Is there a better way to counter Hamas? – opinion

For the past 15 years, the Hamas leadership has repeatedly proven that it cares not a whit for the pain and carnage that their tactics inflict on the Palestinians of Gaza, or on their own fighters and families. It is as if Israel and the Hamas are playing by two sets of rules: Israel does everything it can to protect its own population and limits its attacks to minimize destruction to Palestinian civilians in Gaza, while Hamas targets Israeli cities with glee and does everything possible to provoke Israel into killing more and more Palestinians. The time has come for Israel to change its strategy.Were it realistic to destroy Hamas without generating a bloodbath in Gaza, then a full-scale military invasion might well be a pragmatic policy for Israel. At present, an invasion is the only way to free the Palestinians who actually live under Hamas’s rule. Morally, such a move would be totally justified. Perhaps one day Israel will find itself with no other choice. Of course, it would be even better if the United Nations would take it upon itself to disarm Hamas and try its leadership for crimes against humanity.Meanwhile, the targeting of Hamas missile launchers, commanders, anti-tank squads and tunnels is necessary, but not sufficient. All of these are assets that Hamas knows it will lose in any conflict and is clearly willing to sacrifice. Therefore, on a strategic level, Israel’s military response is largely irrelevant. At best, it stands to gain a few months or even years of quiet until the next round when Hamas will not only be more lethal. But the likelihood of a general conflagration involving Hezbollah and Iran will be that much greater.Instead, Israeli strategy should be based upon a deeper understanding of the ultimate and intermediate goals of Hamas. No matter how many well-meaning observers argue that one-sided concessions by Israel will lead Hamas to moderate its positions, the reality is that Hamas is a fanatic, ruthless movement willing to inflict any cost on its followers and the 1.5 million Palestinian hostages under its control, in order to bring about the destruction of Israel. Other revolutionary movements and leaders have successfully transitioned from terrorism to responsible government (Nelson Mandela, Gerry Adams and Menachem Begin come to mind). Neither Hamas nor its Iranian benefactors fall into that category. However, fanaticism and rationality are not mutually exclusive, and Hamas is a rational movement that carefully and logically plans its steps. One needs, therefore, to ask, What was its objective in provoking a full-scale military conflict with Israel that it could only lose?To answer that question, one must ask, What is new in its latest aggression and why now? Hamas itself attributes its attack on Jerusalem to its desire to protect al-Aqsa Mosque against Israeli policy, and most international media has taken this at face value. However, the real objective of Hamas in this round has much less to do Jerusalem than with elections in Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
UNTIL THIS WEEK, an Israeli offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the United Arab List (Ra’am), was on the verge of actually supporting an Israeli government; the first Arab party to do so in Israeli history! Like Hamas, the UAL has ideological roots in the Muslim Brotherhood. However, it argues that Israeli Arabs must use the political potential granted them by Israel’s political system to address their actual needs in the here and now rather than squandering it on fruitless rhetoric in support of Israel’s enemies.

With this pragmatic approach the UAL became the largest Arab party in the Knesset…