On Sunday morning, I came across an article written by Michael Milstein on the 15th anniversary of Hamas’ takeover of the Gaza Strip. Milstein is a former intelligence officer with the rank of colonel, who spent most of his years in the army investigating the Palestinian arena. After his release he completed a doctorate in the same field, and is currently researching in this field. Before us, no doubt, is one who knows them. And us too.
In an article published in Yedioth Ahronoth, he did not spare criticism from Israeli governments. He said that despite the years that had passed, Israel had not digested the change, nor had it conducted an in-depth discussion about the strategy to be taken towards the Gaza Strip. Everything she tried turned out to be of limited efficiency. In the current lull, he says, no achievement should be seen, because it comes thanks to unprecedented civilian gestures given to Hamas.
Israel, Milstein states, has accepted Hamas’ conditions of play: in the Gaza Strip they keep quiet, so as not to kidnap, but in other arenas (East Jerusalem, Israel and the West Bank) they continue to operate. He warns of the next campaign, which may be more difficult than its predecessors. “Silence has been created in the short term,” he writes, “but a growing threat in the long term, a trap that must be condemned in the public and political discourse in Israel.”
A few hours before the publication of Milstein’s article, a publicist hiding behind the name Fadel al-Manatsafa published an article by him on the exact same subject: the Gaza Strip 15 years later. Manatsafa, a young Palestinian writer, does not spare his criticism of Hamas. Manatsafeh claims that Hamas’ strategy against Israel was largely based on slogans and promises for a better future that were not realized. Their policies, he writes, recorded a diligent failure in the economic and social spheres. He listed the series of military clashes between Israel and Hamas during these 15 years.
One by one, he writes, these wars failed to exhaust the enemy, but gave him a good reason to lay his hand on the population of the Strip. They also revealed, he said, the depth of Iranian support for Hamas. This support, he believes, has been very relevant to the Palestinian issue, since it has also led Western countries to join the Israeli punitive mechanism on the Gaza Strip. “The occupation knew and knows,” the young Palestinian writes, “how to push Hamas into a state of disarray and reduce it under its weight and sanctions.”
Manatsafeh is identified, according to his writing, with the PA, and yet, things in this spirit can be heard today even among the population of the Strip. Today’s Hamas is still in its teens, it continues, and has not yet reached the stage of self-criticism of its political path. He, too, like Milstein, calls on the leaders to stop playing with the fate of their people and start showing national seriousness. “No Palestinian plan to build a state will be possible under these conditions, while the Arabs are reinforcing normalization with Israel and ignoring the Palestinian issue.”
In an age where many writers, on both sides, tend to slander the enemy, it is interesting to see two throwing self-criticism at their own leadership. There is no room for questioning which of the two is right. Everyone sees the same car accident from a different perspective. Many of us talk about the loss of deterrence against Hamas. And here, there are Palestinians who admit not only to deterrence, but also to the existence of failure and humiliation. What did Fadel Manzape call it? Hamas is cornered in a state of disarray.
And yet, that is not the point. This week, my colleague Yaron Wilensky, presenter of the “Evening Diary” on Gali Tzahal, asked me what the Palestinians think about political change. I said what I think they think. Bad for them. Hamas, on the other hand, fears Lapid because he is unfamiliar. A new Israeli leader scares them, lest he start a war or go crazy at their expense. Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett, I said, were good to Hamas. Relatively of course. The other, on the other hand, maintained the arrangement, albeit with structural changes, and doubled the number of workers who would go to work in Israel, all in the short term.
In the long run, both Hamas and the PA want a stable government in Jerusalem. Only in this way, they hope, will the Israeli leadership be able to reach an agreement with them. The two young writers are right: the solution to the Gaza issue, on both sides, is brave decisions from above.
The Hajj Dog
These days, a decade ago, a bitter war raged in Syria. Rebel battalions, most of them the grandchildren of the victims of the al-Hama massacre, stormed military posts and public buildings in order to overthrow the government and take its place. Sunni governments, led by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, supported the rebels with weapons and money. These three countries believed that if they overthrew the Ba’athist regime, they would weaken the Iranian camp. They were right, the Iranians were indeed expected to be hit. But their plot failed.
2012 was Bashar Assad’s most difficult year. Few thought he would get out of his predicament in peace. In the heart of Damascus, in the al-Maza district, Hamas headquarters abroad and the offices of the head of the political bureau Khaled Mashaal and his men were located at the time. , As the whole world has seen, slaughters the Sunni population, and if Hamas is silent about it, it may be perceived as collaborating with the massacre.
They did not do it secretly, but carved their tongues. You could say that they gambled, with some degree of arrogance, on Assad’s end. One bright morning Mashaal declared his support for the revolution and waved the rebel flag. Hamas spokesmen called Assad a criminal and charged him with mass murder. Assad was offended and saw this as stabbing him in the back. He sent his spokesmen to slap Mashaal with derogatory nicknames. “Deported and orphaned seeking refuge,” Syrian television called him, “sold the resistance for power.”
Mashaal and his men moved to Qatar, and together with Qatari intelligence, began supporting al-Qaeda fighters operating in the al-Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus. Assad managed to escape from the gallows, gathered Hezbollah and the Iranians into it, and then the Russians arrived and finally rescued him. Mash’al remained in Qatar, and was later abandoned by the movement’s top brass and replaced by Ismail Haniyeh. Assad felt on the horse, and in 2016 he said the following about Hamas: “Once Muslim brothers, always Muslim brothers. Inside them, they will always be terrorists and hypocrites.”
All these years, the Syrians at the top of Hamas have seen traitors and lepers. When Haniyeh took office in 2017, he began to grope his way into Assad’s heart and repeatedly sought to open a new page, even as Damascus rejected his requests. In recent months, Hassan Nasrallah has entered the picture, and talks for reconciliation have accelerated. This week, senior Hamas officials announced that a breakthrough had been achieved, and the parties are expected to announce the breaking of the ice soon. Damascus, on the other hand, continued to remain silent, letting Hamas creep into it slowly. Revenge is served cold, even among the Arabs.
Leaving aside the ego, both sides have an interest in this reconciliation. Assad will once again declare his support for an important Palestinian factor, and will rake in points on the Arab street that the Qataris have taken from him with their great wisdom. Hamas, as a fatherless organization, will add another state factor to its insurance certificates. These days are not good for the Iranian camp. Arab countries have joined Israel, Turkey is showing signs of distancing itself from Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and the West in its own right – still sees them as the axis of evil.
This week I found a short television interview given by Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas figure in Beirut, to a Lebanese news channel. That was a year ago, when Haniyeh’s further effort to be accepted by Assad was rejected. Hamdan spoke highly of Syria and said he and his friends hoped that Damascus would continue to be the “capital of resistance,” as he put it. I immediately remembered the Arabic proverb: Whoever wants to respect the dog, the Hajj will call him a dog.
The author is the commentator on Arab affairs of Gali Tzahal