REPOST

Hamas in Gaza: Who are the puppet masters?

Serious Means for Serious Ends

Vincent J. Curtis                                                                       23 July 2014

 

War is a serious means for attaining serious ends.  The waves of rocket attacks by Hamas against Israel are certainly serious means, but what serious end is in view for Hamas?

Territorial gain cannot be the goal, certainly not the immediate goal of the acts of war committed by Hamas against Israel.  For the foreseeable future, Hamas and the Palestinian people they govern will be confined to the Gaza strip, a well-defined piece of territory.  Israel would gain no respite should territory be ceded to Hamas as a gesture, and Hamas lacks the military power to seize and hold Israeli territory.  Gain of territory cannot be the serious end in view. 

The sheer inconveniencing of Israeli citizens and Israeli commerce, while it may be occurring, is not a serious goal because it cannot be maintained.  It is not a step towards something higher.  Israeli retaliation against Gaza makes that goal not a paying proposition in the interim.

The declared goal of Hamas is the complete destruction of the Israeli state, and these rocket attacks will not achieve that.  Israel is not going to surrender to Hamas because of these attacks.  Indeed, the success of the Iron Dome anti-missile system is making Hamas’s barrages look feeble.  On the other hand, serious destruction is being meted out by Israel against Gaza.  Air attacks, artillery, and now a ground invasion of Gaza by Israel provoked by the Hamas rocket offensive is proving what an illusion it was to believe that Israel would surrender to a rocket barrage.

What goals could possibly be aimed at by Hamas, since neither the surrender of Israel, the gain of territory, retaliation, nor the relief of other pressures by Israel is in the offing?

Several goals come to mind.  The first is that Hamas is proving its worth to its supporters and paymasters.  Israel is hated by many other countries in the Middle East; the destruction of Israel is the declared national goal of Iran, for example.  Hamas did not build the missiles it is firing into Israel.  The missiles Hamas is launching into Israel had to be supplied by someone, and manufactured somewhere other than Gaza.

A missile capable of reaching Tel Aviv from Gaza takes up a lot of space.  Thousands of rockets somehow had to be transported by sea and delivered to Gaza through an efficient Israeli naval blockade.  This fact suggests that the missiles were delivered through Egypt and moved past the border controls between Egypt and Gaza.  These missiles would not have been delivered to Gaza at such cost and risk unless it was understood that Hamas would launch them against Israel.  Thus Hamas is acting as an agent to the state which supplied them the missiles.  It is doing what is expected of it.

 

The benefit to the state which supplied Hamas the missiles is that it gets to see Israel harassed at no physical cost to itself.  It is the Gazans who suffer Israel’s wrath, not Iran for example.

Hamas also is enforcing its control over the Palestinians of Gaza.  The goal that Israel must be destroyed is resisted at the cost of one’s life in Gaza.  Hamas will tolerate no dissent, on this point above all.  The Palestinians of Gaza have been dragooned into a war with Israel.  They are obliged to use their women and children as human shields protecting Hamas’s missile storage sites, an act contrary to the Geneva Conventions.  Being able to show civilian casualties to the world and offering these as examples of Israeli brutality is another goal of Hamas in this campaign.

Who would be convinced by such a thing?  The scenes of destruction and the sight of wounded children have certainly raised emotions all around the world.  Emotions would most likely be raised favorably for Hamas among those who are already convinced of the evil of Israel.

Thus Hamas by this rocket offensive against Israel is proving its worth as an agent and client of its supporters.  It is demonstrating its power over the Palestinians of Gaza by dragooning them into the war with Israel.

But Gaza and its Palestinian population clearly are things to be used by Hamas.  The destruction of Gaza and the creation of misery for its population are useful to Hamas since it can justify repression of dissent as a necessary war emergency.

Hamas governs Gaza, but to the benefit of itself not to the benefit of the people of Gaza.

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