Hamas
Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. It was founded in 1987 and is dedicated to the defeat and destruction of the state of Israel and the liberation of the land of Palestine and the creation of an Islamic state. It comprises a political wing, a social services wing, and a military wing. It is popular with the Palestinian people, and it effectively governs the Gaza Strip, a tiny, impoverished strip of land that is home to over 2 million people.
Hamas has been supported financially by Qatar, Iran, Turkey, and Syria, and militarily by Iran. It has repeatedly attacked Israel with rockets and terrorist attacks, and Israel has retaliated. Most recently it attacked and massacred over 1,000 Israelis in Southern Israel. It has taken and is holding over one hundred hostages. American citizens are among the fatalities, the wounded, and the hostages.
Israel was taken by surprise by these attacks; its intelligence services failed to detect them, and its military failed to deter and initially defeat them. It is now regaining control on the ground, has begun launching air raids on Gaza, and is likely to launch a massive ground invasion against Hamas with extensive civilian and military casualties likely to result in Gaza.
Why did this happen? Hamas wanted to disrupt the normalization of relations among and between Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the US. Iran was similarly threatened by normalization and may have green lit the attack. Both the US and the Israelis say they have, as yet, no hard evidence of Iran’s involvement.
There is a possibility that Hezbollah, also supported by Iran and by Syria, will attack Israel from its bases in Southern Lebanon, and Israel will then face a two-front war. This could escalate.
At the moment, Israel needs to form a coalition government of right, center, and left to fight the war with Hamas. It needs to sideline its extreme right, the settlers and others who have been so aggressive in dispossessing West Bank Palestinians. It needs to continue its normalization talks with those willing Arab governments in the region. And it needs to restart serious negotiations with the Palestinian Authority towards a two-state solution and put a halt to the illegal actions of settlers and settlements in the West Bank.
In the Middle East, the standard terrorism response between Palestinians and Israelis have been extra-judicial killings of the perpetrators and the loss of far too many innocent civilian lives in the process. The cycle of massacre and massive retaliation needs to be broken; the world needs to condemn, capture, and imprison the terrorist perpetrators within Hamas, and they need to be brought to justice. An international, judicial body, like the ICC (International Criminal Court), needs to bring swift and speedy justice to those Hamas military and political leaders and the others who have just perpetrated the unspeakable massacres of peaceful civilians in Southern Israel – a process that is wholly unfamiliar to the ICC and other international bodies. Since Hamas does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and is the chief perpetrator of violence in the region, it needs to be defunded by the world and by regional communities; funds should flow only through reputable NGO’s. The Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank badly need an honest, elected government, recognizing Israel’s right to exist, committed to peace in the region and to their economic development. Hamas could have evolved and become the organization that Palestinians need. To date, however, it has evolved to become ever more terrorist, and ever more dedicated to armed struggle, and an impenetrable and implacable obstacle to peace between Palestinians and Israelis.