Which side won the Israel- Hamas war?

By J. Zel Lurie

J. Zel Lurie
J. Zel Lurie

DELRAY BEACH, Florida –“Hamas was seriously beaten,” Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu told a group of skeptical reporters and columnists at a news conference, on the day after an open-ended ceasefire was declared.

The IDF put figures on the “severe beating”. 603 Hamas soldiers, commonly called gunmen by the media and terrorists by Israeli politicians, were killed. At the same time, 64 Israeli soldiers were killed, a 10:1 ratio in fatalities.

A week later on September 2nd, a senior army intelligence officer told the press everything the army knew about the war. He did not call the Hamas soldiers terrorists. He called them operatives. He said there were 16,000 organized in six battalions. Their losses were only a few hundred.

What the army learned and how this war differed from previous invasions of Gaza was that the rockets were held underground in a maze of tunnels so that they could be moved from one location to another in minutes. He showed before and after air-surveillance photos of the yard of a UN school. In the first photo, the yard was bare. A few hours later, there were boxes which the officer said were filled with rockets.

He said that Hamas still had 3,000 rockets. If he said that more are being manufactured daily underground, it was classified information and not reported in the press.

I hate to compare the deaths of over 2,000 Gazans to a boxing match, but that is the image that comes to mind. I see a man with his hands and feet tied being beaten mercilessly by another. The man could only spit his defiance. Hamas’ spit was a daily barrage of homemade rockets which, according to the New York Times, “paralyzed southern Israel”.

Although no one has reported this, I feel that these rockets are being made daily in underground workshops. The only way that the IDF can find and destroy them is by occupying the entire coastal enclave. This is what Naftali Bennett and other right-wing ministers, such as Avigdor Lieberman, are demanding. This is what Netanyahu and his defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, are resisting.

In late July or early August, the IDF’s top brass gave a classified briefing to the eight-member security cabinet on the difficulties of occupying and disarming Hamas. This meeting was leaked to the press and J.J. Goldberg reported on it in the Forward.

According to Goldberg, occupying Gaza would be costly in men and material. Moreover, it would cost rioting in the West Bank and might rupture Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan.

The leak to the press, which obviously came from the prime minister’s office, has increased the pressure on Netanyahu. His popularity has dropped by more than 50 percent since the beginning of the war.

At the news conference, Netanyahu told the press that Hamas was diplomatically isolated and then he asked, “will we reach a long-term quiet?”

Long-term quiet depends on Israel lifting the blockade which has kept 1.7 million Gazans living in an open-air jail for decades. They never had enough water or electricity to power the sewage pumps. The United States and the West considered Hamas to be terrorists.

The tunnels to Egypt kept the economy running while breaking the social order. Those who ran the cargo tunnels became known as the “Tunnel Millionaires”.

The overthrow of the Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi, who was friendly to Hamas, closed the tunnels and Hamas’ isolation was complete.

Hamas believed that only war could break its isolation. Hamas provoked the war and kept it going for seven weeks. (The senior army intelligence officer admitted that the army was surprised that Hamas kept the war going for 50 days.)

The war destroyed hundreds of buildings and homes in Gaza, 23 mosques, several UN schools, and made a quarter of a million people homeless.

But it ended Gaza’s isolation. Lifting the blockade is now on the West’s agenda. It will crop up at the United Nations General Assembly this fall.

The war did serious damage to Israel. Not only was the entire south paralyzed for 50 days, but the country’s economy was seriously damaged. The tourist industry was cut in half. Ben Gurion’s airport was virtually closed for two days after a rocket had landed nearby.

Hamas’ acting prime minister celebrated the end of the war, not at a news conference, but before a cheering crowd of tens of thousands waving the green flag of Hamas.

According to the terms of the ceasefire agreement, lifting the blockade and constructing a port and reconstructing the airport will be discussed in a month. So the answer to Netanyahu’s question: “will we reach a long-term quiet?” remains to be seen.

In Washington, Martin Indyk, former American ambassador to Israel and President Obama’s special envoy to Israel, said that the war had hammered another nail in the coffin of a two-state solution to the conflict.

Hamas’ goal is not a two-state solution. Hamas’ goal is to lift the blockade.

The two-state solution is the realm of Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestine Authority. Whatever he achieves, Hamas says it will agree to.

Since Secretary John Kerry’s attempt to end the conflict has collapsed, Abbas has adopted a new strategy. He will ask the U.N. Security Council to demand that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in Gaza come to an end in three years. The United States will find it difficult to veto such a resolution.

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Lurie, a centenarian, lives in retirement in Delray Beach, Florida after a long career as a journalist in Israel.  He may be contacted via jzel.lurie@sdjewishworld.com