The Death of a Pipe Dream

The enemy of… conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events
—John Kenneth Galbraith

Saturday, October 7, marked the demise of conventional wisdom and of ‘respectable’ establish­ment perceptions regarding the conflict over the Gaza Strip. Decades-old precepts were washed away in a deluge of blood. The idea of Palestinian self-rule (the two-state solution), along with the notion of “managing the conflict” (aka “mowing the lawn”, or “kicking the can down the road”) were swept away by the gory events.

The assault proved definitively that the idea of a Hamas-gov­erned Gaza, placated by economic well-being, is a hallucinatory pipe dream. Indeed, despite being the preferred illusion of much of the Israeli decision-making echelons—particularly the military—it was, in fact, brusquely rejected by the Hamas leadership years ago.

In 2017, then-Defence Minister Avigdor Liberman had offered a seemingly alluring proposal. He proposed transforming Gaza “into the Singapore of the Middle East” by building a seaport and an airport and by creating industrial zones that would help create 40,000 jobs—if Hamas would only agree to demilitarise and dismantle the tunnel and rocket systems it had built.

The Hamas response was swift and acerbic. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas official, dismissed it derisively: “If we wanted to turn Gaza into Singapore, we would have done it ourselves. We do not need favours from anyone.”

His retort prompted a stark comment from Bassam Tawil, a Palestinian scholar at the Gatestone Institute: “Why did Hamas reject an offer for a seaport, airport and tens of thousands of jobs for Palestinians? Because Hamas does not see its conflict with Israel as an economic issue. The dispute is not about improving the living conditions of Palestinians, as far as Hamas is concerned. Instead, it is about the very existence of Israel.”

Tawil added: “Hamas deserves credit for one thing: its honesty concerning its intentions to destroy Israel and kill as many Jews as possible. Hamas does not want 40,000 new jobs for the poor un­employed Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. It would rather see these unemployed Palestinians join its ranks and become soldiers in its quest to replace Israel with an Islamic empire.”

Yet, our leaders clung fast to the idea of economic welfare as the panacea—allowing the flow of Qatari dollars into the Islamist cof­fers of Hamas. On October 7, this defective doctrine of “dollars for dummy stability” collapsed—tragically and catastrophically.

MOWING THE LAWN WON’T CUT IT

Another ‘mainstream’ doctrine that has been definitively disproved is that of ‘Conflict Management’—that is, rather than Conflict Resolution. This is an approach, dubbed by some as “mow­ing the lawn”, that entails Israel starting a new bout of fighting every time Palestinian violence reaches levels it finds unacceptable. Thus, it essentially endorses a policy based on resignation to a reality of recurring rounds of violence, separated by intermittent periods of calm whose length would be determined by either the enemy’s willingness to engage or by its desperation, making it impossible not to. However, in the past, I have pointed out:“[T]he periods of inter-bellum calm have been consistently used by the Palestinian terror groups to enhance their capabilities… After all, when Israel left Gaza (2005), the range of the Palestinian rockets was barely 5km, and the explosive charge they carried, about 5kg. Now their missiles have a range of over 100km and warheads of around 100kg. When Israel left Gaza, only the sparse population in its immediate prox­imity was threatened by missiles. Now well over 5 million Israelis, well beyond Tel Aviv, are menaced by them.”

Thus, Hamas—and its more radical off-shoots—exploited the periods of calm to further advance and extend its infrastructure and other abilities which were barely imaginable a decade ago.

Accordingly, it is clear that successive bouts of limited fighting did little to deter Hamas in the sense of breaking their will to engage in battle. Rather, after every round, they have been forced to regroup, redeploy, and rearm—only to re-emerge spoiling for a fight, ever bolder, with ever-greater (indeed, once inconceivable) capabilities.

THE DEMILITARISATION FETISH

Short-sighted proposals like disarming or deposing Hamas ignore the very problems that their implementation would inevitably raise.

The fetish for the demilitarisation of Gaza is both timeworn and futile. Indeed, it has ostensibly been part and parcel of the noxious Oslovian “peace-process” since its inception.

However, those who until October 7 persisted in suggesting demilitarisation of Gaza were apparently oblivious to the fact that Gaza was already supposed to be demilitarised under the Oslo Ac­cords, and they gave little hint as to why future demilitarisation was likely to be any more effective than in the past—or by whom it might be enforced and how such enforcement would be effected.

But even if Hamas were effectively disarmed, how could it im­pose law and order on more radical opponents or heavily armed criminal elements in the Strip? Moreover, beyond day-to-day chal­lenges to law and order, how was a defanged Hamas supposed to contend with attempts to overthrow it by more radical opponents both within the Gaza Strip and from the adjacent Sinai Peninsula? If a demilitarised Hamas—or any disarmed successor regime—were faced with a significant challenge to its rule, whether from domestic or foreign sources, would Israel be called upon to defend it? Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of a more Kafkaesque prospect than one in which IDF forces need to be mobilised to prop up a virulently Judeophobic Islamist regime, against even more viru­lently Judeophobic Islamist adversaries.

On the other hand, if Hamas were deposed, it would be more than likely that its successor would be even more radical. After all, it is highly implausible that a more moderate entity would be pre­pared to adopt the kind of behaviour required to take power—and keep it—in the ruthless Gaza environment.

THE LOGIC OF THE GAZA CONFLICT

The political rationale of the Gaza conflict can be expressed in the inexorable logic of an almost mathematical algorithm—stu­diously, and tragically, ignored by Israel’s policy-making echelons.

Clearly, the only way Israel can ensure who governs Gaza is by governing it itself. Moreover, the only way Israel can govern Gaza without imposing its rule on “another people” is to remove that “other people” from the confines of Gaza, over which it is obligated to rule. Till October 7, it was possible to conceive of this being con­ducted in a non-coercive manner by economically induced emigra­tion. Lamentably, that possibility has been overtaken by events. Now, such an exodus must be implemented coercively and rapidly.

After all, Israeli lives matter!

The appalling experience of October 7 underscored the cruel—and hitherto disregarded—dilemma, which Israel can now ignore no longer.

It must choose between having Jews live in the Negev, or Arabs in Gaza. It is no longer possible that there will be both.

About The Author

Martin Sherman

Martin Sherman spent seven years in operational capacities in the Israeli defence establishment. He is the founder of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies, a member of the Habithonistim-Israel Defense & Security Forum research team, and a participant in the Israel Victory Project

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