Hamas in Lebanon

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 26 February 2024

Hamas seems intent on building up a fighting force inside Lebanon. 

Early last December news emerged of a large-scale recruitment drive by Hamas in and around the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.  Dubbed “The Al-Aqsa Flood”  – in line with the name given to the October 7 massacre – the recruitment program was aimed at young men aged between 17 and 20.  There are 12 UNRWA refugee camps in Lebanon, housing some half-million Palestinian refugees as defined by UNRWA – namely a hugely inflated number of patrilineal descendants of the Palestinians originally displaced during the 1948 Arab-Israel conflict. 

   Evidence of Hamas activity within Lebanon came to light on November 21, when an Israeli drone struck a four-man Hamas squad in the Lebanese village of Chaatiyeh.  All four were killed in the strike, including Khalil Kharaz, Hamas’s deputy commander in Lebanon.

Opinion is divided as to whether this new Hamas initiative is in opposition to Iranian/Hezbollah interests – an attempt to seize the initiative and ramp up the anti-Israel conflict –  or in support of them.  A third possibility is that Hamas, in anticipation of military annihilation in Gaza, is preparing to use Lebanon as a new base for continuing its fight against Israel. 

That is the fear among mainstream Lebanese leaders and political parties.  Many denounced Hamas when it put out its recruitment call on December 4, accusing it of violating their country’s national sovereignty.  Wasn’t it enough that Hezbollah had established a political and military grip on the weakened and impoverished nation, without Hamas elbowing its way in?  After all, Lebanon, on its knees economically speaking, was already supporting two military machines – its own national army and the even stronger Hezbollah militia. A third loose cannon, as it were, is the last thing Lebanon needs.

Opposition was particularly strong from Lebanon’s Christian community, among whom the painful memory of Lebanon’s 15-year-long bloody civil war persists.  One of the key causes of that conflict was that Palestinian terrorists linked to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah organization had been operating with virtually complete freedom in southern Lebanon, launching attack after attack on northern Israel. This gave rise to the region’s nickname of “Fatahland”.  Lebanese Christians now fear the creation of what they are calling “Hamasland.” 

If Hamas succeeds in its recruitment drive, the question may well arise as to whether it will operate as an independent militia.  Any attempt at effective collaboration with Hezbollah would bring into play an inescapable difficulty that militates against harmonious terrorist relations.  Hezbollah is a Shia Muslim organization while Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, is inescapably Sunni.  Separated by the full length of Israel – with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon – the intrinsic Islamic clash of traditions could be ignored.  That is scarcely possible were the two forces to attempt operating side by side, each regarding the other as infidels, apostates and heretics.

For example, all was far from sweetness and light when fierce intra-Palestinian fighting broke out last August and September in Lebanon’s Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp, near Sidon.  The clashes, which lasted for three months, were triggered by the attempted assassination of Fatah leader, Mahmoud Khalil.  Sixty-eight people were killed in the conflict, which was finally brought to an end through the intervention of the speaker of Lebanon’s parliament, Nabih Berri. He spoke with both Fatah and Hamas leaders, and arranged a truce.  Quoting this incident, Lebanese officials have been pressuring Hezbollah not to let Hamas gain military ascendancy inside the refugee camps.

Both Hamas and Fatah have a foothold within Lebanon, and Hamas’s latest recruitment drive is certainly partly aimed at achieving dominance over its Fatah rival.  It has two other constituencies to win round – the dominant Hezbollah organization, and the large Sunni sector of Lebanese society.  While Hamas does not have Fatah’s long-term connection with Lebanon, since October 7 it has, according to Mohanad Hage Ali of  the Carnegie Middle East Center, “gained popularity specifically among Sunnis in Lebanon.”

The leading Hamas personality is Abu Obeida, the so-called “masked  spokesman” for Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades.  He invariably appears in public with his whole face and head enrobed in a red keffiyeh and only his eyes visible.  His real name is unknown.  He came to prominence in 2006, when he announced the capture of the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, later exchanged for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.

In late October, exploiting its new-found popularity, Hamas organized a large protest in downtown Beirut. Thousands of people were bussed in from around the country to take part as green Hamas flags filled Martyr’s Square. While much of the crowd was Palestinian, many Lebanese were also present.

Emboldened,, Hamas has since launched military operations from Lebanon – like the 16 rockets fired by the Qassam Brigades targeting the northern Israeli city of Nahariya and the southern outskirts of Haifa.  Israel said that it had identified about 30 launches from Lebanon.

