Could Hamas Be Winning The War?

The following is part of an op-ed in The Washington Post by Yuval Noah Harari (professor of history at Hebrew University of Jerusalem):

War is the continuation of politics by other means. Many people recite this mantra, but too few pay it enough attention — especially in the midst of war. With the massacre Hamas perpetrated in Israel and the mounting civilian casualties in Gaza, the deep logic of war is hidden by the immense human misery it produces. As the bodies keep piling up, who will win this war? Not the side that kills more people, not the side that destroys more houses and not even the side that gains more international support — but the side that achieves its political aims.

Hamas launched this war with a specific political aim: to prevent peace. After signing peace treaties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Israel was on the verge of signing a historic peace treaty with Saudi Arabia. That agreement would have been Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s biggest achievement in his entire career. It would have normalized relations between Israel and much of the Arab world. At the insistence of the Saudis and Americans, the treaty’s conditions were expected to include significant concessions to the Palestinians, aimed to immediately alleviate the suffering of millions of them in the occupied territories, and restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The prospect of peace and normalization was a deadly threat to Hamas. From its founding in 1987, this fundamentalist Islamist organization never recognized Israel’s right to exist and committed itself to uncompromising armed struggle. In the 1990s, Hamas did everything in its power to disrupt the Oslo peace process and all subsequent peace efforts.

For more than a decade, Israeli governments led by Netanyahu abandoned all serious attempts to make peace with more moderate Palestinian forces, adopted an increasingly hawkish policy regarding the occupation of disputed territory and even embraced the right-wing messianic ideas of Jewish supremacy.

During that period, Hamas showed surprising restraint in its dealings with Israel, and the two sides seemed to adopt an uneasy but functional policy of violent coexistence. But on Oct. 7, just when Netanyahu’s government was on the cusp of a major breakthrough for regional peace, Hamas struck with all its force.

Hamas slaughtered hundreds of Israeli civilians, in the most gruesome ways it could devise. The immediate aim was to derail the Israeli-Saudi peace deal. The long-term aim was to sow seeds of hatred in the minds of millions in Israel and across the Muslim world, thereby preventing peace with Israel for generations to come.

Hamas knew its attack would make Israelis livid, distraught with pain and anger, and the terrorists counted on Israel to retaliate with massive force, inflicting enormous pain on Palestinians. The codename Hamas gave its operation is telling: al-Aqsa Tufan. The word “tufan” means flood. Like the biblical flood intended to cleanse the world of sin even at the cost of nearly wiping out humanity, Hamas’s attack aimed to create devastation on a biblical scale.

Doesn’t Hamas care about the suffering this war inflicts on Palestinian civilians? While individual Hamas activists surely have different feelings and attitudes, the organization’s worldview discounts the misery of individuals. Hamas’s political aims are dictated by religious fantasies.

Unlike those of secular movements such as the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas’s ultimate goals are not of this world. For Hamas, Palestinians killed by Israel are martyrs who enjoy everlasting bliss in heaven. The more killed, the more martyrs.

As for this world, according to the views of Hamas and other fundamentalist Muslim groups, the only viable aim for a human society on Earth is unconditional adherence to heavenly standards of purity and justice. Because peace always involves compromises on what people consider justice, peace must be rejected, and absolute justice must be pursued at any cost. . . .

If Hamas’s war aims are indeed to derail the Israeli-Saudi peace treaty and to destroy all chance for normalization and peace, it is winning this war by a knockout. And Israel is helping Hamas, largely because Netanyahu’s government seems to be conducting this war without clear political goals of its own.

Israel says it wants to disarm Hamas, and it has every right to do so in protecting its citizens. Disarming Hamas is vital also for any chance of future peace, because as long as Hamas remains armed, it will continue to derail any such efforts. But even if Israel succeeds in disarming Hamas, that’s just a military achievement, not a political plan. In the short term, does Israel have any plan to rescue the Israeli-Saudi peace deal? In the long term, does Israel have any plan to reach a comprehensive peace with the Palestinians and normalize its relations with the Arab world? . . .

As a historian, I know history’s curse is that it inspires a yearning to fix the past. That is hopeless. The past cannot be saved. Focus on the future. Let old injuries heal rather than serve as a cause for fresh injuries. . . .

I do know that war is the continuation of politics by other means, that Hamas’s political aim is to destroy any chance for peace and normalization, and that Israel’s aim should be to preserve the chance for peace. We must win this war, instead of helping Hamas achieve its aim.