Freeing Gazans means ending Hamas

The premise of this article is that the majority of Gazans are aligned with and support Hamas. While Israel abides by the rules of warfare, Hamas does not abide by the rules of warfare, and because Gazans accept and support Hamas in its violation of those rules, Gazans will suffer and die. Both Hamas and its Gazan supporters are to blame for all of the suffering and death that is wrought, and Hamas must be ended so that Gazans can obtain a new viewpoint and a new start.

HISTORY OF JEWS, ISRAEL, AND GAZA

100 years ago, with 2 billion people living in the world, there were 15 million Jews, and no Jewish country.  Today, in part because the Holocaust wiped out 40% of the entire Jewish population and led to the depopulation of Jews from virtually all of Europe and all of the Middle East where they’d lived for millennia, there is one Jewish country, Israel. The land of Israel is the ancestral home of Jews, and retains a permanent Jewish presence dating back thousands of years.  But moreover, it had already become the new home of hundreds of thousands of Jews who began returning there starting in the 1870s, to a then-sparsely populated, undesirable locale.  Israel was in the process of becoming a Jewish state prior to the Holocaust.

Today, there are still only 15 million Jews in the world (less than 1/5 of 1 percent of the 8 billion people on the planet).  Half of all Jews live in Israel.  For context, there are 2 billion Muslims and 50 Muslim-majority countries (31 cite Islam as their national religion), and there are 2.4 billion Christians and 108 Christian-majority countries (34 cite Christianity as their national religion).^[1]  Israel is a very small country, about the size of New Jersey, and most of its population is in a 10 mile-wide corridor: Israel’s Arab neighboring states have 525 times the land mass, which is about 1.5 times the size of the whole United States (including Alaska).[2]

For generations, Jews and Arabs lived in the area known as Gaza.  The Gaza Strip is 25 miles north-south and about 6 miles east-west, running along the Mediterranean Sea, bordering Egypt and Israel.  It was long-controlled by Egypt, but was ceded by Egypt to Israel after the 1967 War.  In 1993, pursuant to the Oslo Accords and its promise of a two-state permanent peace plan, Israel granted its governance to the Palestinian Authority (which has always been led by the Fatah party).^[3]

In 1967, the population of Gaza was 394,000.  Today, its population is 2.1 million.  That population growth rate is among the highest in the world.  Half of its population is under 20, which is also among the highest rate in the world.  About half of the population is unemployed.^[4]

The Jews of Gaza regularly suffered terrorist attack.  But beginning in the 1980s and continuing for decades, attacks by Palestinians against Jews in Gaza rose to become a massive issue.  In a huge gamble unilaterally undertaken by Israel in 2005, Israel forcibly removed all Jews from Gaza, with the hope that the Palestinians, without the presence of Jews as a catalyst for unrest, would shift their focus to improving their lives.  In furtherance of its hope for better neighbors, Israel allowed tens of thousands of Gazans into Israel to work, and allowed Gazans into Israel for medical treatment.[5]

HISTORY OF HAMAS

Yet, rather than inducing peace, Israel’s gamble in removing Jews from Gaza led to the opposite result.  In 2006, a democratic election was conducted.  The majority of Gazans voted not for Fatah, the mainstream Palestinian political party, but instead voted for Hamas.  Hamas’ position, since its founding in the 1980s, at the time of the 2006 election, and today, is solely focused on the death of all Israelis, and the death of all Jews everywhere, through Palestinian and Islamic martyrdom.^[6]

Since 2006, Hamas has been the aggressor in mass terrorist assaults against the Israeli people  —  not the Israeli military, but the Israeli people  —  on a nonstop basis.  Not one year has passed without rockets fired from Gaza at Israeli civilians.  Identified wars, involving hundreds and thousands of rockets and infiltrations into Israel, occurred in 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2018, and 2022, but at no time has there been any substantial period of more than a few months when Hamas did not work to murder Israeli civilians.^[7]

Hamas is financially, militarily, and logistically supported by Iran.  It is financially supported by Qatar.  It receives support from Turkey.^[8]  But while Hamas is often viewed as a proxy for Iran, it is its own entity, and representative of the majority of Gazans.

