How Did You Think Gazans Would Respond?

The dispute between Israel and the Palestinian people has been in and out of the news cycle my entire life. For years, the narrative in the news has been very much around “terrorism”, with the Palestinians being broadly characterized as the perpetrators of terrorism.

There is no question that in terms of military capability, Israel is the 500lb gorilla here.  They have one of the most impressive militaries on the planet, and for good reasons. The creation of Israel out of the end of the European colonial empires wasn’t exactly greeted with good wishes by its neighbours.

However, people seem genuinely shocked when Israel puts on display what is clearly the contents of a weapons cache.  Let’s talk about how Israel has treated Gaza, and Palestinians since Netanyahu came onto the political scene (which, mysteriously, isn’t far off when Hamas took political control of Gaza).

Gaza has been described as an “Open Air Prison”.  There are good reasons for this.  First, let’s talk about the ocean front.  Yes, there is a fishing zone that Israel “allows” Gazans to fish in, but just beyond that limit, Israel maintains a naval blockade.  Venture too close to that blockade, they turn their ship’s guns on you and sink you. 

There are a handful of land border crossing points as well.  Strictly controlled, Israel restricts how many Gazans can cross into Israel and attempts to control the flow of goods in and out of Gaza as well.  The rest of the border with Israel is fenced off, and there is a massive surveillance and security network built around it. Further, Israel has declared that anyone who comes within a certain distance of the fence will be shot. 

For a variety of reasons, the border crossings with Egypt are generally kept closed.  In part, I suspect because it’s much easier for Egypt to keep the Palestinians out of the Sinai than it is to cope with a militarized border with Israel.  

The metaphor of a prison camp isn’t entirely inaccurate.  The civilians in Gaza are basically being held there and have very limited mobility and freedom beyond the fences.

* Before you come in yabutting about the reasons behind Israel’s actions here, that isn’t relevant to my point - I’m just describing the state things were in prior to October 7, 2023. 

Hamas wrested control of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority in 2007, so that gives Hamas the best part of 20 years to spread their propaganda within Gaza, as well as to prepare things for what happened in October this year.  Think about that for a moment. I can’t speak to Hamas’ propaganda, but one might imagine that it has been used to harden attitudes towards Israel in general, and frankly when walking too close to the border fence gets you shot, the general population is going to be fairly receptive to those messages.  

That’s the first part of the “pressure cooker” that Israel has created here.  They locked the people of Gaza up with only very limited contact outside of the “prison camp”.  That makes it far easier for Hamas to demonize Israel, and to make the people of Israel the anonymous “other” - it’s a pretty classic propaganda strategy.  

Add to that the strict controls over the Gaza border, where Israel effectively controls the ability of Palestinians to access trade, fuel, and other instruments of economic development and that further exacerbates the situation within Gaza.  This is part 2 of the pressure cooker.  With limited economic opportunities, it becomes easier for Hamas to portray itself as both the saviour of the people and also to explain away the crushing poverty that so many would be living in.  (“Look - it’s all Israel’s fault - it’s the land of milk and honey beyond that fence”)  

So, Hamas sets about creating its own underground economy in Gaza.  What does that revolve around?  Everything from building up underground (literally) infrastructure that is away from prying Israeli surveillance to smuggling operations that bring in the raw materials needed for manufacturing weapons. The people have work to keep them busy, and as long as there is food flowing in, Hamas can keep things relatively quiet.

It isn’t difficult to see that parts for guns are easily smuggled in a variety of guises (construction materials, parts for machinery repair, etc).  It’s well known that an AK-47 can be duplicated quite easily by anyone with access to conventional metalworking tools.  The few parts that might need to be imported could be dressed up as any number of innocuous things.  

Anyone who is surprised that Israel is finding weapons caches all over Gaza is being naive.  Of course there are caches all over the place - including around civilian infrastructure.  Hamas has cleverly used the last 15+ years to arm the Gaza.  They would be able to justify this to their people with propaganda along the lines of “You never know when Israel is going to come rolling in” - and they aren’t wrong.  That’s the beauty of propaganda - it’s believable because it’s wrapped around a tiny kernel of truth.  

The fact that Hamas has been able to lob rockets into Israel more or less continuously for years now tells us that the Israeli “Siege of Gaza” strategy is only of limited effectiveness in terms of preventing Hamas from acquiring the materials of war.

But, the more salient point here is that you cannot effectively control a rival power by direct occupation and suppression alone.  An unwilling population will find ways around your controls, no matter what they are.  WWII era Europe under German occupation, and then Cold War era Soviet controlled states showed that repeatedly.  The Soviets were perhaps more successful, but the blunt reality is that the underground economy ultimately was uncontrollable.

Through a combination of cynical politics, and naive strategy, Israel’s leadership gave Hamas everything it needed to turn Gaza into an armed camp waiting for Israel to invade.  In fact, we know that Netanyahu’s own political strategy specifically depended on feeding Hamas to drive division between the West Bank Palestinian Authority, and Gaza. It was deliberate.

The third aspect of the “Gaza Pressure Cooker” is the utter lack of any kind of relief valve in the equation. Every interaction with Gaza had become an excuse to “tighten the screws”.  Further, we cannot ignore how the Israeli “settlements program” would inflame anger at Israel both in Gaza and in the West Bank.  Although universally declared illegal under international law, the Israeli government has more or less thumbed its nose at such declarations.  The Palestinians would see this as disempowering, and even the act of lobbing rocks or rockets at Israeli targets would be seen as “doing something”.  

* To be absolutely clear here, I am not endorsing Hamas or its actions.  What I want you to take away from this is an understanding of how cynical, simplistic policy on the part of Israel created a pressure cooker which was inevitably going to explode.  

I cannot say what the strategic goals of Hamas’ actions on October 7 were beyond provoking Israel into (over) reacting. I do think it is simplistic to view it simply as “an act of terrorism”.  Certainly, aspects of those events look like a large scale terrorist action.  Perhaps the internal political pressures within Gaza were reaching a point that Hamas had to do something direct to distract people’s attention away from them (although that seems unlikely at this distance).  

With the evidence of both Russian and Iranian involvement with Hamas that we do have, one can suspect that the larger goal is to spark a regional conflict to draw attention (and resources) away from Ukraine.  Although it hasn’t turned into a regional conflict yet, if Israel succeeds in pushing the Palestinian people out of Gaza and into the Sinai, that will happen.  It may well happen if Israel continues to push southward in Gaza, crushing the people against the border with Egypt too.  At some point, groups like Hezbollah and others will decide to get involved.  

How do we prevent that from happening?  At this stage, I’m not at all convinced that you can prevent it.  It will take leadership that is far more committed to peace than currently exists.  There is little question that both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are profoundly corrupt organizations at this point, whose leadership sees more (personal) gain in conflict than in negotiation - likely funded and supplied by Russia and Iran.  Netanyahu himself is facing trial on corruption charges, and no doubt sees this conflict as a useful distraction.  Lebanon and Syria are both in shambles politically, and unlikely to be able to stay the actions of groups like ISIS and Hezbollah.  Egypt seems reluctant to upset Israel, and Jordan has remained notably silent, similarly seeming to hope that whatever is going on within Israel’s borders stays there. 

Internationally, the US has long lost its status of “honest broker” in the region, while Russia and Iran seem to be content to stir the pot since conflict is very profitable.  It is possible that China could try to intercede and take over the “honest broker” role here, but China is facing its own problems at the moment and given their alignment with Russia would have a difficult time being seen as credible. 

In short, there are few on the stage today whose interests are served by peace, and even fewer whose vision extends far enough to formulate a roadmap towards peace.