How Netanyahu Legitimised Hamas

IN A MORAL UNIVERSE, no ending deviates from the norm more than that in which evil has the last laugh. That doesn’t neces­sarily make it unnatural, since nature knows little of human morality or its poles of right and wrong. Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist outfit that eclipsed the original ter­rorist in a keffiyeh soon after the Oslo Accords of 1993, is laughing in its grave as death and destruction, disease and inanition become the new enforcers of Gaza’s blood pact with the Islamists. And one man stands, not in the middle like a benevolent figure, but on either side of Hamas’ genocidal rage of October 7, 2023 and the humanitar­ian catastrophe Israel has wreaked on the Gaza Strip in revenge—like a sinister jester and his clone.

The list of Benjamin Netanyahu’s sins runs long and we are not talking about allegations of corruption. The Israeli prime minister first failed a permanently besieged state and its people on security. Without his government’s complacence and incompe­tence, October 7 wouldn’t have happened. Then he ignored what all military trainers would warn against: the red mist of blind anger that clouds judgement. And then he em­barked on an incremental war he always intended to make total and unending.

The result: 1,200 Israelis killed, the highest number of Jews murdered in a single day since the Holocaust, and 251 hostages taken; more than 50,000 Palestinians dead, with a famine raging and children deprived of life let alone a future; about 20 hostages still held in subterranean Gaza; Israel’s struggle to stay alive turned into a lie even in friendly constituencies abroad in a world witness­ing a near-rerun of pre-war 20th-century anti-Semitism; and Hamas legitimised, not merely in the slogans of the river-to-the-sea militants in the streets of Europe and America.

Such is the denouement of Netanyahu’s play: not just Israel’s loss of credibility as the photographs come out of Gaza or journalists are killed or hospitals bombed, but the vindication of Hamas. And that is a shame.

The truth goes deep into the structure of Israeli politics and society. It’s understand­able that Israeli public opinion hasn’t yet grasped the horrors of Gaza because Israel hasn’t quite stepped out of the trauma of October 7 to a post-traumatic reckoning. Its divisions have become more unbridgeable with each new day of war. Just as many people cannot wait to see Bibi’s back as those still trust­ing his faux-Churchillian avowal: “We will fight to defend our homeland. We will fight and not retreat. We will fight on land, at sea and in the air. We will destroy the enemy above ground and below ground. We will fight and we will win.”

The truth is Hamas would be nothing without Netanyahu. That’s not only about what he has done to Gaza. It’s about what he has done for 30 years to bring things to this point. It’s no se­cret that Bibi sabotaged Oslo after Yitzhak Rabin’s assas­sination in November 1995. It’s not a secret either that his successive governments propped Hamas up, ensur­ing cash flows from Qatar to Gaza. Nor is it a secret that he has never believed in the two-state roadmap. A perpetual conflict would best serve his worldview and his claims to permanent power. And he saw this in his first term (1996- 99), understanding quickly that Gaza was the perfect foil for the PLO’s West Bank and an immovable roadblock for a Palestinian state. (Israeli historian Adam Raz has now laid this sordid saga out in detail in a new book yet to be translated from the Hebrew.)

Netanyahu empowered Hamas. He will keep its memory alive. In the process, he has betrayed Israel not once but twice. The delusion of 1993 was drowned in blood. For a moment though, there was hope. That hint of a different future has irretrievably disap­peared into a black hole.

Benjamin NetanyahuDonald TrumpGaza borderIsrael-HamasUS administration