By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

After Hamas-led militants massacred hundreds of Israelis on October 7, prominent observers argued that the group’s ideological intransigence left Israel with no option but to eliminate it.3 US President Joe Biden rejected calls to “stop the war” because “[a]s long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a cease-fire is not peace.”4 Senator Bernie Sanders dismissed the prospect of “a permanent ceasefire with an organization like Hamas which is dedicated to destroying the State of Israel.”5 “People who are calling for a ceasefire now,” former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asserted, “don’t understand Hamas.” The group “will sabotage any efforts to forge a lasting peace, and will never stop attacking Israel.”6 The practical corollary of this reasoning was set out with disarming frankness by the Economist. In an editorial published November 2, the August journal acknowledged that “Israel is inflicting terrible civilian casualties” in Gaza, accepted that Israel “has unleashed a ferocious bombardment against the people of Gaza,” recognized that a prolongation of Israel’s offensive would cause “the deaths of thousands of innocent people” in Gaza—and concluded that “Israel must fight on,” because “while Hamas runs Gaza, peace is impossible.”7 Given its lethal-cum-genocidal implications,8 the claim that no lasting truce or peace agreement with Hamas is possible merits scrutiny.

Attempts to blame Palestinian recalcitrance for the intractability of the Israel-Palestine conflict are not new. On the contrary, Israeli spokespeople long ago elevated into a public relations mantra the aphorism of Abba Eban, Israel’s one-time foreign minister: “The Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity” for peace.9 The main problem with this claim is that it is flatly contradicted by the historical record. Palestinian leaders have sought for decades to resolve the conflict on terms approved by the international community. By contrast, Israel and the United States have consistently rejected those terms in favor of Israel’s territorial expansion. Furthermore, Israeli military offensives have often been directed not at combatting Palestinian terrorism but, on the contrary, at dispelling the “threat” of a peace agreement. Whenever Palestinian leaders moved toward accepting the international consensus framework for resolving the conflict, Israel responded with violence calibrated to force them back into militant rejectionism.

Preventing peace with the PLO During the June 1967 Arab-Israel War, Israel came into military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip. (Israel also occupied the Egyptian Sinai, Syrian Golan Heights, and two islands in the Gulf of Aqaba.) Already by the mid-1970s, the international community converged on a framework for resolving the festering conflict. This framework comprised two elements rooted in fundamental principles of international law. The first called for Israel’s full withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories in exchange for Palestinian-Arab recognition of Israel. The second called for establishing an independent State of Palestine on the Palestinian territories from which Israel would withdraw, i.e., the West Bank and Gaza, as well as a “just resolution” of the Palestinian refugee question.10 Land for peace and Palestinian self-determination secured through a two-state settlement: these principles for a reasonable if imperfect resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict were eventually endorsed by an overwhelming consensus at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in the political organs of the United Nations (UN), and of respected human rights organizations.11

In the immediate aftermath of the June 1967 war, both Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) rejected a two-state settlement. Preferring territorial expansion over peace, Israel pursued an “insatiable quest for Lebensraum” in the occupied Palestinian territories.12 It began establishing illegal settlements in 1967 and unlawfully annexed East Jerusalem in 1980.13 Palestinians under Israeli occupation were controlled through “brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers.”14 Israel’s defiance of UN efforts to facilitate a negotiated resolution of the conflict was underwritten by Washington, which, impressed by Israel’s decisive victory over Arab nationalism in 1967, adopted Israel as its key “strategic asset” in the Middle East.15 Under the direction of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the United States extended unqualified support for Israel’s rejection of any peace plan requiring its full withdrawal from occupied territory.16

Israel’s rejectionism was at first mirrored by Palestinian leaders.17 In the late-1960s, the PLO was unwilling to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state established through the systematic dispossession of the Palestinian people and situated on over three-quarters of historic Palestine. The diverse factions which together comprised the PLO cleaved to the “unifying” political program articulated in the organization’s 1969 Charter. This called for “the retrieval of Palestine” and its “liberation through armed struggle.”18 PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and the moderate leadership, however, quickly discerned that mobilizing international support on behalf of the Palestinian national cause would be possible only if the PLO came to terms with Israeli sovereignty. From the early 1970s, the PLO began cautiously signaling to Washington its willingness to negotiate based on the crystallizing two-state consensus.19 After the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war swung “the tide of international opinion” in Palestine’s favor, Arafat seized the moment to thrust the Palestinian case before the UN General Assembly, ambiguously offering Israel “the gun or the olive branch.”20 Pretenses to the contrary notwithstanding, Western officials understood Arafat’s speech as inaugurating a Palestinian push for peace.21 At a landmark October 1974 Arab League Summit at Rabat, a “strikingly moderate” Arafat had privately indicated to the assembled heads of state that he was “ready to accept a peace settlement” and to “recognize Israel.”22

Arafat took his olive branch to the UN Security Council one year later. In January 1976, the PLO tacitly supported an Arab and Non-Aligned draft resolution endorsing a two-state settlement of the Arab-Israel conflict. The PLO publicly welcomed the draft resolution as “consonant with a just peace” while, in private, Palestinian representatives conveyed to American and UN officials their acceptance of Israeli sovereignty as a “major concession.”23 This far-reaching Palestinian peace offer was supported by all the frontline Arab “confrontation” states—Egypt, Syria, Jordan—as well as the Soviet Union.24 The resolution was also approved by the majority on the Security Council. But Israel refused to participate in the debate, angrily resolving “never to negotiate” with “terrorist organizations,” and the US killed the draft by voting it down. The PLO ambassador was left to bitterly condemn this “tyranny of the veto.”25

US and Israeli intransigence did not deflect the PLO from its moderate trajectory. On the contrary, the January 1976 draft resolution was just the first of many Palestinian offers to negotiate a two-state settlement, all of which were rejected by Washington. In 1977, Arafat painstakingly negotiated formal PLO recognition of Israel with the administration of US president Jimmy Carter. The talks collapsed when Carter refused to offer reciprocal American recognition of Palestinian self-determination.26 In July 1979, the PLO promoted its own Security Council resolution that explicitly reconciled Israeli sovereignty with Palestinian self-determination.27 This Palestinian initiative marked, in the words of one European ambassador to the UN, “potentially the biggest breakthrough” in peace efforts “since 1948.”28 Washington again threatened its “tyranny of the veto” and the resolution was shelved. In April 1980, the PLO, supported by the Arab states, tabled a Security Council resolution that reproduced almost verbatim the January 1976 draft. The US vetoed it again.29 In July 1982, the PLO affirmed its “full support” for a French and Egyptian Security Council resolution calling for “mutual” Israeli-Palestinian recognition. Faced with unrelenting American-Israeli opposition, the draft never reached a vote.30

Already forty years ago, then, Western observers concluded that Palestinian leaders wanted a diplomatic settlement whereas Israeli rejectionism posed the primary obstacle to peace. In 1981, the entire US intelligence community—including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), State Department, and Department of Defense—converged on these judgments:

1. Department of Defense—converged on these judgments: In exchange for independent Palestinian statehood, Arafat and the core Palestinian leadership was “prepared to recognize Israel’s right to exist,” and “could probably enforce the discipline necessary to obtain acceptance of this within the PLO,” and “would also agree to a process leading to more formal recognition.”