The wars between Hamas and Israel are known as “asymmetrical.”  This is because Hamas operates without rules and expressly aims to murder civilians, while Israel has thus far constrained itself to operate at a higher standard than the rules of war require.  Digging deeper into this asymmetrical warfare necessitates a fuller understanding of the realities and consequences of the alignment of Gazans with Hamas.

PEACE EFFORTS, GENEVA CONVENTIONS, HAMAS CHARTER

In order to understand the alignment of Gazans with Hamas, four subjects must be addressed:  Israel’s efforts to make peace with the Palestinians;  the Geneva Conventions’ description of legitimate military (versus terrorist) operations;  the Hamas Charter;  and, Israel’s military responses to date.

Regarding efforts at peace between Israel and the Palestinians, solely Israel has made efforts at peace, has made difficult compromises for peace, and has suffered for having made efforts at peace.  Israel has offered a two-state solution, and the Palestinians have rejected those offers, without counteroffer, on ten occasions:

1947: UN General Assembly partition proposal (UNGAR 181)  —  rejected.

1949: Israel’s offer for peace (UNGAR 194)  —  rejected.

1967: Israel’s offer for peace (UNSCR 242)  —  rejected.

1978: Begin/Sadat peace proposal  —  rejected (except by Egypt).

1994: Rabin/Hussein peace agreement  —  rejected (except by Egypt).

1995: Rabin’s Contour-for-Peace plan  —  rejected.

2000: Barak/Clinton peace offer  —  rejected.

2001: Barak’s Taba peace offer  —  rejected.

2008: Olmert/Bush peace offer  —  rejected.

2014: Kerry’s Contour-for-Peace plan  —  rejected.

In the interests of peace, Israel has withdrawn from Egypt, from Lebanon, from Gaza, and from parts of the West Bank.  Despite promises, the Palestinians have never made similar efforts.  With little exception, Israel has abided by the 1993 Oslo Accords, which granted Palestinian autonomy over Gaza and the majority of the West Bank.^[9]  The Palestinians have done virtually nothing to abide by the Oslo Accords.  In fact, the Palestinians responded to the Oslo Accords by launching an Intifada that murdered over 1000 Israeli civilians throughout Israel, often through suicide bombings of public buses.

The rules of warfare are largely enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, to which both Israel and the Palestinians are signatories.  The 1949 Geneva Conventions, Part II, Article 28 states “The presence of a protected person [i.e., a civilian] may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.”  The Geneva Conventions First Protocol, Article 51, states “The civilian population shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.  Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited [including] those which are not directed at a specific military objective [ex: against civilians] [and] those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective [ex: untargeted rockets].  The presence of the civilian population shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favor or impede military operations.”^[10]  In short, this means that a country is entitled to self-defense, regardless of where the enemy hides itself, and the liability for the loss of civilian life is solely with the enemy.

Regarding the Hamas charter, as part of the Muslim Brotherhood, it states the following: the Koran is its Constitution; it seeks to conquer every inch of Palestine; all Jews everywhere are to be killed by Muslims; it advocates death for the sake of Allah; it expressly denies the possibility of negotiated settlement; it demands every Palestinian fight and die seeking to conquer Palestine; it expressly makes no difference between enemies that are men, women, children, or old people; it casts many horrible slanders against all Jews; and, it calls on all Palestinians and Muslims to liberate Palestine.  To be clear, Palestine is always referred to by Hamas as the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which is a general description of Israel.  Hamas has always expressly rejected a two-state solution with Israel.^[11]

