict.

Here's another example, just to demonstrate the absurdity of the whole situation.

Israel supplies Gaza with power - to run its sewage plants and provide fresh water, for example. A couple of days ago Hamas hit the infrastructure with a rocket, knocking out their own power supply. 

This is potentially useful PR for Hamas as it increases the likelihood of Gazan misery being portrayed internationally - so of course Israel has had to work, under rocket fire, to restore electricity to the people firing the rockets at them!

Anyway, the long and short of it is that it's a complex mess. In general terms, Israel is playing chess while Hamas is playing checkers.

The fact remains that Hamas frequently violates Israeli sovereignty. It's also very important to note that, despite the unbalanced nature of the conflict, Hamas has had the better part of nine years to concentrate on building a better home and future for Gazans. Instead they've used that time and energy into stockpiling and firing rockets -- most of the rocket fire over the years never makes international media.

All of this rocket firing is based on Hamas' delusion that it might sweep the Jews into the sea and wipe Israel from the map.

Contrast this to the Iraqi Kurds, for example, who have quietly built the functioning infrastructure of a state-within-a-state over the years while consciously never engaging in terrorism. Today, Kurdistan is on the cusp of independence.

Gaza would be far better off if they concentrated on building their state and looking after the well-being of their people - not armed resistance. While the bombs come from Israel, Gazan misery is due to Gaza's rulers.

Adam Taylor is a writer and analyst living in Israel. He writes about politics, finance and economics of Israel and the Middle East. He can be reached at: thedesertprince@gmail.com and on Twitter : @grayzies