As the Israel-Hamas ceasefire ends, the battle for the west begins again
For the past several days a negotiated ceasefire has put a pause on the kinetic action between Israeli forces and Hamas militants in the Northern sectors of Gaza City. Prior to this arrangement, IDF units have spent the last three weeks systematically encroached into the urban sprawl, utilizing uncontested control of the air and advanced fires to dismantle Hamas fighting positions, or any building which could be used as such, as mechanized elements continue a slow crawl deep into the strip. Yet, in no way does this ceasefire offer a promise of cessation. Each day of temporary relief, which Hamas is using to regroup and bolster elements in the South, is bought by the release of a quickly dwindling supply of Israeli hostages carried off in the October 7th attacks. Within a timeframe measured in days Hamas will run out of viable tokens and Israeli patience will wane. A ceasefire might be observed, but the war is far from over.
Soon, headlines will break with news that headlines: “Hamas Renews Attacks on Israeli Forces, Israel responds with air strikes!”
For the Israelis, this resumption of hostilities is straight forward - they will continue the conflict until they extend operational control over the entirely of the Gaza Strip and establish a provisional authority for oversight, whose longevity might well be longer than they openly admit. Likewise, for Hamas, there is little doubt what the coming weeks will bring. The infant intifada will continue until the fighting will of the Palestinian militancy is broken, or else it is rendered functionally inoperable, outside of sporadic insurgent attacks. From the perspective of a military analyst playing with units on a map, there is no doubt in how this conflict will unfold, or end.
The true war being waged is not between RPGs and Tanks, nor Palestinian and Israeli flags, or even divergent faith. It is a war for the compassion of the world. When the last meaningful hostage is handed over and the bullets start flying again, they will not be fired to decide who is the military victor, the gravestones of Hamas fighters being already carved, but to force an answer from the international community: who is the righteous State.
For Hamas, their hopes have already been greatly diminished. Provoked by Saudi-Israeli accords, and an increasing Arab sense of irritation over their wayward Palestinian brothers, the October 7th massacres were a desperate attempt to regalvanize the Islamic world against Israel. The nature of the attack guaranteed an immediately and ruthless response from Israel, spurred on by an emotional West. Hamas played its full hand, hoping that the Islamic world would find itself likewise inflamed, perhaps even leading to another Arab War which would renew anti-Israeli sentiments for the next thirty years. That fervor has not come. Hezbollah wages a soft conflict, refusing to commit beyond rockets and skirmishing. The remainder of the belligerent gang is either missing or dismissive - Iraq and Libya are defunct, Syria holds itself together by a string, Iran rattles sabers but will do nothing other than wire money, and the Arab powers only offer diplomatic condolences, decrying Israeli actions while planning to do little about them. Though accords have been temporarily disrupted, Hamas has little hope that an Islamic alliance will come to their aid.
Yet, there is a second front in the war for the international mind. It is not one which promises Hamas a military savior, but one which is aimed at a longer conflict - that against the continued existence of the Israeli State. In this aim, Hamas must win a war for the most significant factor of all: the moral sentiments of the West. Palestine must gain the favor of the western mind. In doing so, they might divorce Israel from its European and American backers, isolating it into a war of unsupported attrition that levels the playing field. It is an agenda that will not turn back the tanks currently sitting deep in Gaza City, but one which offers some promise of an eventual victory.
Their argument is one of persecution - a story of an innocent people thrown from their land and subjected to the untrustworthy subjugation of the Zionist Jew. Photos of dust coated children flood media in the wake of every Israeli air strike. Narratives of hospitals being leveled and school houses being bulldozed stir up the passions of sympathetic watchers in the West. The Palestinian militant claims himself a freedom fighter, a martyr for a righteous cause, a man defending his family and his home. It is an strategy that is more effective than tunnels and IEDs. On college campuses across the United States, progressive students gather with tears in their eyes for the Palestinian people. Sympathetic politicians make a case for Palestinian favoritism in Congress and the White House is partially paralyzed by indecision. Immigrants and sympathetic foreigners take to the streets in order to rally for the Palestinian cause, if not in support of Hamas, against Israel all the same. Corporations walk a steady line, a certain departure from the past, preaching a 'love all' message that is a tacit awknowledgment of Palestinian struggle. Paradoxically, even some on the far right strum up a confused support for the Palestianian people, driven more by a disdain for Isreali politics than a love for an Islamic militancy. Thirty years ago none of these voices would be heard.
