How to Fight Hamas

This historical sketch is seriously incomplete, but some patterns are clear. The Hamas meme spread especially when Israelis attacked in Palestinian towns to “reestablish deterrence.” The idea that the disproportionate power of Israel’s occupation was ever doubted, or that Hamas acts of “martyrdom” came because its youth were simply not afraid enough of Jews, rests on the kind of primitive psychology you get from combat generals, neocons, and battered children.

Actually, Israel’s expansive power has always been a part of the Hamas message: The Hamas charter continues, “After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates.” And how could Israelis seriously expect ordinary Palestinians in their towns to turn off any Hamas insurgency just because they were getting battered?

Hamas ideology spread, moreover, when Israel insisted that the occupied territory of the West Bank was actually “disputed,” or tried to dissociate its evacuation from Gaza from what it was doing in the West Bank. Hamas influence spread when circles upon circles of grieving youth fought out of rage and survivors’ guilt. It spread when settlers seemed able to push Palestinians who would otherwise support a two-state solution into calls for steadfastness; or when jihadists were themselves able to push Israelis, who are increasingly skeptical of the settlements, into calls for national solidarity in the face of “existential threats.”

Hamas ideology spread, especially, when Israel sealed the Gaza border in a vain effort to starve the place of Hamas influence. It spread when Palestinian economic life seemed futile, or inevitably corrupt—when a fight to the finish seemed the only chance at a meaningful life. Why would Gazans feel beholden to Hamas’ tunnels if they had an open border, relief from grinding poverty, and business opportunities with West Bank partners?

Make no mistake, even under international law, Israel has the right to respond to missiles on Sderot and other southern towns. And if Israeli forces could wipe out Hamas in a great, terrible blow, killing only people set to kill Israelis, one could hardly blame the IDF for defending Israeli lives. A ground attack has just begun, but nobody in their right mind thinks this will end as a surgical strike, which will excise the whole of the Hamas leadership, and not utterly destroy many neighborhoods; already, much of Gaza city is without power; to kill Hamas extremist Nizar Rayyan, a bomb killed his four wives and nine of his children. It is most likely that Cast Lead will end in a monitored cease-fire, and that Israel will be satisfied to have made what one Sderot resident called “a statement.” Unfortunately, this statement helps Hamas, or its successor, make its case—not only in Gaza, but across the West Bank, and among Israeli Arabs as well.

The point is, the rise of Hamas is a cautionary tale about trying to do quickly with military force what needs to be done over a generation with reciprocity. All along, Israel might have made a strong statement of a different kind. It might have endorsed the obvious features of a two-state solution, like the ones worked out with President Clinton just before he left office in 2001. It might have helped strengthen the Palestinians' immunity to Hamas ideology, creating a stronger civil society, new businesses, new schools, new Palestinian cooperation with international peace-keepers and investors. It might have meanwhile announced, say, that it can know the precise location from which each Hamas missile is launched, and that it would bomb that location exactly ten minutes after each launch, giving surrounding citizens a chance to flee—and creating a mounting incentive for civilians to resist Hamas cadres using their homes as cover. One can think of any number of creative ideas that project strength, decency, and hope. This is not, well, rocket science.

Bernard Avishai splits his time between Jerusalem and New Hampshire. He is the author, most recently, of The Hebrew Republic: How Secular Democracy and Global Enterprise Will Bring Israel Peace at Last (Harcourt). A former editor of the Harvard Business Review, he writes for Harper’s and many other publications, and blogs at www.bernardavishai.com.