2. Israeli politicians from Likud on the right to Labor on the left were united in “broad agreement” that there should be “no total withdrawal [by Israel] to the pre-June 1967 borders and no negotiating with the PLO.” “Even if the PLO were to modify its charter to recognize Israel and to renounce terrorism,” Israel “would still oppose negotiations with the PLO.”32

The PLO and all Arab states support the international consensus two-state settlement; Israel and the US obstinately reject it. This fundamental impasse persists into the present and explains why the Israel-Palestine conflict continues.

Thwarting Palestinian moderation Israel did not rely solely on Washington’s Security Council veto to pre-empt, discredit, and deflect the pestiferous onslaught of Palestinian peace offers. In the 1970s and 1980s, Israel conducted so-called “reprisals” against the PLO in Lebanon that were vastly disproportionate to Palestinian attacks, wildly indiscriminate, and all too often targeted at civilians.33 Western observers commented at the time on a most cynical aspect of this “retaliatory” policy: Israeli assaults on Palestinian and Lebanese civilians increasingly responded not to Palestinian terrorism but, on the contrary, to Palestinian moderation.34 Israel’s reaction to the PLO’s January 1976 peace initiative was illustrative of this dynamic. Two days after the Security Council decided to include the PLO in its deliberations on the Arab and Non-Aligned draft resolution, Israeli warplanes bombed Palestinian refugee camps in South Lebanon. The strikes killed dozens, including many civilians. Israeli officials admitted the bloody assault was “preventive, not punitive” while the CIA regarded it as a “reflection of Israeli anger” over the Security Council’s decision to hear the Arab peace plan.35

The massacre was not an emotional outburst but reflected a strategic logic that manifested repeatedly over the following six years. When Israel greeted the PLO’s July 1979 peace proposal with another round of “particularly bloody” and “unprovoked” airstrikes—twenty-two men, women, and children were killed—US officials took note of the pattern.36 “Israeli actions in Lebanon,” they concluded, “are designed to weaken the position of moderate Palestinians and drive them into extremist attitudes which will effectively prevent the US from doing business with them.”37 The logic was straightforward, if perverse: people are unlikely to desire peace with you if you murder their families, and that’s a good thing if you aim to acquire territory, not peace. This macabre strategy culminated in Israel’s June 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

Successive Palestinian peace initiatives had by then corroded the legitimacy of Israel’s rejectionist posture and raised the prospect that Israel would be pressured into relinquishing the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In 1980, the governments of Western Europe began to reward Palestinian moderation by drifting toward the UN consensus on Palestinian rights.38 Still more ominously, the Arab League issued a peace plan the following year offering recognition of Israel in exchange for Palestinian statehood.39 Most disturbing of all, the PLO signed a US-brokered ceasefire in July 1981 and proved “scrupulous” in adhering to it.40 Halting attacks across Israel’s northern border, Arafat sent word to Western officials that the PLO was, “in unequivocal terms,” prepared “to live in peace with Israel.”41

These developments elicited panic in Israel. The US envoy responsible for negotiating the PLO ceasefire warned that Israeli officials were “almost paranoic” about the diminished violence.42 Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon feared that by substituting the image of the PLO “diplomat” for that of the PLO “terrorist,” Arafat might unleash a tide of global, and even American, pressure for Palestinian statehood. “Paradoxically, the fact that the PLO … restrained itself and observed the cease-fire for a year was the greatest threat of all to Israel,” a prominent Israeli political sociologist concludes. “[A]fter all, someone might conclude that the organization could be a partner for peace.”43 Indeed, the word “ceasefire” was such a “negative codeword” for Israel’s “neurotic” officials that many refused even to utter it in the presence of their American counterparts.44 Perhaps “what the US ought to be doing,” one high-level American official mused, “was sending Israel, not supplies of arms, but loads of Valium.”45

To thwart these “Palestinian peace offensives” that threatened to foist on Israel a diplomatic settlement of the conflict, Israel resolved to “wipe out” the PLO in Beirut.46 From July 1981, Israel persistently sought to “goad the PLO into breaching the ceasefire” and thereby to “manufacture” a “propaganda base” for war.47 Israeli forces bombarded Lebanese villages indiscriminately, exploded car bombs in Beirut’s crowded city center, and only narrowly aborted a scheme to bomb Beirut’s stadium sky-high, liquidating the PLO leadership in one fell swoop.48 When Arafat finally succumbed to the relentless pressure and authorized retaliatory rocket fire, in May 1982, the Israeli army steamrolled into Lebanon in the name of “rooting out Palestinian terror,” killing as many as 20,000 Palestinian and Lebanese, overwhelmingly civilians.49 Having been privy to Israel’s repudiation of UN efforts to consolidate the ceasefire, Britain’s Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Francis Pym observed in the opening week of the war that “Israel’s … prime objective” was “not security of [its] northern border” but the “elimination of inconvenient Palestinian claims”—“inconvenient” because validated by an ever-widening international consensus.50

Israel’s operation to smash the moderate PLO leadership in Lebanon was therefore directed not at combating Palestinian terrorism, but at fomenting and provoking it. This was widely recognized by informed Western observers. “The Israeli government will undoubtedly see its invasion as a clear military and political success,” Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) reported several weeks into the war. “There must now be a greater risk of terrorist acts, especially against American and Israeli targets”—and “any PLO terrorism will give Israel a propaganda success.”51 After the invasion, the PLO’s moderate leadership faced an internal revolt over Arafat’s “failure … to mobilize international support behind a negotiated solution to the Palestinian issue.”52

The CIA found “the Israelis … pleased” with this dissension:

the unrest will produce a more militant PLO, raising the chances for increased terrorist attacks on Israeli targets throughout the world. Nonetheless, Israel realizes that a return to terrorism will decrease the PLO’s acceptability as a negotiating partner and thereby further erode international pressure on Israel to deal with the Palestinians.53

Though Arafat retained his leadership role, the Lebanon war dealt the Palestinian national movement a shattering blow. Displaced to far-off Tunis, riven by factionalism, and politically overshadowed by regional conflicts, the 1980s saw the PLO in steady decline. The outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada in December 1987 pulled Arafat’s chestnuts from the fire. Despairing of liberation from without, Palestinians under occupation took the national struggle into their own hands. First in Gaza, then across the occupied territories, Palestinians entered into mass, unarmed civil revolt against Israel’s military rule.54 Israel’s policy of “force, might, and beatings” to suppress the uprising provoked international indignation and rejuvenated support for Palestinian self-determination.55 Arafat sought to capitalize on this newfound political urgency by launching another peace offensive. In December 1988, Arafat renounced “all forms of terrorism” and affirmed Israel’s “right … to exist.”56 US officials groused that, by once-and-for-all burying the US-Israeli pretext for refusing to negotiate, Arafat had inaugurated a “new and rather nightmarish era” in which Palestinian claims could no longer be dismissed.57 To deflate international pressure for a Palestinian state, the US and Israel were henceforth compelled to adjust their approach: instead of sidelining the PLO or battering it into extremism, they now sought to co-opt the Palestinian leadership and, thereby, pacify it.

