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AL QUDS/GAZA: Low-tech militants may be easy prey for high-tech missiles, but Israel will find it hard to wipe out the Hamas.
One of Israel’s key strategies to counter a three-year-old Palestinian revolt against occupation has been to smash regional militant cells by killing or seizing the commanders and blowing up their bomb factories in raids into West Bank cities.
But Palestinian and Israeli political analysts say Hamas has popular roots and needs no central leadership to fight on. New local cells with new commanders have sprung from the rubble to send new waves of suicide bombers.
Ami Ayalon, who learned much about Hamas as chief of Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service in the 1990s, said Israel’s war on Hamas cannot be won in military terms.
“This is because Hamas is not an organization per se but an ideological movement incorporating the aspirations of many Palestinians who lost their hope in a negotiating process and seek to remove the occupation and find a better life,” he said.
After a Hamas suicide bomber from the West Bank killed 22 people in Jerusalem on August 19, Israel unleashed a campaign to assassinate Hamas’s Gaza-based political hierarchy.
It has killed 12 Hamas leaders or aides by missile strike and driven others into hiding, saying it must do so because the Palestinian Authority has ignored its obligations under a US-backed peace “roadmap” to rein in militant groups.
Hamas mustered no response for weeks. Israeli officials and media suggested the air attacks might have Hamas on the ropes.
But two Hamas suicide bombers killed 15 Israelis in back-to-back attacks on September 9. They both came from a West Bank village cell far removed from Hamas’s upper echelon and eluded Israeli security dragnets on access routes.
The attacks underlined Israel’s vulnerability and police acknowledged there was no way to prevent every single attack.
TAPPING ANGER: Hamas’s “resistance” message resonates among religious and secular Palestinians alike who are angered that Israel has expanded Jewish settlement of occupied territory and is building a security barrier carving up West Bank land they want to be part of a Palestinian state envisaged by the “roadmap”.
Israeli efforts to kill Hamas leaders, including wheelchair-bound spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, have strengthened the movement’s hold on the Palestinian street.
Israel contends that Hamas suicide bombings and rocket attacks have been planned and authorized by Gaza-based leaders. But using force to decapitate Hamas has not shut it down.
“With Hamas, you can cut off the head but the body will continue to live,” said George Joffe, Middle East specialist at Kings College in London.
Analysts say Hamas has cells in most Palestinian communities and many do not take or need orders from Gaza leaders to strap on bomb belts requiring little expertize or money to make and send a suicide militant on a mission.
“In the short term Israel can degrade Hamas’s operational ability with sheer military might. But Hamas’s infrastructure of local support assures its recovery over time,” said Joffe.
ADDING FUEL TO THE FIRE: Israel’s decision in principle to “remove” Palestinian President Yasser Arafat would pour more fuel on the fire of militancy, Palestinian analysts say.
“Some Palestinian factions have hesitated because of the presence of Arafat, the Authority and the political process to launch devastating attacks. But if he is deported, we can expect anything and everything. Things would turn upside down,” said Ghazi Hamad, editor of a Gaza-based Muslim opposition newspaper.
Israel pins ultimate blame for violence on Arafat, saying the former guerrilla leader plotted the revolt and has sabotaged the roadmap by refusing to subdue militants.
Palestinian officials say Israel undermined it by continuing to pursue militants during the truce period and to blockade Palestinian cities, breeding resentment that produces militants.
They say that trying to dismantle militant groups would stoke civil war and that Israel’s military crackdown has denied them leverage with their own public needed to crack down.
Another critical factor in Hamas’s appeal has been a network of welfare services dealing with the destitution and destruction wrought by Israeli offensives. Such charities have filled gaps left by corrupt or collapsed Palestinian Authority institutions.—Reuters