 “The IDF is responding with artillery fire toward the origin of the launches,” the IDF posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Many in Lebanon were convinced that the Hamas recruitment drive would not have been possible without the positive approval, and possible collaboration, of Hezbollah.  How deep that collaboration runs is the subject of speculation.  Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, will be aware that Hamas is trying to use its moment in the spotlight, allied to the unhappy conditions in the refugee camps, to expand its influence in Lebanon.  He may also believe, with some analysts, that with its recruitment drive Hamas is initiating a longer-term aim –  forming a new young cadre of supporters, deeply imbued with Hamas’s beliefs and objectives, to carry on its anti-Israel crusade from Lebanese territory.  Nasrallah, acting in accordance with Iran’s own longer-term strategy, will view any such intention with suspicion.

        It is perhaps this disparity in influence that Hamas is intent on redressing, as it strengthens its position inside Lebanon and seeks to make it a second military front from which to continue its struggle against Israel’s very existence.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled:"Hamas in Lebanon is fighting to eliminate Israel", 26 February 2024:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-788814

Netanyahu’s total victory

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 19 February 2024  

            The term “total victory” has been on prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s lips a great deal recently. It has about it the ring of the phrase adopted by Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at Casablanca in the middle of World War Two – “unconditional surrender” – implying that the Allies would be content with nothing less than the complete and utter defeat of the Nazi enemy.  There would be no armistice, no haggling over the terms of a cessation of hostilities.  Unconditional surrender became the ultimate war aim of the Allies.

Total victory could be described as Netanyahu’s ultimate war aim.  It implies both the complete elimination of Hamas as a fighting force and the liberation of all the hostages held by them.  The military defeat of Hamas would mean also the end of its control of the Gaza Strip.  How Gaza is to be administered and its reconstruction put in hand are urgent problems that will require attention and cooperative international action as soon as the Hamas military machine is no more.

            Netanyahu used the term “total victory” several times on February 8 in response to the most recent hostage-for-ceasefire offer by Hamas.  Back in November negotiations conducted with the help of intermediaries produced a pause in the fighting in Gaza and the freeing of 105 hostages held by Hamas, matched by the release of 240 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. Ever since there has been a constant to-and-fro of further negotiations in an attempt to reach a another deal acceptable to both Hamas and Israel.

Hamas’s aim has been to secure Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and the release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.  Israel is seeking the liberation of all the hostages held by Hamas in return for as short a pause in the fighting as possible, to prevent Hamas regrouping and reversing Israel’s gains in the Strip.

Talks in Paris involving intelligence chiefs from Israel, the US and Egypt, together with the prime minister of Qatar, resulted on January 30 in new proposals for a ceasefire and release of hostages.  Hamas said it was studying them.

A senior Hamas official then told Reuters news agency that the proposal involved a three-stage truce, during which the group would first release remaining civilians among hostages it captured on October 7, then soldiers, and finally the bodies of hostages that were killed.  Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh left his luxurious home in Doha to fly to Cairo to discuss them.

While the people of Gaza have undergone untold misery following Hamas’s horrendous actions on October 7, the leaders of Hamas have been enjoying sumptuous lifestyles in Qatar. 

          Between them Ismail Haniyeh, Moussa Abu Marzuk and Khaled Mashal are estimated by the New York Post to be worth a staggering $11 billion, accumulated heaven knows how.

          The discussions in Cairo resulted in a counter-offer from Hamas, made public on February 7. Using the same three-stage formula but spread over 135 days, Hamas proposed in the first 45 days a temporary halt to military operations and the repositioning of Israeli forces outside populated areas. On its part Hamas would release Israeli civilian women and children together with elderly and sick hostages in return for the release of Palestinian women, children, elderly and sick from Israeli jails.

The second 45 days would see Israeli forces withdraw outside the Gaza Strip and Hamas release all Israeli male civilian and military hostages in exchange for other Palestinian prisoners. 

In the third 45 days the exchange of bodies and remains from both sides would see the virtual end to the conflict.  Israel would have withdrawn from Gaza, and all the hostages would have been released.

Netanyahu’s reaction?  Total rejection.  Dubbing the proposals “delusional”, he renewed his pledge to destroy Hamas.  To a media conference he said that total victory in Gaza was within reach and that there was no alternative for Israel but to bring about the collapse of Hamas.  He insisted that total victory against Hamas was the only solution to the Gaza war. "Continued military pressure,” he said, “is a necessary condition for the release of the hostages." Is he right?  Or is he, as a tranche of Israeli opinion holds in a somewhat ungenerous interpretation of his motives, mainly interested in the personal and political advantages he derives from spinning out the war scenario for as long as possible?

