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Mainstream, Vol 63 No 5,February 1, 2025

Both Israel, Hamas have lost the horrific Gaza bloodbath | M.R. Narayan Swamy

Saturday 1 February 2025, by M R Narayan Swamy

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Israeli is patting its back, and loudly, after almost decimating the Hamas in Gaza and the Hezbollah in Lebanon and contributing to the ouster of Basher al-Assad in Syria. The Hamas is jubilant that it survived the savage and punishing Israeli military onslaught that pulverized Gaza and is now going to get back thousands of Palestinians locked up in Israeli prisons.

To that extent, both sides can claim success – but these are, if anything, pyrrhic victories. In reality, neither Israel nor Hamas has won the bloody and cruel war that has claimed hundreds of Israeli and a staggering and shameful 47,000-odd Palestinian lives in just 15 months.

It is true that the Israel-Palestine conflict did not begin in October 2023. But it is equally a fact that the audacious Hamas attack on Israel that led to the slaughter of some 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and the abduction of 251 Israelis, again overwhelmingly civilian and including women and children, was a turning point in a lingering historical showdown.

As a journalist who has covered the Palestine National Council meeting and visited a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan and having interacted with senior Palestinian diplomats, I have always sympathized with the legitimate demand for a Palestinian homeland. But what Hamas did on October 7, 2023 is inexcusable. If the Hamas aggression can be condoned, then one will have to approve Israeli atrocities too. The Hamas not only wantonly killed mostly non-combatants but carried out abominable atrocities on Israeli civilians. I do not want to elaborate.

Of course, the Hamas, in the process, deeply humiliated Israel. A state which until then was too proud of its military and intelligence might, at times claiming that its intelligence could even tip off friendly Arab countries about imminent dangers, was caught with its pants down when some 3,000 Hamas fighters invaded Israel and unleashed misery.

That one single action almost destroyed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and left Israel with the stinking falling that it was not as impenetrable and infallible as it was thought. Israel may have beaten some Arab countries in war but a Palestinian group, determined and dogged, showed what it could do, using the same tools that has made Israel famous and infamous – meticulous intelligence gathering and action as well as stunning and shock tactics.

To that extent, Hamas is solely responsible for the Israeli reaction that followed. And Israel, with the brazen backing of the United States, unleashed a virtual pogrom on Gaza, punishing an entire population for the crimes of a few. In the process, the Gaza Strip has been reduced to rubble save some parts while nearly 47,000 people – men, women and children – have been killed. Thousands more have been wounded or maimed. And almost the entire Gaza population has been rendered homeless.

How did all this happen? Netanyahu and his core team always hated more than anyone else the one man who for long years was the face of the Palestinian resistance – the legendary Yasser Arafat, a long-time friend of India. After his death, Netanyahu and those like him ensured that the Fatah, which was founded by Arafat, and the later Palestinian Authority should be weakened. This in turn led to the steady growth of the more radical Hamas, which took control of Gaza in 2007 after violently crushing the rival Fatah-turned-Palestinian Authority.

Although Israel would keep bombing from the air whenever it felt the Hamas needed to be taught a lesson, Netanyahu allowed the Palestinian group to take roots in Gaza. This laid the foundation for the eventual catastrophe. In the process, the Israeli leader allowed Qatari money to finance the Gaza administration.

Over time, the Netanyahu administration came to believe that the Hamas, unlike outfits like the Islamic Jihad, wanted peace in the long run and would never pose any danger to Israel. It is this thinking that led to a terrible complacency that blinded the Israeli intelligence to ignore warnings and alerts from its own agents and soldiers to a military preparation by Hamas just across the border. So, when the Hamas attacked, the Israeli world came crashing down.

Israel may have virtually obliterated Gaza but it could not achieve two of its main objectives behind the war. One, it could not decimate Hamas although there is no doubt the group has suffered heavily. Two, it could not locate and free all the Israeli hostages. In the eventuality, partly due to the incoming US administration of Donald Trump, Netanyahu finally agreed to a deal that could have been reached earlier but for the Israeli leader’s bloated ego.

And as the scenes in Gaza that followed the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas showed, the latter is far from finished. Hundreds of its fighters in battle fatigues have returned to the streets while its uniformed policemen too are back on duty, directing civilians and motorists. The Gaza administration is still controlled by Hamas although the group has learnt that it cannot govern the Strip any more on its own. So, it is ready to shake hands with the Palestinian Authority, whose fighters it once pushed to death from rooftops of high-rise buildings. But Netanyahu continues to hate the Palestinian Authority, which governs West Bank, and has ruled out any role for it in Gaza.

The Hamas attack on Israel has caused immense suffering to the Palestinian population in Gaza. But for the October 2023 aggression, the thousands who perished would have been alive today and the large mass who were wounded and maimed and also left homeless would not be suffering. The Hamas can pat its back for surviving the Israeli military machine as well as for forcing the release of the hundreds from Israeli jails; but was this colossal punishment of Gaza worth a price for this?

On its part, Israel has lost whatever remained of its moral sheen following the Gaza destruction. Israelis are now unwanted in many countries. It has also lost the diplomatic support of many more countries. No country, barring perhaps Iran, supported the Hamas attack on Israel; at the same time, no country was ready to condone what Israel did to Gaza and its innocent people. To add insult to injury, Trump is now gloating that he wants Palestinians to quit Gaza for good and resettle in Egypt and Jordan. The point is not whether this can even happen but the plight to which a perennially stateless people has been reduced to.

After 15 months of a bloody twist in a lingering dispute, the Middle East remains a tinderbox it always was. Israel is not ready to accept a two-state solution, partly because it knows it can have its way thanks to Washington; the Hamas or anyone else can no more replicate October 2023. The Hamas will also know that once all the Israeli hostages go home, nothing will prevent Israel from resuming its war to destroy it. If that happens, whatever the trigger, genuine or fake, the Trump administration will only be too happy to back Tel Aviv. My fear is that the present truce will collapse, sooner than later. If that does happen, it will be a monumental tragedy.

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