Worse Outcomes Than A Strengthened Hamas
Worse Outcomes Than A Strengthened Hamas
A number of writers have noted the possibility of Hamas being politically strengthened by Israel’s bombing of Gaza, just as Hezbollah were strengthened by Israel’s 2006 bombing of Lebanon. This would obviously be a bad outcome, but it’s important to understand that it would not be the worst. A much worse outcome would be that the bombings weaken Hamas while strengthening Salafist elements in Gaza, who consider Hamas a bunch of timid, half-stepping sellouts.
Salafism is a strict, puritanical interpretation of Islam, of which Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda are extreme exponents. One of the many tragic consequences of the Iraq war is that, not only did it contribute to the rising popularity of this radical doctrine in the Middle East, it provided an environment for radicalized Muslims to come and train alongside their radical brethren in the latest guerrilla tactics against the world’s best military. They took very seriously President Bush’s invitation to “bring it on,” managing to turn Iraq into a killing field for several years before their Iraqi allies turned against them.
Many of these fighters are now filtering back into the region, bringing their hardened ideology and training with them. Michael Scheuer, the CIA’s former point man on bin Laden, has been examining the penetration of the Levant by extremist factions facilitated by the war in Iraq. Scheuer recently reported that “the bleed-through from Iraq also is having some impact in the Palestinian territories — especially Gaza — and in Israel.”
In these theaters, of course, access to Israeli targets already is assured, and so the emphasis of the newly arrived mujahideen and a number of in-place Israeli Arabs seems to be to build a foothold from which Salafism can be preached and have a chance to grow among the populace.
There have been anti-Israeli operations conducted by Salafi groups in Gaza – such as the Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam) – but the attacks have not been major, and the Salafis appear to spend just as much time fighting with their erstwhile Islamist colleagues in Hamas.
Scheuer quoted Jordanian writer Urayb al-Rintawi’s warning that “those who blockaded Gaza to take revenge on Hamas and champion Fatah could one not-too-distant day see that their reprehensible deed has only led to bring [in] al-Qaeda and draw [in] fundamentalist organizations that are more extreme than both the hawks of Hamas and the militants of Islamic jihad.”
In April, the Jamestown Foundation reported on Al Qaeda’s growing interest in Palestine. After experiencing a series of defeats in Iraq as a result of the Anbar Awakening and Iraqis’ broader rejection of Al Qaedism, Osama bin Laden indicated his intention to reboot the brand by focusing on an issue dear to Arabs and Muslims — the plight of the Palestinians.
In July, Der Speigel ran a story on the competition between Hamas and Salafist elements in Gaza:
Abu Mustafa says, he and his comrades in arms realize they need to be patient. There’s a long way to go before they can begin their struggle for global influence. First, they have to take care of an enemy closer to home: Hamas.
So far, Hamas has done what it can to keep the Salafis under control. They know the ultra-radicals are just waiting to take over Hamas’ position of leadership. “They are traitors,” Abu Mustafa says of Hamas. “Compared to us, they are Islamism lite.” [...]
The group’s greatest sin, says Abu Mustafa… is its effort to bring Islam and democracy together. “Hamas represents an American style of Islam. They have tried to curry favor.” Which is not such a bad thing for Abu Mustafa and his Salafis. “Hamas is like a block of ice in the sun,” he says. “Every minute they get smaller — and we get larger.”
Note that the competition between Salafists and Hamas eviscerates (once again) the neoconservative conceit of a united Islamofascist front against the West. These are different groups with different ideologies and goals. Treating them merely as different heads on a Islamic terrorist hydra is just bad policy. In addition to addressing underlying causes when possible, a better policy would involve exploring whether these differences can be aggravated and exploited, as they have been in Iraq.
Since 9/11, neoconservatives and other supporters of a “war on terror” have tried to conflate Israel’s war with the Palestinians with America’s war with Al Qaeda, playing upon Americans’ fear and trauma to obscure the very different issues that in fact motivate the Israel-Palestine conflict. But just as an Iraq invasion premised in part on the myth of an Iraq-Al Qaeda connection resulted in a foothold for Al Qaeda in Iraq, so a U.S.-Israel policy that admits essentially no difference between Hamas and Al Qaeda — and that continues to blindly support attempts to crush extremism without addressing the conditions that drive extremism — could very likely do the same for Al Qaeda in Palestine.
11 Responses to “Worse Outcomes Than A Strengthened Hamas”
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Hamas played the Saudi Arabia (Sunni) off Iran (Shia). What happened to the $3 billion everybody play nice deal brokered by Saudi King Abdullah?
V.P. Cheney called the Arab League peace plan viable. Only it’s been on the table since 2002. Israel doesn’t want to give up land for peace.
