War on Gaza: Why Israel will never ‘finish the job’

The announced design by the Israeli War Council to occupy Rafah hides increasing doubts about what they will achieve when they get there after 1.4 million Palestinians were forced to take refuge there following their forced displacement from the north and center of Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not alone in his determination when he said, “We will do it. We will reach the remnants of the Hamas cells in Rafah.” Opposition leader Benny Gantz is also pushing for this, saying, “To those who say the price is too high, I say clearly: Hamas has a choice. They can surrender and release their prisoners, and the people of Gaza can celebrate Ramadan.”

This display is not only for local consumption.

It took the Israeli occupation army four months to fight their way through an area 41 kilometers long and about 12 kilometers wide, while the occupation of Baghdad in 2003 took more than 5 weeks for the international coalition led by the United States. For the record, Israel consumed ammunition in 4 months equivalent to what the United States consumed in 7 years in Iraq. Something has gone terribly wrong.

Either Israeli soldiers were not the stormtroopers they thought they were, or resistance fighters in Hamas and other militants were unexpectedly tough, but the only thing certain is that the Israeli forces were fighting with one hand tied behind their backs.

Israeli Knesset member Nissim Vaturi summed up the mood in the country, saying in the Knesset last week, “Whoever gets shot probably deserves it.” The army is trying to convey just that.

Conditions for Collective Displacement

Aerial bombardment, artillery shelling, and drone attacks were designed specifically to terrorize civilians and create conditions for mass displacement. The large number of casualties and attacks on vital infrastructure are military objectives, not collateral damage. The International Court of Justice has acknowledged Israel’s obligation to comply with the Genocide Convention.

Beneath the swagger are glimpses of a darker reality related to the ground operation.

Israeli intelligence, despite claims to the contrary, believes that Hamas will survive as a capable resistance movement capable of carrying out increased operations against them. It says that Hamas’ “real support” remains high among Palestinians in Gaza.

Israeli journalist Ilana Dayan said on Israeli Channel 12 that these conclusions were presented to political leaders a week ago by senior army officers, Shin Bet officials, and members of the National Security Council. She pointed out, “In this regard, at the very least, there will be no absolute victory.”

Many outside Israel reached this conclusion four months ago.

Other questions directed at the top Israeli leadership are equally pressing: Do they have the forces to conduct a major operation in Rafah and reoccupy the Philadelphia Axis without having to call up more reserve forces? I don’t think so, as there must be some war fatigue weighing on them.

A second set of problems lies in the relationship with neighbouring Egypt. So far, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has agreed to an agreement with Israel regarding border arrangements with Rafah. Sisi allows Israel to dictate its aid flow arrangements with Gaza and prepares for the influx of refugees. The Sinai Human Rights Foundation said that the Egyptian authorities are preparing a 10-square-kilometer buffer zone to accommodate Palestinian refugees.

But reoccupying the Philadelphia Axis, a 14-kilometre-long buffer zone on the border, would constitute a violation of the peace treaty signed by Egypt and Israel in 1979, although that would not be enough of a violation to make Egypt abandon the treaty.

The biggest fear for Egyptian military intelligence is armed militants infiltrating Sinai, which is already witnessing entrenched rebellion.

Waves of Resistance

As for Washington, it constitutes a third factor affecting the imminent invasion of Rafah. Just as with Ukraine, Israel realizes that its firepower far exceeds its ammunition stocks. These stocks must be constantly replenished by the United States. President Joe Biden has the decision to halt or restrict this flow of weapons, especially as it seems he has drawn a red line regarding the need to evacuate Rafah refugees.

There are no indications that Biden has resorted to this pressure card yet. On the contrary, quite the opposite. But that does not mean he will not use it as the US presidential elections approach.

Therefore, the loud threats of a bloody ground assault on Rafah may just be part of intermittent negotiations with Hamas for a ceasefire and the exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, at least for now.

But let’s set all of the above aside, and let’s assume that there will come a time when Israel fully controls the Gaza Strip. What would they have accomplished then, except for causing the deaths of over 30,000 people?

Netanyahu’s first mistake is thinking that if he eliminates what is supposed to be the last four Hamas battalions in Rafah, then it will all be over.

Hamas is not an army with a fixed number of fighters; it’s a resistance movement, an idea that can be passed from family to family, from generation to generation, or from one movement to another. While the Palestine Liberation Organization under Arafat was secular, Hamas is an Islamic resistance movement, which makes its ideology more enduring.

It doesn’t matter much which side carries the torch; what matters is that the torch itself continues to burn. And Hamas does not delude itself into thinking it can militarily prevail against a much larger conventional force.

It’s worth mentioning that the Algerians, the African National Congress, or the Irish Republican Army did not achieve direct victory on the battlefield. Instead, they fought their way and chose the path of combat as a means to reach the negotiating table. Resistance does not necessarily depend on defeating the opponent as much as it aims to force them to appreciate the cost and exhaustion, which may ultimately lead to withdrawal or at least readiness to negotiate. So even if Israel forces Hamas out of Gaza, which I doubt it can, would that be a victory?

