2023-12-23 10:00:40
Ezra Klein is an influential Jewish journalist for the New York Times. He has dedicated these months of war in Gaza to analyze with dozens of interviews with experts and analysts the impact of the Hamas attack (around 1,200 dead) and Israel’s retaliation (20,000 dead). In his last program, he summarized what he had learned: security paradigm that the Hebrew Government has used in recent decades has not worked.
“Israel had all the intelligence it needed to prevent the Hamas attack: the detailed document with the plan, analysts who saw how they trained. They ignored him. And what they did was not complicated. They didn’t have advanced weapons in one of their tunnels: they had parachutes, people with vehicles and rifles,” says Klein. “I don’t buy the idea that they are going to eliminate Hamas’ capabilities. The death toll in Gaza will generate more radicalization and thirst for revenge. “How many children are there right now who have been orphaned and who will dedicate themselves to seeking revenge?”
The latest surveys reinforce that thesis. The Gaza war has triggered support for Hamas in Palestine, especially in the West Bank, the other piece of land that, together with Jerusalem, forms the occupied territories. Meanwhile, the Palestinian National Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas, which cooperates on security issues with the Israeli Government, is plummeting, and 90% of Palestinians are calling for him to resign. The Palestinians also demand the right to defend themselves by force of arms.
“As long as the root of the problem continues, the occupation of the territories and the denial of Palestinian rights and human dignity, there will be no security,” he says for this newspaper. Omer will cry, an expert on the Middle East conflict at the University of Notre Dame (United States). “Hamas is more than its armed wing, it is an idea of liberation. Even if it is destroyed, another Hamas will emerge. You cannot underestimate the people’s desire for freedom. It is the lesson learned in the American ‘war on terror'” .
Israeli strategy in Gaza
The Israeli Government does not clarify what the military strategy is behind what President Joe Biden has called “indiscriminate bombings” in Gaza. For now, it has left the north uninhabitable, destroying or damaging seven out of every ten buildings in the Strip, almost all the bread factories and many of the hospitals.
They have also begun to flood the network of tunnels from where Hamas designs its attacks against the occupying power and stores the rockets it launches against Israeli cities.
One of the objectives targeted by the Israel Defense Forces would be the creation of a “buffer zone” on the Palestinian side of the wall surrounding the Strip to prevent future attacks. This is what the Israeli Government is secretly communicating to several Arab countries, Reuters reports.
“About the buffer zone, I will be clear: there will not again be a situation in which Hamas terrorists can approach the border so they can cross it and kill our people again,” said the security adviser of the Mark Regev Government.
Israel has built a multimillion-dollar separation wall with Gaza with advanced control systems, cameras and Artificial Intelligence that were, however, nullified by homemade drones with bombs by Hamas.
In 2018, Israel killed 312 Palestinian protesters who approached the separation fence to protest against the blockade to which the Strip is subject. There were also more than 20,000 injured.
The new security dilemma
For decades, Israel has maintained a systematic strategy of occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where it has established hundreds of illegal settlements for more than 700,000 settlers. In 2005 she withdrew from Gaza, although she kept it under a total siege by land, sea and air.
Since then it has waged more than five wars against the Strip, in what has been called the “lawn mowing strategy”. They have caused the death of more than 6,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, almost always under the government of right-wing Benjamin Netanyahu in government. “Until October 7, many Israeli officials believed the strategy was working,” he notes. Sean Foley, expert in the Middle East and Islamic History at the University of Middle Tennessee (United States). “It went hand in hand with the influx of funds from abroad into Gaza and opportunities for Gazans to work in Israel. Now they face a new dilemma.”
International governments insist that the two-state solution, which is based on the Oslo Accords and dozens of United Nations resolutions, is the best way to guarantee the security of both parties. A Palestinian National Authority with a viable State and security forces. It is also the position of the Spanish Government, expressed both by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares.
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