When diplomacy fails to deliver in the Middle East, other options come to the fore, usually in some form of violence practiced in different ways by both sides. The current violence is by Israel’s armed forces, which are waging a fierce and disproportionate attack against mostly unarmed civilians in the Gaza Strip — killing hundreds at a time, injuring thousands, and destroying huge elements of the Palestinian civilian infrastructure — for the fifth or sixth time in the past 50 years. This follows Israel’s strangulation of the territory that causes hardships for every civilian by reducing the flow of food, medicine and essential needs.
Hamas wages war for its part by firing its imprecise homemade rockets into southern Israel, which traumatise Israelis more than they actually hurt or kill them. It used to send suicide bombers into Israel, killing scores at a time, but this tactic receded in recent years — though it may reappear again in response to the Israeli attack on Gaza.
If we wish to chart a way out of the cycle of death and destruction, the critical first step is to acknowledge that we are faced with an active war waged by two parties, using very different tools and tactics. Blaming Hamas only — as the Israelis and the United States continue to do — is a sure formula for intensifying the fighting, rather than reducing it. Recent decades have proven this beyond doubt.
The prevalent Israeli-orchestrated theme — parroted most shamefully by an emasculated American media and political elite — is that Hamas fires rockets at Israel without provocation, after Israel left the Gaza Strip a few years ago. The reality is that Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza, but has waged relentless, brutal war against Gaza’s people and its Hamas leaders, through economic blockades, assassinations, bombings, and other means.
Active, bilateral Palestinian-Israeli warfare — not unilateral Hamas rocketry — is the correct context in which to understand and analyse the current situation. The problem that Israel faces is the same one that has faced all colonial regimes or foreign invaders throughout history — its use of massive military force against a weaker, mostly defenceless civilian population over time only generates a fiercer will to resist.
More problematic is that Jews themselves, throughout history, have used guerrilla and terror tactics similar to those used by Hamas today. The best examples are probably the pre-1948, pre-state days when Zionist terror groups attacked both Palestinian and British targets, and the 2nd century BC Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid-Hellenist rulers of the region, when the Jewish priest Mattathias and his five sons successfully led forces using guerrilla tactics that would be called terrorism today. (The victory, which founded the Hasmonean dynasty, is celebrated annually as Hanukkah).
Olmert, Livni, Barak and other Israeli leaders suffer the same quandary that plagued the Seleucid Emperor in 167 BC at the start of the Maccabean Revolt — indigenous political and military forces fighting against foreign domination enjoy a legitimacy that cannot be eliminated by military force. The more the foreign imperial or colonial oppressor uses military power against the indigenous guerrillas and their society, the stronger the guerrillas emerge, and the more support they gain among the civilian population for what becomes a war of resistance, survival, and, ultimately, national liberation.
It is a perplexing sign of sheer stupidity, blindness or massive collective amnesia among Israelis today that they cannot see the parallels between their Jewish liberation struggle in the historic land of Palestine and the current liberation struggle that is now led almost solely by Hamas. They cannot crush, eliminate or decapitate Hamas. They can only come to terms with it, and negotiate an end to violence by both sides.
Imperial power and indigenous nationalism can go on fighting for decades, to no avail. The answer in cases like this requires several known steps: Both sides must reach the point where they admit that military power cannot resolve political-national disputes. Both sides admit they can go on fighting for many years, and that a negotiated compromise for coexistence is the only possible humane and lasting resolution to a war between two legitimate populations and fighting forces. This is what happened in Vietnam, Northern Ireland, South Africa and many other conflicts where rational leaders asserted themselves over the depraved criminals, stubborn fools, and sick killers in their midst.
Hamas and Israel will fight for some time; then they will agree to a ceasefire. This will only confirm what we already know — but what Israelis and their mostly mindless, shameless, and spineless American sidekicks refuse to admit.
Hamas and Israel have proven their manhood, their political legitimacy, their staying power, their technical prowess, and their capacity to kill civilians. Now they have to agree on a long-term ceasefire, and let the new political landscape of the Arab-Israeli conflict play itself out in an arena where sensible statesmen and stateswomen prevail — rather than the fools and charlatans who reign today.
Rami G Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon