Did Hamas really win in Gaza?
Jan 25th, 2009 by MESH
From Mark N. Katz
With the fighting over in Gaza (at least for now), many see Hamas emerging as the victor in the same way that Hezbollah did in the war it fought with Israel in the summer of 2006. But did Hamas really win? Is it better off now than before the fighting began?
Just like Hezbollah in 2006, Hamas has survived its January 2009 conflict with Israel. Also like Hezbollah, Hamas has retained—and perhaps even increased—its control over its core constituency. In another similarity with Hezbollah in 2006, the 2009 conflict with Israel has increased Hamas’s status throughout the Arab and Muslim world. Also like before, criticism in the West and elsewhere has focused on the damage caused by Israel, and not the damage done to it.
Further, Hamas can probably still launch missile attacks on Israel just like Hezbollah can. Finally, Hamas has reportedly begun to rebuild the Israeli-damaged tunnels it uses to smuggle weapons from Egypt into Gaza.
But just how impressive are these achievements? Like Hezbollah, Hamas survived an Israeli onslaught. But also like Hezbollah, Hamas was unable to prevent or stop Israel from causing enormous damage to its supporters as well as the population it claims to protect. It is true that the conflict has increased the stature of Hamas in the West Bank. But this was something that was already occurring anyway through the incompetence and corruption of Fatah, which has made Hamas look better to many Palestinians.
Like Hezbollah in 2006, Hamas has won enormous sympathy and support in Arab and other Muslim countries. But if anything, Hamas has received even less support from their governments than Hezbollah did. America’s Muslim allies have not broken relations with Washington (as many did in 1967) or sent men and materiel to help their Palestinian brothers fight Israel. Even anti-American forces have kept their distance from Hamas. While expressing solidarity, Hezbollah has not launched a missile onslaught from Lebanon that might have forced Israel to divert its attention away from Gaza. Indeed, Hezbollah was quick to disclaim responsibility for the few missiles that were fired into Israel from Lebanon. As for Syria: while encouraging Hamas to resist, Damascus has done little to help it do so.
Tehran has actually become frightened over the genuine anger toward Israel that has welled up among Iranians. As Azadeh Moaveni’s Washington Post Outlook piece of January 25 noted, “Early this month, Khamenei appeared on national television to temper his previous declaration encouraging martyrdom on behalf of the Palestinians. He thanked the young people who had offered to go die in Gaza but said that ‘our hands are tied in this arena.’ Khamenei didn’t really want anyone’s hands to be untied, however; the whole Gaza incident was meant to distract Iranians, not to jeopardize Iran’s role in the region.”
However impressive the volume of outrage expressed in the Arab and Muslim world over Gaza, the Palestinians living there—and Hamas itself—may well have been more impressed by the fact that they received no meaningful support from these quarters in their struggle.
Also like Hezbollah, Hamas could not take much comfort from European criticism of Israel, as this did not result in effective action to halt Israeli military activity—much less any material support for the Arab side. Most importantly, whatever strains the 2006 and 2009 conflicts may have put on the Israeli-American relationship, U.S. support for Israel clearly remains strong. While criticism of Israel and sympathy for the Palestinians may be growing in the United States, this has not led to sympathy or support for Hamas. Nor is it likely to.
Finally, it should be pointed out that a large part of the reason why Hezbollah was perceived as victorious in 2006 is that it was the Israelis themselves who, in their disappointment at not having destroyed it, declared Hezbollah to have been the winner. Yet while Hezbollah’s political strength within Lebanon certainly increased as a result of the 2006 conflict, it is noteworthy that Hezbollah has been extremely careful not to provoke another Israeli attack since then.
It remains to be seen whether Hamas will follow Hezbollah’s example in refraining from firing missiles into Israel after such an intense conflict with the Jewish state. If it does, then Hamas’s behavior might more reasonably be described as prudent rather than victorious. If, instead, it resumes missile attacks, Hamas risks not only triggering another Israeli intervention in Gaza, but also being blamed by Gazans for having needlessly brought them more pain without any gain. And this would open the door for another Palestinian movement to displace Hamas through taking advantage of Hamas’s mistakes (just as Hamas did with Fatah). Hamas cannot afford a “victory” such as this.
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5 Responses to “Did Hamas really win in Gaza?”
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Israel’s military superiority over non-state actors such as Hamas and Hezbollah has never been in question, and Hamas seems to have performed far worse in this last engagement than Hezbollah did in 2006. Israel’s military learned many lessons from its performance in 2006, and some Israeli military officials may see this as an opportunity to exorcise the demons of a lackluster performance that degrades Israel’s deterrent power.
Israel’s problem, however, is not that those fighting it doubt the IDF’s capacity to wreak destruction. It is, instead, that Israel has often been unable to apply military force in such a way that it creates desired political outcomes. Early reporting may be misleading, but there seem to be few signs that any alternative to Hamas is emerging in Gaza, and even fewer that Mahmoud Abbas and his allies are expanding their control there. To the contrary, Israel’s assault on Gaza revealed Abbas to have feet of clay. The entire Arab world saw this battle not as Israel against Hamas, but instead as Israel against Palestinians. In that battle, Abbas did not emerge as a defender of Palestinian interests or a leader of the putative Palestinian nation. He was, instead, a bystander when the Palestinian people were crying for leadership. When the final accounting is done on this war, Abbas—whom some in the Israeli government see as a potential peace partner—may emerge as the most significant casualty.
Hamas and Israel have fallen into a spiral in which Israel’s application of overwhelming force does not cause Hamas to surrender, but instead makes even random acts of Hamas violence seem like heroic defiance. Israelis can wound Hamas on the battlefield, but only Palestinians can turn away from the movement and starve it of the support it needs to survive. Troublingly for Israel, the chief lesson it should have learned from Lebanon in 2006 appears not to have been learned: that body counts of adversaries are a poor measure of success. Political outcomes are a much better one, and in this instance, early indicators are quite negative.
Jon Alterman is a member of MESH.
There’s no doubt that the IDF can win military battles against Hamas. Less clear is whether Israel can win the political war. Regrettably, the preliminary signs from this round of fighting don’t look good.
Despite a poor military showing—Hamas has reportedly launched a probe into its military performance—on several fronts the organization appears to have emerged from this war in an improved political position. Regionally, Hamas has burnished its image. Internationally, the French and others appear to be moving away from the Quartet prerequisites for engagement. So Hamas is edging closer to international recognition.
If reports in the Jerusalem Post are true, Hamas may also be the verge of vindicating its “resistance” tactics à la Hezbollah 2006. According to the Post story, Israel has offered to free 1,000 Hamas prisoners and open Rafah crossing in exchange for Gilad Shalit. Should this agreement come to fruition, it will be celebrated as a great victory for Hamas. The organization appears to have provoked the crisis in order to open Rafah and end “the siege.”
The purported arrangement sounds eerily similar to the Kuntar deal last year. In 2006, Hezbollah kidnapped two IDF soldiers for the expressed purpose of engineering Kuntar’s release.
Developments so far look quite favorable for Hamas. But it’s not a forgone conclusion they will continue in this direction. Robust Egyptian counter-tunnel activities and international technical support on tunnel detection in the Sinai would constitute a real blow to Hamas in Gaza.
Perhaps most important, however, is how the rebuilding of Gaza transpires. If Hamas is directly provided with Arab state funding and becomes solely responsible for the reconstruction, the organization could greatly improve its standing among its “constituents” and further erode support for Fatah among Palestinians.
Given Palestinian political dynamics, it would be naive to think that Hamas could somehow be excluded from the project. Nevertheless, steps should be taken to minimize if not prevent Hamas from politically capitalizing on the reconstruction effort like Hezbollah has done in Lebanon.
David Schenker is a member of MESH.
Another way to approach this is to ask whether Hamas has achieved the objectives for which it escalated the crisis, by its refusal to extend the cease-fire. Musa Abu Marzuq, number two in the Damascus office, explained the primary Hamas objective in a very straightforward way: “The tahdiyeh had become ‘a ceasefire [in exchange for another] ceasefire,’ with no connection either to the crossings and [the goods] transported through them, or to the siege. Terminating it was [thus] a logical move.” So Hamas gambled, escalated, and now finds itself, once again, in a “cease-fire for a cease-fire.” Israel’s primary objective was to compel a cease-fire by means of deterrence alone, without opening the crossings, thus serving its long-term strategy of containing and undercutting Hamas. This it has achieved, so far.
When Israel launched its operation, Hamas announced a secondary objective: to inflict significant military casualties on the Israelis. For this purpose, it had built up a network of fortifications supposedly on the Lebanon model, which it promised to turn into a “graveyard” for Israeli forces. The military wing announced that “the Zionist enemy will see surprises and will regret carrying out such an operation and will pay a heavy price. Our militants are waiting with patience to confront the soldiers face to face.” This too never happened. The Hamas line quickly folded, its “fighters” shed their uniforms and melted into the civilian population. That Hamas failed to fight did surprise many Israeli soldiers, who had expected more. But there was no battle anywhere, and Israel suffered only 10 military fatalities, half of them from friendly fire. Hamas has taken to claiming that Israel has hidden its military casualties, and has thrown out various numbers—a rather precise measure of what it had hoped and failed to achieve.
There is something perverse in the notion that Hamas “won” by merely surviving. Robert Malley has said that “for Hamas, it was about showing that they could stay in place without giving way, and from this point of view it has achieved its main objective.” This was not its “main objective” by any stretch of the imagination. Rashid Khalidi has written that “like Hizbullah in Lebanon in 2006, all [Hamas] has to do in order to proclaim victory is remain standing.” But Hamas had a specific objective—lifting the “siege”—which was altogether different from the objective of Hezbollah. This objective Hamas manifestly failed to achieve. It also failed to achieve the secondary objective it shared with Hezbollah: inflicting Israeli military casualties. It defies logic to declare the mere survival of Hamas to be a triumph, given that Hamas openly declared a much larger objective, and Israel never made the military destruction of Hamas an objective.
War is only the pursuit of politics by other means, and anything could happen going forward. Israel could forfeit its war gains by inept diplomacy—something for which there is ample Israeli precedent. Hamas could parley its setback into a diplomatic gain—something for which there is ample Arab precedent. But I think there is little doubt that at the end of the war, Israel had achieved many of its stated objectives, and Hamas had not.
A final point, on the comparison of Hamas to Hezbollah. It is always a mistake to lump these two movements together. Hezbollah’s “Islamic Resistance” deserves the name. For years, it confronted Israel militarily in southern Lebanon, and fought battles of maneuver and assaulted Israel’s fortified lines. Its cadres received serious Iranian training, and while they didn’t win a straight fight with the IDF in 2006, they were battle-hardened, fought hard, and inflicted casualties. The “resistance” of Hamas has always been a fiction. Hamas’s so-called “military wing” developed in circumstances of occupation, and it specialized exclusively in the suicide belt and the Qassam rocket, both terrorist weapons which it directed almost exclusively at civilians. The videos of masked Hamas “fighters” in elaborate jihad-chic costumes, brandishing guns and jumping through hoops of fire, were cheap posturing. Hamas doesn’t have a cadre of battle-hardened fighters; one Israeli soldier aptly described those who did pop up in Gaza as “villagers with guns.”
If the “siege” of Gaza is signficiantly eased or lifted (which I still think is unlikely), it won’t be because Palestinian “resistance” forced Israel’s hand. It will be because Palestinian suffering has weighed on the conscience of others. That’s a very old story, and there’s nothing new or “heroic” about it. Those who’ve promised to liberate Jerusalem and Palestine by arms are (again) begging the world for sacks of flour.
Martin Kramer is a member of MESH.
The problem with David Schenker’s take is that he seems to be basing the most likely outcome on five “maybes”: If Hamas completely revamps its tactics, if the crossings are opened unconditionally, if it gets a ridiculously good deal on the release of one Israeli hostage, if France and other countries start dealing with Hamas, and if Arab states want to funnel aid through Hamas. None of these things has happened. They might but they are not likely. So, Martin Kramer’s analysis is accurate. We can re-examine it based on David’s checklist if things do start to change. Martin could have also listed some other factors like the open break with Hamas by many Arab states and a relatively critical media response, among other factors.
Finally, it is important to remember that historically about 20 percent of Palestinians supported Hamas. This rose somewhat due to disgust with Fatah ,and in the election—this is very rough but gives a sense—about 25 percent of voters were actually Hamas supporters and another 25 percent protest voters (seeing Hamas as more honest, tougher fighters, etc). The first question is whether that latter half will now rethink their views; the second question is whether it matters in Gaza, which is a dictatorship. Still, this could have a bigger effect on the West Bank than people think. Again, though, one should never overestimate the practical effect of public opinion in Arab politics.
Barry Rubin is a member of MESH.
There appears to be a consensus that on the Palestinian side, the latest round of fighting has enhanced Hamas’s stature, at least temporarily. The more important question is whether it can articulate a longer-term strategy that is viewed by the Palestinian people as being more effective than that of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. Here, Hamas may be approaching a crossroads—between the rejectionist stance that has predominated so far, and a newer approach that envisions a definitive abandonment of armed struggle in return for statehood within the 1967 borders.
On the Israeli side, the political leadership appears trapped between a realization that the status quo vis-à-vis the Palestinians is no longer sustainable, and an inability or unwillingness to do anything about it. The current government’s stated commitment to a viable two-state solution has so far proven as devoid of substance as the opposition’s assurances that the occupation can in fact somehow be sustained. In the meantime the settlements keep growing—by another 69% last year, according to a recent report—and the televised images of Palestinian suffering keep stoking Muslim wrath across the globe. Those who believe that the intensification of anti-Israeli sentiment in Turkey is due primarily to the efforts of the current government there, for example, fundamentally misread the situation. It is the other way around: Erdoğan is reflecting public opinion, and Turkish public opinion in turn is growing increasingly in synch with a Muslim world inflamed by the sight of largely defenseless Palestinians being subjected to the destructive power of the Israeli military.
One ray of hope: the United States now has a president who, according to his recent interview with Al-Arabiya, recognizes the “interrelated” character of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the U.S. engagement with the broader Muslim world, and consequently believes that “the moment is ripe” for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement and that “the most important thing is for the United States to get engaged right away.”
Malik Mufti is a member of MESH.