Israel has declared victory several times in this ongoing conflict for 75 years, announcing victory in 1948 by expelling 700,000 Palestinians from their cities and villages.

Israel thought it had defeated three Arab powers in 1967. Ariel Sharon declared victory 15 years later when he forced Yasser Arafat and the PLO to leave Beirut, but the first intifada broke out five years after that.

When peace talks collapsed, the second intifada erupted. Again, Israel thought it could crush the Palestinian national cause by besieging Arafat in his Ramallah headquarters and poisoning him. Was that a victory?

Today, Israel believes it can crush Hamas in Gaza by killing four men who hold a special place among them.

The list of Palestinian leaders who have died in this long conflict is already long. Aziz al-Qassam, a Muslim preacher and leader in the Arab national struggle, was killed by the British in 1935.

Kamal Adwan, one of the senior leaders of Fatah and the PLO, was killed in an Israeli attack in Lebanon in 1973. Khalil al-Wazir, one of Arafat’s top aides, was assassinated in his home in Tunisia by Israeli commandos. Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, was killed when an Israeli helicopter fired a missile at him as he was being pushed in his wheelchair returning from Fajr prayers in Gaza City.

Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, one of the founders of Hamas, was killed by rockets fired from an Israeli Apache helicopter. Two agents of the Mossad fired five bullets at Fathi Shikaki, the founder and secretary-general of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in Malta, killing him. The same was true for Abu Ali Mustafa, the Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

But what have these assassinations achieved other than launching another, stronger wave of resistance and heralding the emergence of a new generation of fighters honed by history at the hands of their occupiers?

Memory of Massacres

History feeds collective memory, and tongues have passed on the memories of war massacres such as the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948, as well as the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982. At that time, there was hardly any internet or widespread video recording, yet words were powerful enough to inspire future generations with resistance.

Israel has exploited a series of video clips claiming to depict killings carried out by Hamas and other fighters from Gaza in Israeli kibbutzim on October 7th last year on a large scale.

If those video clips evoke terror in their viewers, just imagine the impact that the widely circulated videos on social media over the past 4 months of the massacres committed by Israeli forces in Gaza will have on future generations of Palestinians.

The catastrophe or “Nakba” perpetrated by Israel in Gaza over the past four months has been documented much better than the Nakba of 1948. And those images will remain on the internet forever. Why did Israel think that this catastrophe would evaporate from public consciousness when the fighting ended?

Jordan’s population is 11.5 million, with slightly over half of them being Palestinians descended from refugees who were expelled from the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

Even if we exclude the tribes of the East Bank of the Jordan River — whose voices were as loud about Gaza as the Palestinians themselves — that means that the number of Palestinians in Jordan is three times that of Palestinians in Gaza. They are angry, relatively affluent, and have access to a thriving arms market. Furthermore, Jordan has easily penetrable borders with Syria and Iraq, where Iranian-backed groups are eager to intervene.

This makes Jordan an ideal ground for recruiting the next wave of Palestinian fighters.

Now, who in their right mind might seek to secure their southern border from enemy attack at the expense of reactivating the much longer eastern border? Who might replace insecure borders 60 km long with others that are 482 km long?

Blind Victimhood Mentality

Israel and its supporters see only its history, and hear only its voice. They cannot see what it means to be on the other side in its ongoing campaign to expand its occupation boundaries.

They cannot see that the Palestinians in Rafah have been displaced numerous times in their southward exodus, and that they are descendants of refugees from towns and cities that are now part of Israel in Beersheba, Jaffa, and the Negev.

The occupation’s blindness prevents it from seeing the powerful symbolism of what it is doing. Amid its efforts to crush Gaza, Israel is attempting to crush the entire Palestinian nation. And if Israel succeeds in Gaza, there will be no Palestinian in Israel, occupied East Jerusalem, or the West Bank who does not think their turn will be next.

Israel’s sense of victimhood and historical destiny blinds it to the suffering it causes. In its view, there can only be one victim in history: the Jewish victim.

There is no room for anyone else in this worldview. Palestinians are not just invisible but also nonexistent, yet the Palestinian national issue certainly exists.

Netanyahu declared last year in 2023, the end of the conflict with the imminent signing of agreements with Saudi Arabia. But just weeks later, Israel became embroiled in its longest war since 1947. This war has propelled Palestinians to the forefront of the human rights agenda worldwide.

Nevertheless, Netanyahu’s army moves from hospital to hospital like a gambler rolling dice, failing to find a Hamas hideout and certainly causing damage to Gaza’s healthcare system in the process. It has moved from north to south, declaring victory as imminent.

Benny Morris, the left-leaning historian turned hardliner, told the German newspaper Frankfurter Algemeiner that he hates Netanyahu very much: “He’s a trickster. But he’s right that the war must continue until Hamas is crushed, because we’ll be seen as failures in the region if we don’t complete this mission.”

But I have some news for historian Morris; Israel will never “complete the mission.”

It has only two options: to follow the path of Itamar Ben Gvir and Betzalel Smotrich in their quest to turn a ground war into a religious war, or to sit down with Palestinian leadership that has the freedom to discuss how to share the land on equal footing.

As for myself, I know which option I would choose.