In 1993, with the intifada sputtering under Israel Defense Forces (IDF) repression, Arafat and Israel’s prime minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands on the White House lawn as they inaugurated what became known as the “Oslo peace process.” For the PLO, this was a Faustian pact: the Palestinian leadership-in-exile was permitted to return and set up a subordinate administration in the occupied territories, where it would serve as “Israel’s enforcer.”58 This newly established Palestinian Authority (PA) would “rule … by their own methods,” Rabin explained to a meeting of the Israeli Labor Party, “freeing … Israeli soldiers from having to do what they will do.”59 “The [Oslo] agreement leaves us with the territory and them with the populated areas,” Oslo’s legal architect likewise enthused. “[I]t even leaves them with the dirty work of patrolling the cities and refugee camps.”60

Worse still, the PLO embarked on negotiations conducted outside the framework of international law, absent a protective UN forum, and without having received any US or Israeli guarantees that talks would be directed toward achieving Palestinian self-determination. The results were predictable. The PLO unilaterally recognized Israel and committed to negotiations “mediated” by Israel’s primary ally and patron. In exchange, Israeli leaders made no commitments on the terms of a final agreement and continued to reject any prospect of a Palestinian state, while the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied territories ballooned by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2001.61 When Palestinian and Israeli leaders eventually met to hash out a final deal, in 2000 and again in 2007, Israeli offers fell short of even the minimum requirements under international law.62 Palestinian representatives were willing to compromise on the terms of the international consensus. But when they refused to entirely sign away the internationally validated rights of the Palestinian people, American “mediators” erupted in fury. “This isn’t the Security Council here. This isn’t the UN General Assembly,” President Bill Clinton fumed in 2000. “I’m the president of the United States.”63

Since 2014, even the pretense of diplomatic negotiations has been abandoned as Israel brazenly trumpets its opposition to Palestinian statehood.64 The leading Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, affirms that “the West Bank has been annexed in practice.”65 Israel’s government, formed after the November 2022 elections, is formally committed to “promote and develop [Jewish] settlement” in the West Bank, to which, it stipulates, “[t]he Jewish people have an exclusive and indisputable right.”66 All this time, the PA has run the negotiations treadmill. It has talked—pleaded—with its oppressor for three decades, longer than any other anti-colonial movement in history. Meanwhile, Israel steadily consolidated its grip on the occupied territories, incorporated ever larger tracts of Palestinian land, implanted hundreds of thousands of Jewish colonists, and squeezed Palestinians into ever smaller concentrations hemmed in on all sides by Israeli military and settler infrastructure.67 Palestinian independence has never been farther from reach.

Hamas redux The PLO not only accepted, but compromised well beyond, the requirements of international law and the international consensus for resolving the conflict. Can the same be said of the Hamas authorities in Gaza? Hamas has substantially retraced the PLO’s political trajectory while attempting to avoid replicating the PLO’s mistakes. At its inception in 1988, Hamas rejected the international two-state consensus. Its founding covenant, like that of the PLO before it, looked forward to “a decisive battle of liberation” for the whole of Palestine.68 The Islamist movement’s attitude began to shift, however, when Israel unilaterally redeployed its troops to the perimeter of Gaza in August 2005, removing civilian settlers from the Strip while retaining control over Gaza’s borders, airspace, and waters.69 A few months later, in January 2006, Palestinians across the occupied territories held a carefully monitored, “completely honest and fair” election.70 Hamas had previously opposed elections because the PA, like the Oslo process that created it, was illegitimate. But this time, Hamas unexpectedly decided to participate. Even more unexpectedly, it won: in what was widely interpreted as a protest vote against the PA’s corruption as well as collaboration with Israel, a plurality of Palestinians gave Hamas a majority of seats in the legislature.71

Newly burdened with administrative responsibility and eager to obtain international legitimacy, Hamas repeatedly signaled that it was ready to moderate its program to achieve a negotiated settlement with Israel. “If Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders,” Hamas leader Khalid Meshal asserted in February 2006, “there could be peace and security in the region.” “If Israel declares that it will give the Palestinian people a state,” added Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, “then we are ready to recognize them.”72 Hamas officials subsequently proposed a “long-term truce” that would be “automatically renewed,” securing space to “negotiate a lasting peace” including resolution of “important issues like the right of return and the release of prisoners.”73 “Hamas’ conditions are almost too good to be true,” asserted a former deputy head of Israeli intelligence. “Refugees and right of return and Jerusalem can wait for some other process; Hamas will suffice with the 1967 borders, more or less, and in return will guarantee peace for ten, 25 or 30 years of good neighborly relations and confidence-building.”74 In January 2007, Mishal acknowledged that a viable peace settlement would leave Israel intact—“the first time,” asserted Israel’s leading newspaper Ha’aretz, “that a Hamas official has raised the possibility of full and official recognition of Israel.”75

Two years later, Hamas sent letters to the newly elected US president Barack Obama, committing itself to “a just resolution to the conflict not in contradiction with the international community and enlightened opinion as expressed in the International Court of Justice, the United Nations General Assembly, and leading human rights organizations.”76 The letter was delivered amidst a new spate of public statements from top officials asserting Hamas’s commitment to negotiated peace: “If our demand is met and a Palestinian state is established,” affirmed one high-ranking figure, “we will recognize Israel.”77 Over the following decade, Hamas reiterated to the point of tedium its support for negotiations based on the international consensus two-state settlement.78 Ambiguities notwithstanding, the organization’s overarching trajectory toward the two-state settlement was unmistakable. “Hamas has been carefully and consciously adjusting its political program for years,” argued a US government agency study in 2009, “and has sent repeated signals that it is ready to begin a process of coexisting with Israel.”79 “The leadership of Hamas knows that they have no capability of destroying Israel,” a former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency affirmed in 2016. “Hamas is now searching for ways and means of dialoguing with Israel.”80

It might be objected that, even as Hamas offered a long-term ceasefire in exchange for a state in the West Bank and Gaza, it still refused to countenance a permanent peace with or to formally recognize Israel. But Hamas has also stated that “regardless of its ideology or principles,” it would abide by a two-state settlement if this was approved by a popular referendum of the Palestinian people or adopted by a legitimately representative government.81 This pragmatic compromise was formalized by Hamas’s adoption of a new covenant in 2017. Supplanting the “outdated” as well as antisemitic original, Hamas’s “de-facto” new Charter stipulated that, whereas Hamas itself would not recognize Israel, the movement would accept the reality of Israel within its pre-June 1967 borders as “a formula of national consensus.”82 This positioned Hamas closer to the international consensus framework for resolving the conflict than every mainstream political party in Israel.

It might also be contended that the above survey overlooks Hamas statements rejecting co-existence with Israel or that it naively takes Hamas overtures at face value. But putting aside the fact that Hamas has demonstrated itself willing and able to uphold past diplomatic agreements with Israel,83 the crucial point is this: at no point in the last fifteen years have Israel or the United States ever so much as seriously considered testing Hamas’s offers to negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict. It bears emphasis that Hamas’s moderate overtures represented its opening offer, issued without any guarantee of reciprocation from Washington or Tel Aviv. If Hamas refused to unilaterally recognize Israel, this likely reflected a rational aversion to replicating what Hamas considers a cardinal PLO error: unconditionally recognizing Israel, and negotiating on this basis for three decades, only to receive worse-than-nothing in return. “Having witnessed the sorry fate of the PLO,” a leading scholar of the movement queried, “what is Hamas’s incentive to follow suit?”84 Hamas nevertheless showed potential to “evolve in a pragmatic direction that would allow for a two-state solution,” UN Middle East envoy Álvaro de Soto observed.85 Yet, reprising their treatment of the PLO three decades prior, Israel and its allies responded to evidence of Hamas’s political moderation not as an opportunity to pursue but as a dire threat to avert.