ISRAEL’S RESPONSE TO OCTOBER 7, 2023 MASSACRE

Regarding Israel’s response to date, it has consistently tried to only attack Hamas leaders and terrorists, despite the fact that they hide in, attack from, and store weapons in populated areas.  Hamas operates out of the heart of Gaza’s most densely-populated cities.  Despite extraordinary efforts that eclipse those ever seen in any other military engagement, it is unavoidable that Israel strikes against Hamas sometimes hits Gazans.  Israeli forces call off attacks when there are civilians in the area.  When there are terrorists in a populated building, they “knock” on the building by hitting it with non-explosives in order to alert civilians.  The Israeli army has literally called people on the phone in buildings where there are terrorists in order to encourage them to escape.^[12]  Because of this, Israel has lost the lives of many additional civilians and soldiers, and incurred significant materials costs, by not pursuing the legitimate targets to which it is entitled in its self-defense.  All of these actions are over and above the requirements found in the Geneva Conventions.

To date, every Hamas war has ended with a ceasefire.  Israel has not sought to completely end Hamas.  The ceasefires have, on every occasion, led Hamas to import, build, and create more rockets, more weapons, more ways to attack, and more sophisticated methods than ever before.  On every occasion, Hamas has broken the ceasefires that it had agreed to with Israel.  Hamas has always held itself to be in a constant state of war with Israel, and ceasefires are only a means for Hamas to continue its perpetual war upon Israel.

The October 7, 2023, Hamas attack murdered more Jews at one time than has happened since the Holocaust.  Hamas sent thousands of terrorists into Israel by land, sea, and air, and simultaneously fired thousands of rockets into dozens of Israel cities, including Israel’s major cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. ^[13]  Hamas murdered hundreds at a dance party.  Hamas murdered hundreds in small communities, where they shot, burnt, raped, beheaded, and mutilated their victims, including babies in their cribs.  In all, Hamas terrorists murdered over 1400 Israelis, and took approximately 250 hostages.

Since the formation of Israel, approximately 5,000 Israeli civilians have been murdered by Palestinian terrorists.^[14]  For a population the size of the U.S., that is equivalent to having approximately 220,000 American civilians murdered by terrorists.  While Israel is a modern society, with no interest in a war because it understands that almost anything is better than war and it has focused its energies on its amazing self-improvement in the fields of agriculture, technology, biology, and the arts, this Hamas attack has likely achieved an inflection point.

ALLIGNMENT OF HAMAS AND GAZANS

To date, Israel has not sought to completely end Hamas.  However, it is clear that Hamas has more rockets, more weapons, more ways to attack, and more sophisticated methods than ever before.  This recent mass wave of thousands of Hamas terrorists swarming into Israel to murder Jews resulted in the death of more Jews in one day than has happened since the Holocaust.  And it happened in Israel, the only Jewish state, the last refuge for Jews.

Ending Hamas will require a tremendous amount of violence to be inflicted in Gaza.  It will not be possible for Israel to go over and above the requirements expressed in the Geneva Conventions, as it has before.  Because Hamas has always stored its weapons, hid its underground control centers, stored its supplies, and fired its weapons from the densest parts of Gaza,^[15] all of those parts of Gaza are subject to targeting in self-defense.

This, then, requires consideration of the alignment of Gazans with Hamas.  We know that Hamas won the sole popular election in Gaza.  But how do Gazans feel about Hamas?

On the one hand, we know from some first-person accounts that some in Gaza feel anger and frustration with Hamas.^[16]  Palestinians have received vastly more money than any other group in the history of the world, totaling well over $25 billion,^[17] and Gaza has received billions in aid, much of which Hamas is demonstrated to have stolen.^[18]  Many Gazans would like to leave Gaza.^[19]

But what do the majority of Gazans think about Hamas?  In 2006, Gazans elected Hamas 76-43 over Fatah.^[20]  There have been no elections in Gaza since that time.

Yet, we know how Gazans feel through regular polling (as well as polling of West Bank Palestinians and of Arab-Israelis).  In the most recent poll conducted July 2023, a 57% majority of Gazans expressed a positive opinion of Hamas (along with a 52% of West Bank Palestinians, and a very worrying 64% of Arab-Israelis).^[21]  These figures are consistent with long-term polling (specific polling questions are sometimes different from poll to poll).

