The Lessons Of The Hamas War
Israel's strategic mistake.
March 3, 2017
Caroline Glick
Originally published by the Jerusalem Post.
The State Comptrollerās Report on Operation Protective Edge, Israelās war with Hamas in the summer of 2014, is exceedingly detailed. The problem is that it addresses the wrong details.
Israelās problem with Hamas wasnāt its tactics for destroying Hamasās attack tunnels. Israel faced two challenges in its war with Hamas that summer. The first had to do with the regional and global context of the war. The second had to do with its understanding of its enemy on the ground.
War between Hamas and Israel took place as the Sunni Arab world was steeped a two-pronged existential struggle. On the one hand, Sunni regimes fought jihadist groups that emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood movement. On the other, they fought against Iran and its proxies in a bid to block Iranās moves toward regional hegemony.
On both fronts, the Sunni regimes, led by Egypt under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Saudi regime and the United Arab Emirates, were shocked to discover that the Obama administration was siding with their enemies against them.
If Israel went into the war against Hamas thinking that the Obama administration would treat it differently than it treated the Sunni regimes, it quickly discovered that it was mistaken. From the outset of the battle between Hamas and Israel, the Obama administration supported Hamas against Israel.
Americaās support for Hamas was expressed at the earliest stages of the war when then-secretary of state John Kerry demanded that Israel accept an immediate cease-fire based entirely on Hamasās terms. This demand, in various forms, remained the administrationās position throughout the 50-day war.
Hamasās terms were impossible for Israel. They included opening the jihadist regimeās land borders with Israel and Egypt, and providing it with open access to the sea. Hamas demanded to be reconnected to the international banking system in order to enable funds to enter Gaza freely from any spot on the globe. Hamas also demanded that Israel release its terrorists from its prisons.
If Israel had accepted any of Hamasās cease-fire terms, its agreement would have constituted a strategic defeat for Israel and a historic victory for Hamas.
Open borders for Hamas means the free flow of armaments, recruits, trainers and money to Gaza. Were Hamas to be connected to the international banking system, the jihadist regime would have become the banking center of the global jihad.
The Obama administrationās support for Hamas was not passive.
Obama and Kerry threatened to join the Europeans in condemning Israel at the UN. Administration officials continuously railed against IDF operations in Gaza, insinuating that Israel was committing war crimes by insisting that Israel wasnāt doing enough to avoid civilian casualties.
As the war progressed, the administrationās actions against Israel became more aggressive. Washington placed a partial embargo on weapons shipments to Israel.
Then on July 23, 2014, the administration took the almost inconceivable step of having the Federal Aviation Administration ban flights of US carriers to Ben-Gurion Airport for 36 hours. The flight ban was instituted after a Hamas missile fell a mile from the airport.
The FAA did not ban flights to Pakistan or Afghanistan after jihadists on the ground successfully bombed airplanes out of the sky.
It took Sen. Ted Cruzās threat to place a hold on all State Department appointments, and Canadaās Conservative Party governmentās behind-the-scenes diplomatic revolt to get the flight ban rescinded.
The government and the IDF were shocked by the ferocity of the administrationās hostility. But to his great credit, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu surmounted it.
Netanyahu realized that Hamas is part of the Muslim Brotherhood nexus of jihad and also supported by Iran. As a result the Egyptians, Saudis and UAE rightly view it as a major enemy. Indeed, Egypt was in a state of war with Hamas in 2014. Gaza serves as the logistical base of the Salafist forces warring against the Egyptian military.
Netanyahu asked Sisi for help in blunting the American campaign for Hamas. Sisi was quick to agree and brought the Saudis and the UAE into an all-but-declared operational alliance with Israel against Hamas.
Since the Egyptians were hosting the cease-fire talks, Egypt was well-positioned to blunt Obamaās demand that Israel accept Hamasās cease-fire terms.
In a bid to undermine Egypt, Obama and Kerry colluded with Hamasās state sponsors Turkey and Qatar to push Sisi out of the cease-fire discussions. But due to Saudi and UAE support for Sisi and Israel, the administrationās attempts to sideline the Egyptians failed.
The cease-fire terms that were adopted at the end of the war contained none of Hamasās demands. Israel had won the diplomatic war.
It was a strange victory, however. Netanyahu was never able to let the public know what was happening.
Had he informed the public, the knowledge that the US was backing Hamas would have caused mass demoralization and panic. So Netanyahu had to fight the diplomatic fight of his life secretly.
The war on the ground was greatly influenced by the diplomatic war. But the war on the ground was first and foremost a product of the nature of Hamas and of the nature of Hamasās relationship with the PLO.
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The Comptrollerās Report is notable mainly because it shows that nearly three years after Protective Edge, official Israel still doesnāt understand what happened that summer. The problem with Hamas was never tactical. It was always strategic. Israel won the diplomatic battle because it understood the correlation of its strategic interests with those of the Sunni regimes.
It lost the military battle of attrition because it permitted Hamas to resupply.
The Lessons Of The Hamas War