Israel, in likewise but opposed fashion, wages the same struggle. They brand themselves the civilized choice, a lone island which resists against an onslaught of senseless hatred. Conflicting headlines scroll across Western media, plastered right alongside those celebrated by Hamas, retelling vividly decribed accounts of rape, massacre, and beheaded children. The IDF works tirelessly to demonstrate Hamas as a disingenous militancy, more Al Qaida than Minuteman, utilizing hospitals and pre-schools as operating bases with no regard for their own people. In the West, this understanding largely remains the status quo. Certainly in the establishment sectors long stanging relationships between Israel and the Western governments that enabled its existence remain strong. Evangelicals hold the Judeo-Christian identity close to their hearts, seeing the Isreali people as adjacent to their own. For the most part, the political leadership is aligned, with bipartisan calls for Isreali aid sounding immediately after the October 7th attacks.
As the ceasefire ends, the western choice between these two actors once again pushes itself to the forefront of political discourse, leaving little room to remain in trepid doubt. For the timebeing, Isreal remains safely assured of its funding and military assistance, being so favorably entrenched in the establishment systems. Yet, in a larger frame, the stability of pro-Isreali sentiment is less assured. For many common Americans, the drowning exposure to both narratives through an indecisive media has opened questions about where their sentiments lie. For some, this boils down to a simple matter of ethnic or religious association, but for the unaffiliated Westerner it is primarily a moral question - which side can be assesed as the righteous State when both claim to be the benevolent actor. The difficult reality, which the political element refuses to recognize but the well intending citizen must, is that both narratives exist in a grey. The storied history of Isreali-Palestianian difficulties cannot be summarized in an article, or a single book, but it is safe to suffice that the reality of long-stranding ethnic struggle is one of half-truths and misshapen narratives. Neither side is wholly right, nor their opposition wholly evil, and the headlines of bombed hospitals and beheaded preschoolers are equal lies. The most imperative consideration is that the West is not dragged into a straining conflict on the opposite side of the globe under false pretenses of brotherhood and emotion, regardless of which brothers and the indistinguishable dead being mourned.
That is not to advocate a policy of apathy, the most abhorrent of politics. It isn’t that the Westerner should not care about the conflict, but rather that he must be careful to consider this outbreak in the context of Western interests. For the establishment actor, this is no consideration - the interest of Israel are the interests of the West, the Jewish state being our ‘greatest ally’ in the region. Yet, fair alliances are built on mutual benefit, not historic responsibility, and the antagonization that Israel presents to the region regularly inflames Arab and Islamic distaste for their Western backers. In return, Israel offers little materially, though they reflect principles that are worthy of praise: strong nationalism, cultural emphasis, sovereign borders, and a reverence for homogeneity. Still, while we might condone these notions in the theoretical, the sovereign border that Israel fortifies is not our own and we are not welcome to join their people, unless we share the same blood. If the western conservative wishes to celebrate these fundamentals, they would be better served to look inward, to borders and peoples that are in desperate need of the same support.
However, a careful approach to Israeli support must not be misconstrued for an outlook that artificially stunts Israeli dominance, or certainly one that promotes a Hamas victory. The Palestinians, like many of their unencumbered neighbors, have failed to produce anything that approaches civilizational excellence. To this day, Gaza operates under complete reliance of Israeli power, water, and food, the near the totality of the aid they are freely given is squandered on roughshod, and ineffective, militancy. Hamas and the associated Islamic groupings practice savage violence, perpetrating attacks that invalidate their just war claims under the guise of necessity and religious justification. If we are to question the validity of ‘Judeo-Christian’ terminology, we must certainly distance ourselves from support of any Islamic Fundamentalism which lies strict opposed.
Consequently, the western interest should be one purely committed to containment. There exist a single genuinely ‘bad’ outcome - the uncontrolled spread of the this conflict across the region which would dismantle bilateral relationships with critical gulf states and potentially escalate a major conflict with a nuclear adjacent Iran who, unlike Palestinian militias, poses a direct threat to the western safety and integrity. Power projection by the U.S. military might help to ease hands off holsters, but the provision of direct military aid to Israel conflictingly escalates the situation. There exists no legitimate military benefit, nor meaningful ‘alliance’, which warrants the dissemination of billions of western dollars in missiles and bullets. This act serves solely to appease a political demand at the risk of promoting the very thing we should seek to avoid across an inflamed Middle East. But if the west is to ‘not get involved’ then they should not get involved. The Israeli State operates under no obligation to allow a militant contingency to exist on its border which explicitly promotes its ethnic and racial destruction, just as any western nation would not be expected to tolerate the same. Hamas has, time and time again, elected to reject more than favorable terms for coexistence - terms that might have demanded they operated under the purview of an Israeli system, but such are the terms that a losing side must endure. Endure these Hamas has not. They have chosen the alternate route that is always open, to defy defeat by force of arms, and Israel being a sovereign state has a right to respond in kind.
The saying goes ‘live by the sword, die by the sword’ and just as Hamas has a moral right to chose that life, Israel has the moral right to give them that death. It is the west that must not overstep, either by handing Israel the sword by which to deliver the blow, or by stopping a well deserved thrust.