US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, was less clear-cut in his reaction.  At a late-night press conference in a Tel Aviv hotel, he suggested forging a truce agreement was not a lost cause.

"There are clearly nonstarters in what (Hamas has) put forward," he said, without specifying what the nonstarters were.  "But we also see space in what came back to pursue negotiations, to see if we can get to an agreement. That's what we intend to do."

One obvious non-starter is that at the end of the Hamas-proposed process, Hamas would be left in control of a Gaza Strip from which the IDF had withdrawn completely, and would be totally free to rebuild its military infrastructure and resume its relentless campaign aimed at destroying Israel and killing Jews.  Another, from Washington’s point of view, is that Hamas is fundamentally and inflexibly opposed to the two-state solution, that article of faith so cherished by the UN, US, EU, UK and much of world opinion.

And here is the great dilemma, for a negotiated ceasefire does have an appeal to those concerned above all for the fate of Israel’s hostages still in Hamas’s hands, and it commends itself also to the great swath of world opinion concerned above all for the protection of the Gazan civilian population. 

It is a prospect, however, unlikely to commend itself to Netanyahu, who perceives the long-term implications for Israel – a reversal to the failed policies of the past, with Hamas, Israel’s implacable enemy, reinstalled in power a hand’s breadth away from Israeli citizens, and the whole nation in range of ever more sophisticated missiles and rockets.  Netanyahu attempts to square the circle by arguing that the best hope of liberating the hostages lies not in deals that allow Hamas to regain its control of Gaza, but in maintaining Israel’s military pressure until the complete defeat of Hamas – in other words, total victory. 

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "What does 'total victory' look like for Netanyahu in the war with Hamas?", 19 February 2024:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-787638

UNRWA chief should resign

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 13 February 2024

          One-time US President Harry S Truman kept a slogan on his desk: “The buck stops here”. The idea was to remind himself daily that, as the nation’s leader, he intended to take ultimate responsibility for what happened under his watch. There would be no “passing the buck”, no denying responsibility or laying the blame elsewhere..

          This is the principle at one time observed pretty universally by any chief executive. Heads of organizations took it for granted that they were responsible for its actions. Standards may have slipped somewhat in recent years, but it is still generally accepted that when organisations act reprehensibly, their leader is ultimately responsible for its failures, and relinquishes his or her post.

          The furore that has erupted around the United Nations Relief and Works Agency is not the first time that UNRWA has been charged with scandalous conduct, but it is undoubtedly the worst. The organisation is tarred with offences so heinous that they almost beggar description. Yet we have heard not a peep from its commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini, suggesting that he is shouldering any kind of responsibility, let alone considering his position.

          Based upon what must be pretty convincing intelligence provided by Israel, at least 14 countries have stopped funding UNRWA for the time being. Details of Israel’s intelligence dossier were disseminated in the media on January 30. They provide information indicating that, incredibly, 12 people employed by UNRWA participated personally in the massacre of 1200 people and the capture of some 240 hostages that took place in Israel on October 7.

          The dossier lists the names and jobs of all 12 allegedly involved in Hamas’s attack, and the specific allegations against them. It details how six of the UNRWA staff inside Israel on the day of the attack were tracked through their phones. Others were wiretapped and, during a series of calls, were heard discussing their involvement in the attack.

          It describes ten of the 12 as members of Hamas, and another as affiliated to Islamic Jihad. It names a school counselor from Khan Younis as allegedly conspiring with his son to abduct a woman from Israel, and identifies an Arabic teacher employed by UNRWA as a Hamas militant commander who allegedly took part in the murderous attack on Kibbutz Be’eri. A social worker in the Nuseirat refugee camp is accused of helping Hamas bring the body of a dead Israeli soldier into Gaza, and of coordinating vehicles for the terror group during the October 7 attack and handing out ammunition to its gunmen. The New York Times, which also had access to the intelligence dossier, reported that three of those monitored by Israeli intelligence received text messages on October 7 ordering them to report to muster points, while another UNRWA employee was ordered to bring rocket-propelled grenades stored inside his home.

          But the scandal runs much deeper. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the dossier says that about 10 percent of UNRWA’s 13,000 staff in Gaza have ties to Islamist groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

On January 28 the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres said he was horrified by the allegations and that nine of the 12 employees identified as being involved with Hamas had been sacked. One was dead, he added, and the identities of the other two were being clarified.  While the UN investigates, so far at least 14 countries, among them the US, the UK, Germany, Australia, Italy, Canada, Finland, the Netherlands and Japan have not responded to pleas from Lazzarini and Guterres to resume their payments to UNRWA.