Going back over the course of Hamas’ reign, it has always received the positive opinion of Gazans, and for the terrorism it perpetrates: in the past ten years, we find the following:

2014:  A majority of Gazans support Hamas, support terrorism against Israel, and support firing rockets into Israel from populated areas.^[22]

2016: A majority of Gazans support Hamas, support terrorism against Israel, and support terrorism over peace negotiations.^[23]

2018:  A majority of Gazans support Hamas, support terrorism against Israel, and believe a two-state solution is dead.^[24]

2020:  A wide majority of Gazans support Hamas over any other faction.^[25]

2022:  A wide majority of Gazans support Hamas over any other faction, and a wide majority believe that the Koran prophesizes the near-term demise of Israel.^[26]

Importantly, unlike in Israel where journalists are able move unfettered, all journalists in Gaza are escorted by Hamas.  These journalists can only go where Hamas takes them.  Hamas only takes them to either real or staged scenes of civilian distress, so as to exploit these for the world’s journalists^[27] (widely known as the “CNN Effect”).  Hamas controls the Gaza Health Department and the reports of Gazans injured and killed; Hamas controls the reports of available food, and available medicine, and available fuel, and available funds for recovery, and available land-use.  Hamas pays bloggers and videographers and influencers to paint as sympathetic a picture as possible, without regard for the truth.

Each time Hamas has launched a major attack on Israel, three things have happened.  First, after each Hamas attack on Israel, Gazan polling demonstrates increased support for Hamas, regardless of the outcome of the attack.  Second, Gazans appear sympathetically on camera at the sites of Israel’s self-defense strikes where Hamas maintains and fires its weapons in the midst of civilian population centers.  Third, after each attack on Israel, international aid pours into Gaza, which is asserted to be for the reconstruction of civilian infrastructure, but which aid is significantly controlled by and diverted to Hamas.^[28]

Some have suggested that Gazans support Hamas because the next largest rival, Fatah (which governs the West Bank and which Hamas forced out of Gaza) is corrupt.  First, that view is dehumanizing and infantilizing because it says that Gazans have no agency and can’t help but support an abject terrorist organization.  Second, it is ridiculous, because Hamas is equally corrupt if not even more corrupt.  Third, that argument is undercut by the reality that Hamas is a growing force in the West Bank and polls indicate it would win an election there.^[29]

CHANGING CULTURES FROM PRO-WAR TO PRO-PEACE

History demonstrates that a society that supports a blood-lust leadership must be cleared, so that a new society can form.  In WWI, Germany attacked its neighbors, leading to the deaths of millions.  WWI ended with a ceasefire.  Germany, with an even more vengeful mindset, elected and served the Nazi party.  Only 20 years after WWI came WWII, and Germany once again attacked its neighbors, this time leading to the deaths of tens of millions.  Fortunately, WWII ended with the near total destruction of Germany, the murder of all ranks of the Nazi party, and an occupation that demilitarized it.  Thereafter, German society turned over a new leaf, and has been, in many regards, an excellent model of a safe, conscientious, and calming international presence.  This same analysis holds for Japan after WWII.[30]

The majority support of Gazans for Hamas demonstrates that the majority has no interest in recognizing the existence of Israel, no interest in recognizing the right of Israelis to live in peace, no interest in negotiating a peaceful settlement, no interest in establishing their own state, and little sustained interest in advancing the quality of their own lives.  The majority support of Gazans for Hamas demonstrates that the majority of Gazans support Hamas’s single-minded bloodlust to murder Israelis.  Not only are Gazans not partners for peace, they cannot stand to be neighbors.  History makes clear that the only remedy is to end Hamas, so that with it dies the Palestinian belief in permanent victimhood and bloodlust, thereby enabling a new generation to move forward into modernity.  History demonstrates that rooting out Hamas in its entirety is the only way to permanently instill a change of societal culture.

Israel is obligated to defend its citizens.  The rules of warfare make clear that self-defense, through the targeting of an attacking aggressor, is the legitimate goal of warfare.  The rules of warfare expressly make clear that hiding among civilians does not negate the obligation to target the hiding aggressor with the amount of force needed to destroy the aggressor, and that harm caused to civilians is the responsibility of the aggressor who hides among civilian institutions or buildings or assets, who hides among civilians or, worst of all, affirmatively uses civilians as human shields.

