Reports of the assassination of Hamas’s military wing commander, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, included all the usual details: the identity card of the person killed, statements from the prime minister and defense minister saying, “I instructed, I ordered.” One thing was missing: any indication that Hamas was on alert for a response.
There have been dozens of reports from Israel’s leadership in recent months about Hamas growing stronger, recruiting militants, rebuilding infrastructure, and acquiring weapons. If so, how is it that the organization has not responded to the killing of the head of its military wing in the midst of a supposedly ongoing ceasefire? And how has it not responded to the hundreds of people killed in Gaza since the ceasefire took effect?
The Netanyahu government’s intention to return to fighting in the Gaza Strip is not being hidden. Given the American position, which currently supports Israel, there is no certainty that Donald Trump will try to stop it.
The narrative they will sell the public is that, unlike the two years of fighting Hamas, this time Israel will succeed in defeating it because this time there are no hostages in Gaza. Perhaps. But it is also possible that, as in the different case of Hezbollah, it will turn out that the appetite to finally eliminate a weakened enemy will end in a bloody quagmire from which Israel will not know how to escape.
The IDF will crush, destroy, and eliminate, while Hamas will strike through guerrilla operations, and the world will once again turn against Israel over the harm caused to Gaza’s residents.
This will certainly serve Netanyahu politically. The prime minister does not want to go into an election with Hamas still in the Gaza Strip; he will want to be in a position to tell the public: We are just about to finish off Hamas. Which almost automatically leads to a frightening conclusion: an election during another round of war in Gaza.
The most important point is that there is an alternative to war — an alternative the Israeli public is not aware of. Trump’s plan established, among other things, a governing committee for Gaza. Representative Palestinians were selected. It took weeks to find Palestinians who, on the one hand, represent the Palestinian public and are acceptable to Israel, while on the other hand have no ties to Hamas.
The governing committee has been in Cairo for months and has not received Israeli permission to enter the Gaza Strip. Israel insists that Hamas must first begin disarming.
Hamas has already announced that it is willing to transfer control to the governing committee. Its condition is that all of Gaza’s civil servants remain in their positions, or retire and receive pensions. We are talking about tens of thousands of people who presumably belonged to Hamas — as did virtually anyone who held a position in Gaza over the past 20 years. They are the ones operating Gaza’s education, healthcare, and policing systems, not the fighters of its military wing.
There is no certainty that it would be wise for Israel to demand that all these officials no longer be part of the governing system in Gaza. Perhaps it is right to remove everyone who was part of Hamas rule, but the American experience in Iraq showed that the United States’ decision to get rid of all members of the Ba’ath Party, Saddam Hussein’s party, was perhaps its biggest mistake and led to years of chaos.
Palestinian journalists close to Hamas claim that the picture Israel is painting of Hamas’s resurgence is wrong. They say the organization is in a position of enormous weakness, has lost legitimacy among the Palestinian public, is deeply in debt, cannot pay its operatives, and is willing to disarm. It has only one condition: that this not be done in a humiliating and degrading manner. No images of Hamas members handing over their weapons.
Suppose they are wrong and the reports coming from Israel are accurate — why not try?
Wouldn’t it be wiser to exhaust this path before sending soldiers deep into the Gaza Strip?