As soon as Hamas was elected, the US and Israel moved to punish Palestinians for their democratic choice. “If we were going to push for an election,” US senator Hillary Clinton rued, “we should have made sure to determine who was going to win.”86 With Egyptian complicity, and US backing, Israel imposed a suffocating blockade on Gaza—an illegal policy of collective punishment and probable crime against humanity.87 Following Israel’s lead, the Middle East Quartet—comprising the US, UN, European Union, and Russia—put forth three “unattainable preconditions” for Hamas’s entry into the peace process: renunciation of violence, respect for past agreements, and recognition of Israel.88 Putting aside the fact that Israel reserves the right to use violence with impunity, runs roughshod over past agreements, and flagrantly denies the Palestinian right to sovereignty, Israel ensured that nothing was done to incentivize Hamas to make concessions. Instead, the specter of Hamas “terrorists” ruling Gaza provided Israel with a convenient dual alibi for its refusal to negotiate Palestinian independence. On the one hand, how could Israel be expected to parlay with an organization committed to its destruction?89 On the other hand, how could Israel reach a deal with the PA if it did not represent all Palestinians?90

Whenever Hamas deviated from its assigned role as terrorist spoiler—for instance, by affirming moderate positions or by forming a unity government with the PA—it became necessary to discipline the organization using the standard methods.91 Consider the build-up to and aftermath of the January 2006 Palestinian elections, during which Hamas adhered to a unilateral ceasefire with Israel. Israeli military officers “readily” credited the “sharp decline in violence” primarily to Hamas’s “restraint,” observed the International Crisis Group, even as “Israel refused to negotiate a reciprocal and comprehensive cessation of hostilities” or to terminate “attacks, including assassinations.”92 When Hamas won the election, it wrote to the Middle East Quartet expressing its wish to achieve a “negotiated settlement with Israel” and, in a letter to President George W. Bush, offered to accept “a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders” along with “a truce for many years.”93 Israel responded with a sharp escalation in violence. Pummeling Gaza with indiscriminate shelling in June, the IDF killed a Palestinian family picnicking on a beach, driving Hamas to abandon the ceasefire it had “largely maintained for sixteen months.”94 Israel then abducted dozens of Hamas parliamentarians, including a third of the Palestinian cabinet.95 The following year, the US and Israel orchestrated a Fatah-led coup in Gaza which Hamas pre-empted, fragmenting Palestinian politics and precluding Hamas’s integration into the peace process.96

The “cycle of violence” came full circle in 2008. That June, Israel and Hamas agreed to another ceasefire. Though its terms were contested, its essence was straightforward: Hamas would not fire rockets, and Israel would lift its devastating siege.97 Hamas was subsequently “careful to maintain the ceasefire,” Israel’s quasi-official Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center observed, resulting in what a Defense Ministry official conceded was “a large measure of peace to Israeli communities near Gaza.”98 Informed observers intuited that Hamas had signed the ceasefire to prepare the ground for a renewed peace offensive. Hamas “recognized … [it’s] ideological goal is not attainable” and was “ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967,” asserted former Israeli intelligence chief Ephraim Halevy, but “Israel, for reasons of its own, did not want to turn the ceasefire into the start of a diplomatic process with Hamas.”99 Just barely easing its suffocating siege, Israel exploited the truce to refine plans—first developed in 2007—for an aggressive assault against the Strip.100 The moment of opportunity presented itself on November 4: with Americans transfixed by their presidential election, Israel raided Gaza, killing six Palestinians.101 When Hamas responded with rocket fire, the IDF seized on the pretext to terminate the truce: ignoring Hamas's offers to re-establish the ceasefire, on December 27 Israel dropped over a hundred tons of bombs on Gaza, killing hundreds.102 The bombardment violated a “48-hour lull” in hostilities, a senior UN official reported, during which “it was obvious that Hamas was trying, again, to observe that truce to get this back under control.”103 Israel then visited Gaza what Amnesty International described as “22 days of death and destruction,” killing some 1,400 people, up to four-fifths of whom were civilians.104

The same blood-drenched process was repeated twice more. In 2012, Israel triggered another military operation after it assassinated its own Palestinian “subcontractor” in Gaza, who “hours before” had “received the draft of a permanent truce agreement with Israel.”105 The operation killed some 170 Palestinians.106 In April 2014, with yet another fragile ceasefire in place, Hamas joined a Palestinian unity government that signed up to the Quartet’s three demands, including recognition of Israel.107 For once, the US and Europe signaled cautious support, sparking angry denunciations from Israel.108 When a rogue Hamas cell abducted three Israeli teenagers in June, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seized the opportunity to torpedo the hated unity government. Though the Israeli government quickly realized the teenagers were dead, it pretended otherwise, citing their rescue as a pretext to rampage through the West Bank, targeting Hamas and provoking rocket fire.109 As Israeli warplanes pounded Gaza, killing dozens, Hamas proposed a far-reaching ten-year ceasefire. Hamas demanded that Israel lift the siege on Gaza by international law and release Palestinian prisoners arrested in the preceding weeks, but dropped its traditional quid pro quo of a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-June 1967 borders. Israel ignored the offer.110 Unleashing Operation Protective Edge, the IDF  massacred some 2,250 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including 550 children.111

Ceasefire, Palestinian peace offer, brutal Israeli military assault—the parallels to Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon scarcely require further elucidation. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”112

Roads not taken Conventional wisdom in the West posits that the massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7 traces back to Hamas’s irremediable “ideology of destruction,” necessitating that the group be militarily destroyed. But the historical record compels a different view. The Hamas-led massacre was a predictable and avoidable political response to Israel’s denial of Palestinian statehood and violation of human dignity in Gaza. In its treatment of the PLO and then Hamas, Israel has consistently rejected the international consensus framework for resolving the conflict while thwarting any attempt by Palestinian representatives to reach a diplomatic settlement within that framework. To neutralize these Palestinian “peace offensives,” Israel sought first to bypass Palestinian leaders as interlocutors, then to violently provoke them, and finally to co-opt and contain them. Israel followed this playbook with both the PLO and Hamas, in roughly the same sequence. In each case, Israel initially refused even to engage with Palestinian overtures. When moderate PLO and Hamas pronouncements threatened to win them international legitimacy, and thereby to undermine the tenability of Israel’s non-engagement policy, Israel in both cases conducted brutal military attacks aimed at derailing Palestinian diplomacy. Finally, Israel sought to maneuver both the PLO and Hamas into positions of subordinacy. Each organization found itself responsible for administering occupied territory and dependent on Israel for the resources and stability needed to do so. Israel thereby sought to reconcile the PLO and Hamas to its regime of domination over the Palestinian people without having to make any political or territorial concessions.

