Gaza ceasefire may hold but Israel created a bitter enemy for generations
Posted: 23rd January 2025
When Hamas launched its assault into southern Israel on 7 October 2023, it quickly became evident that Netanyahu’s government was gearing up for all-out war. But what was also strikingly clear was the similarities between Israel’s response and the US rush to war after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as well as its subsequent abject failure to bring peace.
Indeed, twenty-two years earlier and a few days after 9/11, I wrote in openDemocracy that: “The group responsible for the [9/11] attacks has engaged in detailed planning over many months and has substantial numbers of supporters with total dedication to its aims. A core aspect of the current situation is that the group responsible for the attacks needs a strong US counter-reaction. Indeed this should be recognised as one of the prime motivations for the attacks.
Replace “US” in that quote with “Israel” and the fit is uncomfortably close. Netanyahu vowed to dismantle and destroy Hamas piece by piece in retaliation for what he deemed a barbaric attack by “human animals” – echoing the rhetoric used by the US following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Indeed, barely a week after 7 October 2023, 3,000 Palestinians had been killed, 10,000 wounded and a thousand were missing, mainly under the rubble of the wrecked buildings. Already at this point, the war, together with the pre-war privations of the Palestinians in Gaza meant that it would serve as a huge recruiting agent for Hamas, ensuring a long-term flow of supporters, especially among the young people that were seeing so many of their friends and families killed or maimed. And so it has turned out.
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In the past sixteen months 47,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, as many as 13,000 more lie buried under rubble and collapsed buildings, and over 100,000 have been wounded, many with life-changing injuries. The appalling conditions of the ruined towns of Gaza are difficult to comprehend, so complete has been the devastation, but Israel rapidly adopted its own way of war almost from the start, the Dahiya doctrine, in which an entire population is punished for the actions of a few.
That approach has been at the centre of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) posture but, given the thousands of Hamas fighters that have been killed, one aspect of the outcome is difficult to believe. This is that according to the just-retired US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, Hamas has been replacing its paramilitary units almost as quickly as they have been killed. How it is managing to do this may become clear in time, but there are already hints that much of the massive network of tunnels under Gaza has survived and there are even new tunnels still being built.
When the ceasefire started last Sunday, Hamas immediately sought to show that it was still very much around. Its armed paramilitaries were quickly on the streets and a few local services began to operate, even including some uniformed police. It may have been a largely symbolic show of force, but it made the point that the “human animals” were still there and were even open about their weapons.
Such a display, however limited, was no doubt anathema to Netanyahu and his supporters and may partly explain the major operation that the IDF is now mounting on the West Bank. After all, as far as Gaza goes, Netanyahu has little alternative but to abide by the terms of the ceasefire even if it is a very long way from where he wants to be. Not only are IDF troops having to withdraw from most of Gaza but the Palestinians there are able to return to their districts, however wrecked these may be, and aid is starting to flow in.
A shaky ceasefire may persist in southern Lebanon, but Netanyahu and the IDF do still have free rein over the occupied West Bank. Furthermore, they will be reassured that they have Trump’s backing in this regard with his newly appointed Ambassador to the UN, Elise Stefanik, talking of Israel having a “biblical right” to the land.
Although western media coverage is limited, it is clear in reports from within the West Bank that a major military operation is under way, especially focused on the large refugee camp in the northern city of Jenin. There is also an increase in settler attacks on Palestinian villages but neither trend may be as significant as another Israeli move.
Ever since the end of the Second Intifada (uprising) two decades ago, movement across the whole of the West Bank has been under strict control of the border police and IDF units. A network of strategic roads has been set aside for Israeli use only, whereas movement of Palestinians across their own lands can be turned on and off like a tap.
By all accounts Netanyahu’s forces are currently closing up much of the West Bank, effectively punishing the entire Palestinian population of 3.3 million people. The motivation is two-fold. One is for Netanyahu to keep the two far-right parties in his coalition but the other is most likely to incite Hamas so that it reacts strongly enough for Netanyahu to declare the ceasefire over.
From Netanyahu’s perspective, his core problem is that the 7 October attack resulted in ordinary Israelis feeling deeply insecure and this has not gone away. If he cannot get back into the war then exerting far greater control over the West Bank may make political sense to him and his like-minded supporters, at least in the short term.
In the long term it will be disastrous. Despite the terrible cost to ordinary Palestinians, whether in Gaza or now in the occupied West Bank, one undoubted outcome of the war is the creation of hundreds of thousands of angry young Palestinians and this will last for generations.
Historians of Palestine talk of the enduring impact of the Naqba in 1948, the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians during the Israeli War of Independence. That was more than two generations ago. The current Gaza War, with 60,000 already killed or buried under rubble, is an even greater disaster and its impact will last at least as long if not longer.
What Netanyahu has already succeeded in doing is ensuring a fundamentally insecure State of Israel for decades to come.