A year on, Israel’s Gaza objectives far from attainable
Gazans’ plight deepens as no sign of abatement in the offing
Cairo: Close on the heels of Hamas’s October 7 surprise attack in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed “mighty vengeance for this wicked day”.
The Israeli prime minister has since promised traumatised Israelis a “total victory”. The promised victory would entail Hamas’s crushing and the release of hostages the Islamist group seized during the October attacks. Netanyahu has ostensibly kept his word on the “mighty vengeance” — but is still falling short of grasping “total victory”.
Shuddering evidence abounds.
Humanitarian catastrophe
A year after Israel unleashed its relentless aerial and ground campaigns in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the October assaults, the densely populated enclave has been the target of massive-scale devastation, reducing most of it to rubble and spawning a humanitarian catastrophe.
Most of its 2.5 million population have been repeatedly displaced and many are at the risk of famine, according to international aid groups.
“More than 2 million Palestinians are without protection, food, water, sanitation, shelter, health care, education, electricity and fuel – the necessities to survive. Families have been forcibly displaced, time and time again, from one unsafe place to the next, with no way out,” the UN-led humanitarian grouping, IASC, said in September.
“The risk of famine persists with all 2.1 million residents still in urgent need of food and livelihood assistance as humanitarian access remains restricted,” it added.
Nearly 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly civilians, have been killed and more than 96,000 others injured in the ongoing Israeli onslaught, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
“The speed and scale of the killing and destruction in Gaza are unlike anything in my years as Secretary-General,” said the UN chief Antonio Guterres who has been in the post since 2017.
Israel said Hamas had killed 1,200 mostly civilians, and abducted 253 hostages in the October attacks. Israeli leaders also accused Hamas of weaponising sexual violence and beheading babies, accusations that the Palestinian group has denied.
Hostages’ fate in limbo
A year on, 109 of the hostages have walked out free through a sole exchange deal with Hamas, or Israeli rescue operations.
The rest are believed to have been dead or still alive in the devastated Gaza amid faltering attempts to negotiate their release as part of a hitherto-elusive ceasefire deal. Both Israel and Hamas have blamed each other for the stalled mediation efforts that the US, Egypt and Qatar have led for months.
Israel’s international image has also suffered due to its use of excessive force and the high numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza.
Despite the sufferings on both sides of the conflict, the war is grinding on.
Israel said it killed thousands of Hamas fighters and senior commanders in targeted hits, and degraded the group’s military capabilities. Israel is also believed to stand behind the assassination of the ex-Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31.
In a sign of a flexible chain of command, Hamas swiftly put Yehia Al Sinwar, the architect of the October assault, at its helm. Al Sinwar is thought to be hiding inside a network of tunnels somewhere in Gaza.
With all the sophisticated planning and stunning performance manifested in the Hamas operation last October, Israel’s military supremacy over the group need not be overemphasised. The group is all but certain not to return to power to post-war Gaza that it ruled following a 2007 takeover from the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas cannot be written off yet, though. Its fighters continue to claim attacks on Israeli forces. As things stand, the group’s say is also crucial for the fate of the hostages. Their release, it seems, would only be secured through a negotiated deal with Hamas, not through dueling.
While Hamas’s critics blame it for sparking the devastating Israeli military retaliation and exacting a high price from Gazans, its loyalists credit it with putting the Palestinian problem and the two-state solution back in international spotlight after years of inattention.
At the end of the day, and as the EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell put it, Hamas is an idea, and you cannot kill an idea. “The only way of killing an idea – a bad idea - is to propose a better one, to give a horizon to the Palestinian people, to their dignity, to their freedom, to their security, which has to go hand in hand with the security of Israel,” said Borrell whose bloc has designated Hamas a terror organisation.
Alas, no prospect is in sight of an end to this gory nightmare without serious international pressure, mainly from the US. This is unlikely before the US presidential election due in November. Israel and Hamas, meanwhile, appear engaged in a bone-crushing and attrition war.
Region teeters on the brink
Ominously, the spectre of a wider regional conflict looms larger. Lebanon is already caught in the vortex. The September 27 assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the long-time leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah militia in an Israeli airstrike in a Beirut suburb has fanned fears of a full-blown war and an orgy of multi-front violence.
After a year-long bloodshed, Netanyahu continues to stick to his guns literally and figuratively.
“All that has to happen” to end the Gaza war “is for Hamas to surrender, lay down its arms, and release all the hostages,” Netanyahu said at the UN General Assembly on September 27. “If they do not, we will fight until we achieve total victory, there is no substitute,” he added.
Ironically, even if this “total victory” is eventually accomplished, it will be a pyrrhic victory. Gaza’s unfolding misery should leave no one in doubt about this.