In the West Bank, Israel’s policy proved remarkably successful. By subcontracting the task of repression to the PA, Israel eroded the Palestinian leadership’s legitimacy and thus its desire as well as the capacity to mobilize popular resistance to Israel’s occupation. By 2023, Israel believed that it had engineered a similar equilibrium in Gaza, with Hamas administering a besieged prison camp on Israel’s behalf. It seemed, at first glance, that Hamas had been “pacified”: insofar as the Islamist movement prioritized its rule in Gaza, its resistance could be “contained.”113 It is now evident that this Israeli assessment was complacent. Fenced off from any diplomatic horizon and trapped within an unbearable and interminable siege, Hamas resolved to disrupt Israel’s equilibrium and violently refocus international attention on Palestine.

The bottom line is this. If, over the past half-century, Israel and its allies had desisted for but a moment in not merely missing, but actively spurning and sabotaging prospects for a just resolution to the Palestine Question, the 2023 massacre of Israeli civilians and incipient genocide in Gaza need never have happened. Indeed, the Israel-Palestine conflict would almost certainly have been resolved decades ago.

 

1. Quoted in Jerome Slater, Mythologies Without End: The US, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1917–2020 (University of Oxford Press, 2021), p. 285.

2. Saed Bannoura, “Livni Calls for a Large-Scaled Military Offensive in Gaza,” IMEMC News (8 December 2008).

3. Some commentators also suggested that the brutality displayed on October 7 itself disqualified Hamas from any political process; like ISIS, the group had to be destroyed. Given that Israel has inflicted much greater atrocities on Palestinians and Lebanese, this reasoning straightforwardly implies that Israel must be eliminated. As this obvious inference was not drawn, it is doubtful the argument was intended seriously.

4. Joe Biden, “The US Won’t Back Down from the Challenge of Putin and Hamas,” Washington Post (18 November 2023).

5. Ed Pilkington, “Bernie Sanders Calls for End to Israeli Strikes and Killing of Thousands,” Guardian (5 November 2023).

6. Timothy H.J. Nerozzi, “Hillary Clinton Says Those Demanding Ceasefire ‘Don’t Know Hamas’,” foxnews.com (31 October 2023) (“understand”). Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Hamas Must Go,” Atlantic (14 November 2023) (“sabotage”).

7. Editorial, “Why Israel Must Fight On,” Economist (2 November 2023).

8. Influential Israeli officials collapsed any distinction between Hamas and Gaza’s civilian population while Israeli forces inflicted destruction in Gaza indiscriminately. Insofar as Hamas was theoretically or practically inseparable from Gaza’s population, the claim that Hamas could not be bargained with but only eliminated implied, in practice, the mass expulsion or extermination of Gaza’s inhabitants.

9. Quoted in Ze’ev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel’s Security and Foreign Policy (University of Michigan Press, 2006), p. 386.

10. United Nations Security Council (UNSC), S/RES/242 (22 November 1967). United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), A/RES/3236 (22 November 1974).

11. Norman G. Finkelstein, Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance With Israel Is Coming to An End (OR Books, 2012), pp. 203–221.

12. Shlomo Ben Ami, Prophets Without Honor: The Untold Story of the 2000 Camp David Summit and the Making of Today’s Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2022), p. 13. The author was Israel’s foreign minister.

13. Gershom Gorenberg, The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967–1977 (Times Books, 2006), chap. 4. Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967–2007 (Nation Books, 2009), pp. 10–12. UNSC, S/RES/476 (30 June 1980). UNSC, S/RES/478 (20 August 1980).

14. Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001 (Vintage, 2001), p. 341.

15. Norman G. Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (Verso, 1995), pp. 151–162. Kathleen Christison, Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on US Middle East Policy (University of California Press, 1999), p. 132. Hilde Henriksen Waage and Hulda Kjeang Mørk, “Mission Impossible: UN Special Representative Gunnar Jarring and His Quest for Peace in the Middle East,” The International History Review 38.4 (2016), pp. 830–853.

16. William B. Quandt, Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1967 (Brookings Institution Press, 2005), pp. 55–130.

17. In this chapter, “rejectionism” designates opposition to the international consensus two-state settlement while “accommodationism” and “moderation” designate acceptance of it.

18. “Palestine National Council: The Palestinian National Charter,” in Walter Laqueur, ed., The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict (Penguin Books, 2008), pp. 117–121.

19. See “Minutes of a Combined Senior Review Group and Washington Special Actions Group Meeting,” 15 October 1970, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS),1969–1976, vol. XXIII, Arab-Israeli Dispute, 1969–1972 (US Government Printing Office, 2015), pp. 580–588.

20. Paul Thomas Chamberlin, The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 66, 218.

21. Colter Louwerse, The Struggle for Palestinian Rights: The Palestinian Campaign for Self-Determination and Statehood at the United Nations, 1967-1989, PhD thesis (University of Exeter, 2022), pp. 80–86, 91–92, 95, 99.

22. UK Embassy Amman to UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), “Rabat Summit,” FCO 93/332 (2 November 1974), UK National Archives (TNA).

23. Colter Louwerse, “‘Tyranny of the Veto’: PLO Diplomacy and the January 1976 United Nations Security Council Resolution,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 33.2 (2022), pp. 318–319.

24. Ibid., p. 316.

25. Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, updated edition (Haymarket Books, 2015), p. 78.

26. Nathan Thrall, The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine (Metropolitan Books, 2017), pp. 13–18. Jørgen Jensehaugen, Arab-Israeli Diplomacy Under Carter: The US, Israel and the Palestinians (I.B. Tauris, 2018), pp. 36–50, 68–76.

27. Colter Louwerse, Struggle, pp. 198–248. Cf. Salim Yaqub, Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs, and US-Middle East Relations in the 1970s (Cornell University Press, 2016), pp. 307–315.

28. Quoted in Alan Hart, Arafat: Terrorist or Peacemaker? (Sidgwick & Jackson Limited, 1987), p. 440.

29. UNSC, S/13911 (30 April 1980). Louwerse, Struggle, pp. 260–263.

30. UNSC, S/15317 (28 July 1982). Cf. Rashid Khalidi, Under Siege: PLO Decision-Making During the 1982 War (Columbia University Press, 2014), pp. 135–154.

31. “Apart from a few extremist Arab states,” the US intelligence assessment added, “the leaders of most other Arab states privately agree that the only viable solution is a settlement that includes ultimate Israeli withdrawal from all territory occupied in 1967 … and self-determination for the Palestinians, coupled with realistic security agreements and some form of Arab recognition of Israel.” Special National Intelligence Estimate, “Core Positions of Parties to the Palestinian Dispute,” CIA-RDP00T02041R000100100001-4 (12 December 1981), CIA Records Search Tool (CREST).

32. Ibid. Cf. Louwerse, “Tyranny,” p. 321.

33. Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (Oxford University Press, 2001), chaps. 4–6. Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, pp. 199–373.

34. Rowland Evans and Robert Novack, “Israel’s New Isolation,” Washington Post (3 August 1979). Louwerse, Struggle, pp. 221–222.

35. Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, p. 209 (“preventive”). Report, “National Intelligence Bulletin,” CIA-RDP79T00975A028400010008-8 (4 December 1975), CREST, p. 3 (civilians). Louwerse, “Tyranny,” p. 309 (“reflection”).

36. Embassy Beirut, “(U) Israeli Air Raids on July 22 in Lebanon,” 1979BEIRUT04070 (23 July 1979), WikiLeaks (“unprovoked’). “Memorandum From the Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (Aaron) to Vice President Mondale” (23 July 1979), FRUS, 1977-1980, vol. IX, Arab-Israeli Dispute, August 1978-December 1980, second revised edition (US Government Printing Office, 2018), p. 896 (“bloody”).