January 4th, 2009 at 11:01 amWhile Obama monitors for the 9th day, Pope Benedict calls for the fighting to cease:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3650188,00.html
Pope: War won’t solve Holy Land problems
Benedict XVI calls for end of violence in Gaza Strip in speech before pilgrims, saying history has shown ‘war and hate aren’t the solution,’ urges faithful to pray for peace.
January 4th, 2009 at 12:28 pmWhy is this so surprising? It’s a lesson taught over and over and over and over again.
When you eliminate or make powerless the decent opposition, what emerges is the indecent opposition. Lather, rinse, repeat, each time with a less and less decent opposition.
January 4th, 2009 at 1:18 pmWhat Cid said.
January 4th, 2009 at 11:57 pmI don’t understand getting rid of Hamas when they at least tried to be part of a legitimate government. Obviously Israel just wants more and more radicals to fight.
I guess like the U.S. conservatives, they just have to have an enemy to fight. A few rockets and they go crazy, like always.
January 5th, 2009 at 1:28 pmFrankly I don’t see any reason why the Israelis would need distinct policies towards Hamas and the Salafis. So what, Hamas will exploit any and all resources available to kill as many Israelis as possible, but the Salafis really reeeeally want to kill them? Yes, I agree that we should explore whether the differences between these groups can be exploited, but if the missiles were flying towards my town I wouldn’t be clamoring for such an approach.
January 5th, 2009 at 2:34 pmDoes it really matter who is shooting at you? If you get hit, you’re dead. Ideology is irrelevant.
January 5th, 2009 at 3:10 pmugh. Hamas has every right to defend itself against Israel’s genocidal policies.
Israel wants the Salafists to grow in power so they have a better excuse for escalation. The real goal is to bring Syria and Lebanon in, so Israel can eventually control the territory necessary to build a pipeline to Iraq’s oil fields.
January 14th, 2009 at 3:51 pmThe irony is this is history repeating itself. Hamas was created by Israel’s 1982 offensive against the PLO, which created the vacuum in which the more radical Hamas was formed.
Now the Israelis can deal with the PLO, but must destroy Hamas. Which means in 10 or 20 years, Israelis will be longing for the good old days of Hamas.
January 15th, 2009 at 4:14 pmRoots of GAZA’a Problem:
West-UN Maintain-Promote Terrorists Phenotype
By Gunnar Heinsohn
As the world decries Israel’s attempt to defend itself from the
rocket attacks coming from Gaza, consider this: When Hamas routed
Fatah in Gaza in 2007, it cost nearly 350 lives and 1,000 wounded.
Fatah’s surrender brought only a temporary stop to the type of
violence and bloodshed that are commonly seen in lands where at least
30% of the male population is in the 15-to-29 age bracket.
In such “youth bulge” countries, young men tend to eliminate each
other or get killed in aggressive wars until a balance is reached
between their ambitions and the number of acceptable positions
available in their society. In Arab nations such as Lebanon (150,000
dead in the civil war between 1975 and 1990) or Algeria (200,000 dead
in the Islamists’ war against their own people between 1999 and
2006), the slaughter abated only when the fertility rates in these
countries fell from seven children per woman to fewer than two. The
warring stopped because no more warriors were being born.
In Gaza, however, there has been no demographic disarmament. The
average woman still bears six babies. For every 1,000 men aged 40-44,
there are 4,300 boys aged 0-4 years. In the U.S., the latter figure
is 1,000 and in the U.K. it’s only 670.
And so the killing continues. In 2005, when Israel was still an
occupying force, Gaza lost more young men to gang fights and crime
than in its war against the “Zionist enemy.” Despite the media’s
obsession with the Mideast conflict, it has cost many fewer lives
than the youth bulges in West Africa, Lebanon or Algeria. In the six
decades since Israel’s founding, “only” some 62,000 people (40,000
Arabs, 22,000 Jews) have been killed in all the Israeli-Arab wars and
Palestinian terror attacks.
During that same time, some 11 million Muslims have been killed in
wars and terror attacks-mostly at the hands of other Muslims.
What accounts for the Mideast conflict’s relatively low body count?
Hamas and their ilk certainly aim to kill as many Israelis as possible.
To their indignation, the Israelis are quite good at protecting
themselves. On the other hand, Israel, despite all the talk about its
“disproportionate” use of force, is doing its utmost to spare
civilian deaths. Even Hamas acknowledges that most of the
Palestinians killed by Israeli air raids are from their own ranks.
But about 10%-15% of Gaza’s casualties are women and minors-a tragedy
impossible to prevent in a densely settled area in which nearly half
the people are under 15 and the terrorists hide among them.
