A Mid-East Journal: Israel’s war: lessons from the past

Published in the Jerusalem Report, issue dated 27 November 2023

Speaking in Tel Aviv towards the end of his one-day visit to the Middle East on October 18, US President Joe Biden compared Israel’s situation after Hamas’s invasion and pogrom to the US’s crisis after the attacks of 9/11. His country had “sought and got justice,” he said, but also “made mistakes.”

A catalogue of those mistakes was laid out in uncomfortable detail by Garrett M Graf in The Atlantic journal a few years ago. Taken together, they add up to a damning indictment of US foreign policy in the years following the al-Qaeda attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Among the errors, failures and misjudgments listed by Graf, the US-led invasion of Iraq on unverified intelligence, undertaken while the invasion of Afghanistan was still in progress, is particularly noteworthy. Many commentators believe that America’s cardinal error was to begin those operations without either a clear objective for each nation post war, or an exit plan for the invading forces.

In short Biden, while approving Israel’s intention of destroying Hamas root and branch, was pointing to the need for a viable vision of what was to follow its success – for both Gaza and the IDF.

Historical parallels always require special factors to be taken into account, but they do allow lessons to be learnt. Take the document issued from Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) just before the end of World War II, when victory was assured but before it was achieved. It laid out one of the major war aims of the United Nations – the de-Nazification of Germany. The objective? To destroy the Nazi Party, its political organizations and government agencies; to purge and re-organize the police; and to dismiss from government offices and other position of influence all active Nazis, their sympathizers and leading military figures. Very shortly after the end of the war, the program was set in train.

Why was it done? Because Nazism, with its wild-eyed philosophy of Aryan racial superiority, its virulent antisemitism, its brutal disregard for human rights, was seen as a virus that had infected the German state and its population, and had to be eliminated.

The programme was fraught with enormous difficulties. It was only made possible because the Allies had won total victory.

The same applies to Gaza. Hamas is an extremist political and military organization that shares much of the Nazi philosophy. It is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose leaders in the 1930s and 1940s were actively involved in carrying through the Nazis’ ”Final Solution to the Jewish problem”. They supported and were actively involved in implementing the Holocaust.

The Hamas charter expands on its theme of the God-approved duty of every Muslim to kill Jews for, as article 28 asserts: “The Zionist invasion of the world…[aims] at …annihilating Islam. Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people.”Like the perverted Nazi philosophy, this perversion of Islam needs to be countered. The essential pre-requisite for mounting a de-Hamasification program in the Gaza strip is a decisive victory by Israel. Also vitally necessary is a well-conceived, comprehensive and fully worked-out plan, ready to be put into action as soon as the moment is ripe. The object would be to dislodge the leaders and adherents of Hamas, with their malevolent anti-Jew, anti-Judaism and anti-Israel ideology, from their positions of power within Gaza. Only with Hamas out of the picture could any form of reactivated peace process become possible.

Israeli leaders have already said that Israel has no interest in the post-war administration of Gaza. Palestinian or wider Arab input will be necessary to recruit the army of non-Hamas administrators and executives required for its reconstruction and governance. Nevertheless Israel could be party to devising a viable political strategy.

Out-of-the-box thinking is called for. A possible answer could lie in a renewed peace process, aimed this time at establishing a new regional configuration. One possibility out of many is the idea of expanding the Abraham Accord normalization structure to encompass a Palestinian entity.

Another is to consider establishing a new legal entity – a confederation embodying Jordan, Israel and a demilitarized Palestinian state including the Gaza Strip. A confederation is a system like the European Union, in which nation states, while retaining full sovereignty, agree to collaborate in certain spheres such as security, defence, economic development or infrastructure.

Coming into legal existence simultaneously with the new Palestine, a confederation structure could bring Jordan, Israel and Palestine into a mini-EU dedicated to providing hi-tech security and economic growth for all its citizens. It might also conceive a pragmatic status for Jerusalem satisfactory to all parties. The Israel Defense Forces would act in collaboration with the forces of the other parties to guarantee the security of Israel and that of the confederation as a whole.

Rid of the Hamas-inspired rejectionist agenda, a three-state confederation covering the whole of what was originally Mandate Palestine might open a hitherto unexplored path leading away from unending Israel-Palestinian discord.