37. Embassy Washington to FCO, “Tel Aviv Tel 376: US/Israel Relations,” FCO93/2176 (3 August 1979), TNA.

38. Louwerse, Struggle, pp. 259–261.

39. Azriel Bermant, “Israel, the United States, Saudi Arabia and the Fahd Plan of 1981: An Historic Missed Opportunity,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 50.4 (2022), p. 14.

40. E. G. M. Chaplin to Mr. Miles, “Israel/Lebanon Ceasefire,” FCO 93/2779 (16 November 1981), TNA.

41. J. C. Moberly to Sir J. Graham, “Contacts With the PLO,” FCO 93/2806 (26 August 1981), TNA. Cf. “Note of Discussions Between Mr J C Moberly and Mr J E Holmes, FCO, and Mr Ahmed Dajani, PLO. London, 24-25 August 1981,” FCO 93/2806 (26 August 1981), TNA.

42. “Meeting Between Prime Minister Begin and Foreign Minister Shamir with Philip Habib the Prime Minister’s Residence Jerusalem” (21 July 1982), Virtual Reading Room Documents Search (VRRDS). Peter Constable, “Habib Conversation Today With Begin” (21 July 1981), VRRDS.

43. Uri Ben-Eliezer, War Over Peace: One Hundred Years of Israel’s Militaristic Nationalism (University of California Press, 2019), p. 158.

44. Embassy Tel Aviv, “Habib Mission: Meeting With Foreign Minister Shamir” (5 December 1981), VRRDS.

45. Embassy Washington to FCO, “Israel/Lebanon,” FCO 93/3110 (2 April 1982), TNA.

46. Avner Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security: Politics, Strategy, and the Israeli Experience in Lebanon (Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 70 (“peace offensives”). Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari, Israel’s Lebanon War (George Allen & Unwin, 1985), pp. 66, 220 (“wipe out”).

47. Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations (Random House, 2018), pp. 243–244 (“goad”). E. G. M. Chaplin to Mr. Miles, “Israel/Lebanon Ceasefire,” FCO 93/2779 (16 November 1981), TNA (“manufacture”). Embassy Tel Aviv to External Affairs Ottawa, “Southern Lebanon: Ceasefire on the Brink,” FCO 93/3110 (9 February 1982), TNA (“propaganda base”).

48. Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, pp. 217–219 (villages). Bergman, Rise, pp. 225-247 (car bombs at 242–243, stadium at 244–246).

49. Finkelstein, Image, p. xxiii.

50. FCO to Embassy Bonn, “Following for Private Secretary,” FCO 93/3113 (9 June 1982), TNA. Emphasis added.

51. FCO to Embassy Washington, “Implications of Israeli Invasion of Lebanon,” PREM 19/824 (22 June 1982), TNA. The JIC is responsible for oversight of the Secret Intelligence Service, Security Service, GCHQ, and Defence Intelligence.

52. Memorandum, “The Fatah Mutiny: Implications for the Peace Process,” CIA-RDP85T00287R000800130001-1 (10 June 1983), CREST.

53. Ibid. Cf. Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, pp. 224–225.

54. Wendy Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 105–107.

55. “Israel Declines to Study Rabin Tie to Beatings,” New York Times (12 July 1990).

56. Norman Kempster, “US to Talk With PLO as Arafat Meets Terms: Ambiguities Eliminated, Shultz Says,” Los Angeles Times (15 December 1988).

57. Memorandum, Peter Rodman to Colin L. Powell, “Dealing With the PLO” (16 December 1988), 2003-0261-F, Nicholas Rostow Files, Bush Presidential Records, George Bush Presidential Library [GBPL]. Rodman, Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, added that the US would “continue to reject a Palestinian state.”

58. Edward Said, ‘The Morning After,” London Review of Books (21 October 1993).

59. Quoted in Jimmy Carter, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid (Simon & Schuster, 2006), pp. 136–137.

60. Lev Luis Grinberg, Politics and Violence in Israel/Palestine: Democracy Versus Military Rule (Routledge, 2010), p. 96.

61. Yitzhak Rabin, “Speech to the Knesset,” jewishvirtuallibrary.org (5 October 1995). B’Tselem, Land Grab: Israel’s Settlement Policy in the West Bank (May 2002), p. 8.

62. Finkelstein, Knowing, pp. 221–248. Norman G. Finkelstein, How to Resolve the Israel-Palestine Conflict (unpublished, 2014), chap. 3.

63. Charles Enderlin, Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East 1995–2002 (Other Press, 2002), p. 202.

64. Maayan Lubell, “Netanyahu Says No Palestinian State as Long as He’s Prime Minister,” Reuters (16 March 2015). Tovah Lazaroff, “Netanyahu: A Palestinian State Won’t Be Created,” Jerusalem Post (8 April 2019). Mohammed Al-Kassim, “Palestinians Furious Over Netanyahu Claims That Israel Must ‘Crush’ Statehood Ambitions,” Jerusalem Post (1 July 2023).

65. B’Tselem, A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This Is Apartheid (12 January 2021).

66. Yesh Din et al., “Policy Paper: What Israel’s 37th Government’s Guiding Principles and Coalition Agreements Mean to the West Bank,” ofekcenter.org.il (January 2023).

67. UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), The Humanitarian Impact on Palestinians of Israeli Settlements and Other Infrastructure in the West Bank (July 2007). “West Bank Split into Isolated Enclaves: World Bank,” Reuters (9 August 2007). UN OCHA, “Closure Update: Main Findings and Analysis (30 April–11 September 2008),” un.org (September 2008), para. 8.

68. “Hamas: Charter,” in Laqueur, ed., Reader, pp. 341–349.

69. Human rights organizations and legal experts overwhelmingly insisted that, despite the redeployment, Israel remained the occupying power in Gaza. Human Rights Watch, “‘Disengagement’ Will Not End Gaza Occupation,” hrw.org (29 October 2004). Gisha, Disengaged Occupiers: The Legal Status of Gaza (January 2007). Cf. Yoram Dinstein, The International Law of Belligerent Occupation (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 277.

70. Former US president Jimmy Carter, quoted in Norman G. Finkelstein, Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom (University of California Press, 2018), p. 11.

71. Sara Roy, Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict (Pluto Press, 2007), p. 221.

72. Paul Owen, “Hamas Sets Out Conditions for Peace,” Guardian (8 February 2006). Lally Weymouth, “We Do Not Wish to Throw Them into the Sea,” Washington Post (26 February 2006).

73. Ahmed Yousef, “Pause for Peace,” New York Times (1 November 2006).

74. Quoted in Slater, Mythologies, p. 288.

75. Eric Silver, “Hamas Softens Israel Stance in Calls for Palestinian State,” Independent (11 January 2007). Avi Issacharoff, “PM Dismisses Meshal Comments That Israel’s Existence Is a Reality,” Ha’aretz (11 January 2007). In private, Hamas also expressed tacit support for the Arab League’s 2002 Peace Initiative, which unambiguously endorsed a two-state outcome. Donald Macintyre, Gaza: Preparing for Dawn (Oneworld Publications, 2017), p. 149.