The reason for Gaza’s endless youth bulge is that a large majority of
its population does not have to provide for its offspring. Most
babies are fed, clothed, vaccinated and educated by UNRWA, the United
Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near
East. Unlike the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, which deals with the rest of the
world’s refugees and aims to settle them in their respective host
countries, UNWRA perpetuates the Palestinian problem by classifying
as refugees not only those who originally fled their homes, but all
of their descendents as well.
UNRWA is benevolently funded by the U.S. (31%) and the European Union
(nearly 50%)-only 7% of the funds come from Muslim sources. Thanks to
the West’s largesse, nearly the entire population of Gaza lives in a
kind of lowly but regularly paid dependence. One result of this
unlimited welfare is an endless population boom. Between 1950 and
2008, Gaza’s population has grown from 240,000 to 1.5 million. The
West basically created a new Near Eastern people in Gaza that at
current trends will reach three million in 2040. Within that period,
Gazans may alter the justifications and directions of their
aggression but are unlikely to stop the aggression itself.
The Hamas-Fatah truce of June 2007 allowed the Islamists again to
direct all their energy on attacking Israel. The West pays for food,
schools, medicine and housing, while Muslim nations help out with the
military hardware. Unrestrained by such necessities as having to earn
a living, the young have plenty of time on their hands for digging
tunnels, smuggling, assembling missiles and firing 4,500 of them at
Israel since 2006. While this gruesome activity has slowed the
Palestinian internecine slaughter, it forced some 250,000 Israelis into
bomb shelters.
The current situation can only get worse. Israel is being pushed into
a corner. Gazan teenagers have no future other than war. One rocket
master killed is immediately replaced by three young men for whom a
martyr’s death is no less honorable than victory. Some 230,000 Gazan
males, aged 15 to 29, who are available for the battlefield now, will be
succeeded by 360,000 boys under 15 (45% of all Gazan males) who could
be taking up their arms within the coming 15 years.
As long as we continue to subsidize Gaza’s extreme demographic
armament, young Palestinians will likely continue killing their
brothers or neighbors. And yet, despite claiming that it wants to
bring peace to the region, the West continues to make the population
explosion in Gaza worse every year. By generously supporting UNWRA’s
budget, the West assists a rate of population increase that is 10
times higher than in their own countries. Much is being said about
Iran waging a proxy war against Israel by supporting Hezbollah and
Hamas. One may argue that by fueling Gaza’s untenable population
explosion, the West unintentionally finances a war by proxy against the
Jews of Israel.
If we seriously want to avoid another generation of war in Gaza, we
must have the courage to tell the Gazans that they will have to start
looking after their children themselves, without UNRWA’s help. This
would force Palestinians to focus on building an economy instead of
freeing them up to wage war. Of course, every baby lured into the
world by our money up to now would still have our assistance.
If we make this urgently needed reform, then by at least 2025 boys in
Gaza-like in Algeria-would enter puberty as only sons. They would be
able to look forward to a more secure future in a less violent society.
If the West prefers calm around Gaza even before 2025, it may
consider offering immigration to those young Palestinians only born
because of the West’s well-meant but cruelly misguided aid. In the
decades to come, North America and Europe will have to take in tens
of millions of immigrants anyway to slow the aging of their
populations. If, say, 200,000 of them are taken from the 360,000 boys
coming of age in Gaza in the next 15 years, that would be a
negligible move for the big democracies but a quantum leap for peace in
the Near East.
Many of Gaza’s young-like in much of the Muslim world-dream of
leaving anyway. Who would not want to get out of that strip of land
but the international NGO’s and social workers whose careers depend
on perpetuating Gaza’s misery.
—————————
January 19th, 2009 at 5:55 amMr. Heinsohn heads the Raphael Lemkin Institute at the University of Bremen, Europe’s first institute devoted to comparative genocide research.
True Salafis could fight more effectively against Israel than Hamas can. The only way for the Palestinians to win outright is to convert their entire population into a colonizing army (all men, women, and able bodied children), arm themselves to the teeth, train and practice fanatically, and then on that one fateful day the entire Palestinian population goes over the wall all at once in massive organized columns. Only those too feeble to fight are left behind in their WB and Gaza hovels. Suicide bombers are the vanguard that help breach the wall. They pour into Israel against preselected targets at night, and then slaughter every last Israeli. To the last man they fight to the death, take no prisoners, and kill their own mortally wounded brethren. They take no supplies other than weapons and water, and live off the land, which can mean eating their victims. In other words they must fight like ants. When the red ants go up against the black ants, every ant is all-in, and the conquered are eaten. The Palestinians must fight the same way if they really want to win.
February 12th, 2009 at 3:02 pm