1.

There is an article here in the New Statesman by Edward Platt in which he describes some of the efforts of Israel and the PA to shut down organizations on the West Bank they believe to be channeling funds to Hamas.

Its last paragraph goes like this,

There is a danger that the current campaign might backfire - each time Israel or the PA dismantles a charity committee and destroys a source of essential services that cannot be replicated, it increases dissatisfaction with Israel and its so-called “partner for peace”. Rasheed Rasheed believes that the army’s actions are the best advertisement that Hamas could hope for. “If Israel thinks they are destroying Hamas by doing things like this, then they are mistaken,” he says. “If there is someone to be blamed for supporting Hamas, I blame Israel. What are they going to get out of this? More pain for the Palestinians - and then what? More hatred of Israel. The Palestinian children don’t need a curriculum of incitement and hatred - the Israeli killings and shootings and checkpoints are their curriculum.”

2.

The paragraph above suggests that Platt thinks that Israel and the PA should not be fighting Hamas or, at the very least, that they are using counter-productive methods to do so. This is a view that one comes across all the time now, it holds that negotiations are the answer and it is perverse of Israel to fail to recognize this.

3.

Do Israel and the PA need to fight Hamas? It’s my view that they both do and that the need to do so is urgent. However, on this occasion I am going to consider the matter largely from the Israeli view point.

4.

Hamas is not an organization affected by antisemitism. It is an organization which is based on antisemitism and to which antisemitism is intrinsic. I take this as being adequately demonstrated by its founding charter, the words of its leaders and its alliance with the current regime in Iran. Its political aim is the destruction of the state that the Jews founded for themselves and the physical destruction of as many Jews as proves possible along the way. It does not want a Palestinian state to share the territory of Mandatory Palestine with Israel.

5.

It may be possible to negotiate with it on secondary issues such as the fate of Gilad Shalit and the ceasefire that is currently prevailing, more or less, in the south. However, there is no sense in imagining that Israel can negotiate with Hamas in the way it once negotiated with Egypt and Jordan and is currently negotiating with the PA. There are no differences on substantive issues which can be bargained over given that Hamas’s aim is the destruction of its putative negotiating partner and doesn’t even recognize its existence.  Israel must, therefore, use all the legal means at its disposal to fight Hamas.

6.

So if Israel is obliged to fight, how should that fight be conducted? The best way to strike against Hamas would be for the government that emerges from February’s elections to cut a deal with the PA and withdraw from the West Bank as soon as possible.  Fighting from behind internationally-recognized borders would do a lot to resolve the classic dilemma in counterinsurgency reflected in the quote in 1. This revolves around the fact that victories over insurgents and their supporters are likely to prove Pyrrhic in nature if they end up alienating uncommitted members of the public and pushing them towards support for the rebels. On the other hand, if not enough force is employed where it is likely to have an appropriate effect, government forces risk handing victory to the insurgents on a plate.

Once Israel abandons control of the Palestinian population on the West Bank it no longer has to resolve this dilemma. Hostile acts launched from across the new border can be dealt with in the first instance by the new Palestinian government and if it fails to do so then Israel will be within its rights in taking appropriate military measures of its own to do so.

Against this it might be argued that withdrawing from Gaza hasn’t brought peace to Israeli communities living near its borders. This is true but there are important differences between the two cases. I am not advocating a Gaza-style unilateral pull out from the West Bank, I am arguing for a pull out following an agreement with a PA whose credibility with its own population will be strengthened in direct proportion to the completeness of the deal reached.  In any case, and regardless of the bleatings of the “peace” campaigners and others who continue to describe Gaza as occupied territory, there’s no doubt that withdrawing from Gaza was the right thing to do; if Israel wants to remain a democratic state for Jews then it can’t go on ruling large populations of disenfranchised  Palestinians.

7.

What ought to be done while we are waiting for a deal with the PA? In the south, the ceasefire is probably the least bad of a number of bad options; it allows Israelis who live near Gaza to get on with their lives in a relatively normal manner and reduces the sufferings of the Palestinian population in Gaza. In the event of a breakdown in the ceasefire, a large-scale land assault on the Strip could certainly damage Hamas militarily but it would cause a lot of civilian causalities too, each and every one of which would be pinned on Israel in the court of international public opinion. It would also involve a lot of Israeli military casualties and, for the reasons mentioned in 6, the attacking forces would eventually have to withdraw, a withdrawal that would be greeted by Al Manar and the BBC alike as a glorious victory for the Islamic resistance.

If there is resumption in hostilities it’s hard to see why the costs should only be paid Palestinian and Israeli civilians, members of the IDF and relatively low-ranking members of Hamas. Seeing as Israeli possesses the means to oblige Hamas’s leadership to live in the same way that Hassan Nasrallah does now - scuttling from hideout to hideout and only appearing in public at mass rallies where he is protected by Israel’s unwillingness to deliberately cause mass civilian casualties -  then it should do so. There can’t be any more preening in front of the TV cameras for Haniye and his ilk if life is being made impossible for residents of Sderot.

8.

On the West Bank, efforts to destroy and disrupt Hamas and its support networks must go on. So far as possible these should be led by the PA; it’s in the interest of the current Palestinian authorities in the West Bank, whatever their limitations, that this be so and it’s in the objective interest of the Palestinian population too; the situation of oppression under which they live as a result of the presence of Israel will be remembered as a golden age of peace and prosperity if Hamas ever takes power.

As regards the classic counterinsurgency dilemma mentioned above in 6; it would be hard to measure the alienation of the civilian population of the West Bank caused specifically by measures taken against Hamas by comparison to the overall negative effect of the occupation. I’d guess, though, that it’s pretty limited.

I conclude by repeating a point I made earlier. The best way of striking at the whack jobs who are trying to take complete control of the Palestinian national movement  would be to make a generous deal with the PA as soon as possible and transform an insoluble counterinsurgency problem into a question of defending internationally-recognized borders.