76. Medea Benjamin, “Hamas Delivers Peace Letter to President Obama,” huffpost.com (5 July 2009).

77. “Obama Inspires Possible Shift in Hamas,” Israel Policy Forum (11 June 2009). Cf. Gianni Perrelli, “Con Israele Non Sarà Mai Pace,” L’Espresso (26 February 2009) [Italian]. “Hamas ‘Will Not Obstruct’ 1967 Borders Deal,” BBC News (10 June 2009). Ofri Ilany, “Carter: I Believe Gilad Shalit Is Alive,” Ha’aretz (16 June 2009). Jay Solomon and Julien Barnes-Dacey, “Hamas Chief Outlines Terms for Talks on Arab-Israeli Peace,” Washington Post (31 July 2009).

78. Mel Frykberg, “Hamas Parliamentarian: ‘We Accept Existence of Israel Within 1967 Borders’,” Electronic Intifada (1 February 2010). “Hamas Renews Offer to End Fight if Israel Withdraws,” Reuters (30 May 2010). Ethan Bronner, “Hamas Leader Calls for Two-State Solution, but Refuses to Renounce Violence,” New York Times (5 May 2011). Eyder Peralta, “Hamas Foreign Minister: We Accept Two-State Solution With ’67 Borders,” NPR (17 May 2011). “Israel-Hamas Cease Fire; Interview With Hamas Political Leader Khaled Meshaal,” CNN (12 November 2012). Shlomi Eldar, “Ghazi Hamad: Hamas Agrees to Accept State Within ’67 Borders,” Al-Monitor (4 April 2013). Adam Ciralsky, “Hamas’s Khalid Mishal on the Gaza War, Tunnels, and ISIS,” Vanity Fair (21 October 2014). Entsar Abu Jahal, “Hamas Says It Does Not Oppose a State Along the 1967 Borders,” Al-Monitor (26 July 2019). Elior Levy, “In Letter to Biden, PA and Hamas Commit to Two-State Solution on 1967 Lines,” Ynet (21 February 2021).

79. Paul Scham and Osama Abu-Irshaid, Hamas: Ideological Rigidity and Political Flexibility (United States Institute of Peace, June 2009).

80. Colter Louwerse, “Efraim Halevy: Hamas Is Ready to Negotiate,” colterlouwerse.wordpress.com (20 December 2023).

81. “Hamas Vows to Honor Palestinian Referendum on Peace With Israel,” Reuters (1 December 2010). Cf. Chris McGreal, “Hamas Falters in Effort to Achieve Unity,” Guardian (13 March 2006).

82. Khaled Hroub, “A Newer Hamas? The Revised Charter,” Journal of Palestine Studies 46.4 (2017), pp. 102, 107 (“outdated … de-facto”). “Hamas in 2017: The Document in Full,” middleeasteye.net (2 May 2017) (“formula”).

83. Hamas has repeatedly upheld ceasefire agreements with Israel and tacitly acquiesced in elements of the Oslo Accords. Tareq Baconi, Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance (Stanford University Press, 2018), pp. 104, 119, 183–185, 206–208, 224, 229.

84. Tareq Baconi, “Against Anti-Hamas Dogmatism,” in Jamie Stern-Weiner, ed., Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine’s Toughest Questions (OR Books, 2018), p. 200. Cf. Baconi, Hamas, pp. 229–232.

85. UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Álvaro de Soto, End of Mission Report (May 2007), p. 46.

86. “Report: Recording Released of Clinton Suggesting Rigging 2006 Palestinian Election,” Jerusalem Post (29 October 2016).

87. Finkelstein, Gaza, pp. 15, 139. Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (25 September 2009), p. 26.

88. De Soto, Report, p. 19.

89. Shortly after Hamas won electoral power, Israel’s director of military intelligence Amos Yadlin asserted that Israel would be “happy” if Hamas took over in Gaza “because the IDF could then deal with Gaza as a hostile state.” Embassy Tel Aviv, “Military Intelligence Director Yadlin Comments on Gaza, Syria and Lebanon,” 07TELAVIV1733_a (13 June 2007), WikiLeaks.

90. Cf. Gisha, Area G: From Separation to Annexation: Israel’s Isolation of the Gaza Strip and How it Serves Annexationist Goals in the West Bank (June 2020). Gidi Weitz, “Another Concept Implodes: Israel Can’t Be Managed by a Criminal Defendant,” Ha’aretz (9 October 2023).

91. Cf. Jamie Stern-Weiner, “Did Israel Thwart Another Palestinian ‘Peace Offensive’?” jamiesternweiner.wordpress.com (29 March 2017).

92. International Crisis Group (ICG), Enter Hamas: The Challenges of Political Integration (18 January 2006).

93. Ahmed Yousef, “Why Hamas Supports Armed Struggle,” in Stern-Weiner, ed., Moment, p. 164. Barak Ravid, “In 2006 Letter to Bush, Haniyeh Offered Compromise With Israel,” Ha’aretz (14 November 2008).

94. Human Rights Watch, Indiscriminate Fire: Palestinian Rocket Attacks on Israel and Israeli Artillery Shelling in the Gaza Strip (30 June 2007), pp. 84–93 (family picnicking). ICG, Palestinians, Israel, and the Quartet: Pulling Back from the Brink (13 June 2006), p. 20 (“largely maintained”). In a separate incident a day earlier, Israel assassinated a high-level Hamas official.

95. Concurrent with these arrests, Israel launched Operation Summer Rains (2006) against the Gaza Strip. Between June and November, the IDF killed some four hundred Palestinians, “including many unarmed civilians.” Two Israeli civilians were killed in the same period. Israel claimed it was retaliating against Hamas’s June 26 capture of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, and the killing of two others. But this pretext did not bear scrutiny. Hamas’s military operation was launched after Israel refused to negotiate a reciprocal ceasefire or terminate attacks and after months of “daily” indiscriminate IDF shelling which killed “more than 100 Palestinians.” Moreover, just two days before the capture of Shalit, Israel kidnapped a pair of civilians in Gaza, imprisoning them “without trial” and with “no time limit” under its longstanding and illegal practice of “administrative detention.” Indeed, at the moment of Shalit’s capture, some eight hundred Palestinians were already languishing in Israeli administrative detention. Considering that kidnapping civilians is plainly more egregious than capturing a soldier, was Hamas entitled to “retaliate” by arresting Israeli parliamentarians, indiscriminately shelling Israel, and killing hundreds of Israelis? All told, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, John Dugard, concluded that “[r]egime change, rather than security, probably explains Israel’s punishment of Gaza.” Noam Chomsky, “Comments on Dershowitz,” chomsky.info (17 August 2006) (kidnapped). John Dugard, “Despite the ‘Withdrawal,’ the Siege of Gaza Goes On,” Independent (5 October 2006) (“punishment”). Amnesty International, Road to Nowhere (December 2006), pp. 8–9 (“unarmed,” “100”). Richard Falk and Howard Friel, Israel-Palestine on Record: How the New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East (Verso, 2007), pp. 135–142 (“daily”). B’Tselem, Without Trial: Administrative Detention of Palestinians by Israel and the Internment of Unlawful Combatants Law (October 2009) (“without trial”). B’Tselem, “Statistics on Administrative Detention in the Occupied Territories,” btselem.org (20 November 2023) (800). B’Tselem, “Administrative Detention: Background,” btselem.org (n.d.) (“time”).