There is no concept in warfare regarding the loss of life on one side as a measure of proportional comparison to the loss of life on the other side.  “The rule of proportionality requires that the anticipated incidental loss of human life and damage to civilian objects should not be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage expected from the destruction of a military objective.”[31]  In simple terms, this means that the force needed to destroy a target should be used.  The practical analysis of the amount of force needed is based on the size of the target, where the target is located, and the protective defenses of the target that must be defeated.  Meeting those parameters determines the amount of force to be used, and incidental damage is not part of that calculation.  In every war, civilians are killed (as recent examples, in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the allied forces allegedly killed about 50,00 civilians and 200,000 civilians, respectively, although estimates vary.[32])

Israel has provided Gazans with warnings of its defensive actions, it has advised Gazans to leave areas where self-defense targeting will be taking place, it has enabled pauses in targeting to enable Gazans to leave, and it has moved slowly and deliberately with ground forces and not just fired less-discriminating rockets.  Israel need not take these steps, and to do so is above the rules of warfare.  If Gazans, who support Hamas, prefer to ignore all these opportunities to leave and instead choose to stay, Israel does not have to abort its targeting of Hamas.  If Gazans die as a result of Hamas’ presence in their midst, or as a result of refusing to heed warnings, or as a result of failing to take opportunities to leave, that is not Israel’s obligation to address.  Israel has only one primary obligation, which is to defend its own people against the attacking aggressor and to appropriately destroy its targets.  But the indirect beneficiaries will be Gazans freed of Hamas and able to move in a constructive direction.

[1]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_religion.

[2]  https://iris.org.il/israel-and-the-arab-world/

[3]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip#Demographics

[4]  https://www.ft.com/content/7b618433-ba5f-4e92-a3e0-d5d41d6d17f8

[5]  Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, would have died but for medical treatment he received in Israel:  https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/20/middleeast/israeli-dentist-hamas-yahya-sinwar-intl/index.html

[6]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas

[7]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza%E2%80%93Israel_conflict

[8]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas

[9]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_Accords

[10]  https://www.icrc.org/en/war-and-law/treaties-customary-law/geneva-conventions

[11]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Charter

[12]  https://stratcomcoe.org/cuploads/pfiles/hamas_human_shields.pdf

[13]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re%27im_music_festival_massacre; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_during_the_2023_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war

[14]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_casualties_of_war#Terror_and_other_attacks_1948-1967

[15]  https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-middle-east-hamas-152644963f4249a7a21154446649910a; https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-accuses-hamas-hiding-weapons-depots-near-civilian-buildings-2022-07-27/; https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/31/why-hamas-stores-its-weapons-inside-hospitals-mosques-and-schools/

[16]  https://www.youtube.com/@PeaceComms/videos

[17]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_aid_to_Palestinians

[18]  https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/hamas-infiltrated-international-gazan-aid-group-stole-tens-of-millions-of-dollars-463211; https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-209885/; https://www.cfr.org/blog/foreign-aid-hamas

[19]  https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/196500

[20]  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/jan/26/israel1

[21]  https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/polls-show-majority-gazans-were-against-breaking-ceasefire-hamas-and-hezbollah.

[22]  https://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/498

[23]  http://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/636

[24]  http://pcpsr.org/en/node/740

[25]  http://pcpsr.org/en/node/813

[26] https://pcpsr.org/en/node/906

[27]  https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/30/palestine-crackdown-journalists-activists

[28]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_aid_to_Palestinians

[29]  https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-hamas

[30]  In WWII, Allied bombing killed about 350,000-500,000 German civilians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War_II) and about 333,000 to 900,000 Japanese civilians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan)

[31]  Proportionality in International Humanitarian Law: A Principle and a Rule – Lieber Institute West Point

[32]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_war_in_Afghanistan; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War