96. David Rose, “The Gaza Bombshell,” Vanity Fair (3 March 2008). Daniel E. Zoughbie, Indecision Points: George W. Bush and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (The MIT Press, 2014), pp. 125–127. Björn Brenner, Gaza Under Hamas: From Islamic Democracy to Islamist Governance (I.B. Tauris, 2017), pp. 35–40. De Soto, Report, pp. 21–22, 45–46. For a slightly divergent but informative account of the Hamas takeover, see Victor Kattan, “The 2007 Hamas-Fatah Conflict in Gaza and the Israeli-American Demands,” in Peter Sluglet and Victor Kattan, eds., Violent Radical Movements in the Arab World: The Ideology and Politics of Non-State Actors (I.B. Tauris, 2019), pp. 93–120.

97. ICG, Ending the War in Gaza (5 January 2009).

98. Finkelstein, Gaza, p. 32 (“careful”). Embassy Tel Aviv, “Defense Minister Barak’s Discussions in Egypt Focus on Shalit, Tahdiya, Anti-Smuggling, and Iran,” 08TELAVIV1984_a (29 August 2008), WikiLeaks (“measure”). Cf. Amnesty International, “Gaza Ceasefire at Risk,” amnesty.org (5 November 2008).

99. Quoted in Henry Siegman, “Israel Lies,” London Review of Books (29 January 2009).

100. Finkelstein, Gaza, p. 35.

101. Rory McCarthy, “Gaza Truce Broken as Israeli Raid Kills Six Hamas Gunmen,” Guardian (5 November 2008). Israel purported that it was pre-empting a Hamas attack via a tunnel running beneath the Gaza border. But as a prominent Israeli columnist pointed out, the tunnel “was not a clear and present danger”: if it truly passed into Israeli territory, the IDF could just have easily destroyed it from the Israeli side. Israel’s decision to launch an assault within Gaza was clearly directed at “shattering” the ceasefire. Zvi Ba’arel, “Crushing the Tahadiyeh,” Ha’aretz (16 November 2008).

102. Macintyre, Gaza, pp. 150–153. Finkelstein, Gaza, pp. 36–37 (re-establish). “Hundreds Die in Gaza Air Raids,” Toronto Star (27 December 2008) (100 tons). Amnesty International, Operation “Cast Lead”: 22 Days of Death and Destruction (2 July 2009), pp. 6, 100 (hundreds).

103. “UN Official Says Israel Responsible for Breaking Truce With Gaza,” Ha’aretz (30 December 2008).

104. Amnesty International, Cast Lead. Finkelstein, Gaza, p. 68.

105. Nir Hasson, “Israeli Peace Activist: Hamas Leader Jabari Killed Amid Talks on Long-Term Truce,” Ha’aretz (15 November 2012). Cf. Gershon Baskin, “Assassinating the Chance for Calm,” Daily Beast (15 November 2012). Reuven Pedatzur, “Why Did Israel Kill Jabari?” Ha’aretz (4 December 2012). Gershon Baskin, The Negotiator: Freeing Gilad Schalit from Hamas (The Toby Press, 2013), pp. 273–276.

106. Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Implementation of Human Rights Council Resolutions S-9/1 and S-12/1 (13 March 2013), p. 4n4.

107. Jack Khoury, “Abbas: Palestinian Unity Government Will Recognize Israel, Condemn Terrorism,” Ha’aretz (26 April 2014). Rami Khouri, “The Palestinian Unity Government Will Shape Its Own Fate,” Jordan Times (5 June 2014).

108. Barak Ravid, “Amid Wave of Endorsements, PM ‘Troubled’ by US Decision to Work With Palestinian Gov’t,” Ha’aretz (3 June 2014). Barak Ravid, “Israel ‘Deeply Disappointed’ US Will Work With New Palestinian Government,” Ha’aretz (3 June 2014).

109. Finkelstein, Gaza, pp. 212–214.

110. Hamas additionally demanded that Gaza residents be given access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and that an international seaport and airport be established under UN supervision. Yasser Okbi and Maariv Hashavua, “Report: Hamas Proposes 10-year Cease-Fire in Return for Conditions Being Met,” Jerusalem Post (16 July 2014). Asaf Gabor, “Hamas Conditions for Pacification: Airport, Seaport and Entrance to Al-Aqsa,” Ma’ariv (7 July 2014) [Hebrew]. This July 16 Hamas offer responded to a ceasefire proposal tabled by the Egyptian president Abdel Fatteh el-Sissi two days earlier. Hamas’s rejection of the Egyptian ceasefire proposal was cast by Washington as proof of its obstinacy and justification for Israel’s ensuing offensive. And yet, whereas previous ceasefire agreements incorporated international demands that Israel take steps to lift its illegal siege, Cairo’s 2014 proposal stipulated that “the security situation [become] stable on the ground” prior to the opening of Gaza’s border crossings. As the leading authority on Israel’s military operations in Gaza pointed out, “[i]nsofar as Israel designated Hamas a terrorist organization, the security situation in Gaza could only stabilize when Hamas either was defeated or disarmed itself, in the absence of which the siege would continue.” Was it then incumbent on Hamas to acquiesce in Israel’s infliction of a crime against humanity against the people of Gaza? By contrast, all the demands in Hamas’s counteroffer were either validated by international law or consistent with it. “TEXT: Cease-fire Agreement Between Israel and Hamas,” Ha’aretz (21 November 2012) (previous). “The Full Text of the Egyptian Ceasefire Proposal,” Ha’aretz (15 July 2014) (“stable”). Francesca Albanese, “The Deafening Silence Around the Hamas Proposal for a 10-year Truce,” Mondoweiss (22 July 2014) (validated). Finkelstein, Gaza, p. 214 (“disarmed”).

111. UN OCHA, Fragmented Lives: Humanitarian Overview 2014 (March 2015), p. 6.

112. Ecclesiastes 1:9.

113. Baconi, Hamas, pp. 223, 236. Chapter Four. R. J. 1. Baruch Kimmerling, Politicide: Ariel Sharon’s War Against the Palestinians (Verso, 2003), p. 169. 2. Permanent Observer of Palestine to the UN Riyad Mansour, “Letter from Palestine,” un.org (8 April 2011). 3. Sharif Abdel Kouddous, “Palestinians Engaged in Nonviolent Protest. Israel Responded With a Massacre,” The Nation (17 May 2018). 4. Amira Hass, “Along the Gaza Border, They Shoot Medics (Too), Don’t They?” Ha’aretz (28 May 2018). 5. Report of the Detailed Findings of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, A/HRC/40/CRP.2 (18 March 2019), pp. 160–163. Hereafter: UN Report II. 6. Hilo Glazer, “‘42 Knees in One Day’: Israeli Snipers Open Up About Shooting Gaza Protestors,” Ha’aretz (6 March 2020). 7. UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), “Humanitarian Bulletin: Occupied Palestinian Territory,” ochaopt.org (May 2018), pp. 1, 3. 8. See below. 9. International Crisis Group, The Gaza Strip and COVID-19: Preparing for the Worst, Middle East Briefing No. 75 (1 April 2020), p. 5. 10. Amira Hass, “It’s Not a ‘Hamas March’ in Gaza. It’s

 

 

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