A senior Israeli government official told the Wall Street Journal: “UNRWA’s problem is not just ‘a few bad apples’ involved in the October 7 massacre. The institution as a whole is a haven for Hamas’s radical ideology.”

Around the time the State of Israel came into being, something over half the non-Jewish population of what was called “Palestine” at the time, some 750,000 people, left their homes – some on advice, some from fear of the forthcoming conflict, some during the fierce exchanges.

After the armistice the UN set up a body to assist them – UNRWA.  It  began its work in May 1950, seven months ahead of the establishment by the UN of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).  Ever since, Palestinian refugees have been treated differently from all the other refugees in the world.  One reason is that from the start UNRWA totally ignored a key aspect of its remit.

The 1949 UN General Assembly resolution that established UNRWA called for the alleviation of distress among Palestine refugees and stated, crucially, that: “constructive measures should be undertaken at an early date with a view to the termination of international assistance for relief.”  In other words, the new agency’s mission was intended to be temporary as the refugees under its wing were resettled.

         By 2024 the “temporary” UNRWA had been transformed into a bloated international bureaucracy with a staff in excess of 30,000 and an annual budget of around $2.2 billion.  As for the number of Palestinians registered by UNRWA as refugees, that had mushroomed from around 750,000 to 5.9 million as a result of its decision to bestow refugee status in perpetuity upon “descendants of Palestine refugees”– children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.  The growth in UNWRA’s client base was therefore exponential year on year, justifying an ever-expanding staff and an ever-increasing budget.  No resettlement policy was instituted, and the temporary refugee camps became permanent. 

While the main UN agency dealing with refugees – UNHCR – concentrates on resettling them, facilitating their voluntary repatriation or their local integration and resettlement, UNRWA maintains an ever-expanding client base of millions in their refugee status decade after decade.  

“We have been warning for years,” said Israel Katz, Israel’s Foreign Minister: “UNRWA perpetuates the refugee issue, obstructs peace, and serves as a civilian arm of Hamas in Gaza.”

That final charge is substantiated by a recent in-depth investigation into UNRWA’s educational program.  According to the report by IMPACT-se, issued in November 2023, educational textbooks used by UNRWA continue to glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonize Israelis, and incite antisemitism, despite promises to remove such content.

The report identified 133 UNRWA educators and staff found to promote hate and violence on social media, and an additional 82 UNRWA teachers and other staff involved in drafting, supervising, approving, printing, and distributing hateful content to students.

When the organization you are leading is found to have been infiltrated by a terrorist organization, to have become its instrument of propaganda, to have actually been used as a base for a most horrific massacre of innocent civilians, then the honorable course is to take responsibility for the failures.  UNRWA’s commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini, should resign.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online as "UNRWA chief should resign. He let Hamas infiltrate his organization." 13 February 2024:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-786528

The Palestinians don't want a two-state solution

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 7 February 2024

  

          On January 29, out of the blue, Britain’s foreign minister Lord Cameron declared that because Palestinians needed to see “irreversible progress to a two-state solution”, Britain and its allies would consider recognizing a Palestinian state.

          Speaking at a reception for Arab ambassadors, he said there needed to be an immediate pause in the conflict in Gaza; the release of all the hostages held by Hamas; and “most important of all is to give the Palestinian people a political horizon”.

            On the next day, the Jerusalem Post carried a story headlined: "US might recognize Palestinian state after war."  It reported that US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had ordered the State Department to start examining the possibility of US and international recognition of a State of Palestine the day after the Gaza war ended.  One strand of opinion in the State Department, it said, apparently favors recognition of a Palestinian state as the first, rather than the last, step in a renewed peace process aimed at guaranteeing Israel’s security in a two-state solution.

            Hooked on the nostrum of a two-state solution, much of the world, including a swath of Arab opinion, subscribes to the view that it has been Israeli intransigence that has frustrated this deeply desired outcome by the Palestinians. For example Husam Zomlot, Palestinian ambassador to the UK, told the media on the following day that Cameron’s remarks about recognizing a Palestinian state were “historic”.  Pursuing the Palestinian Authority strategy of supporting the two-state ideal, inherited from its first leader, Yasser Arafat, he said:

“It is the first time a UK foreign secretary considers recognizing the State of Palestine, bilaterally and in the UN, as a contribution to a peaceful solution rather than an outcome,” he said. “If implemented, the Cameron declaration would remove Israel’s veto power over Palestinian statehood [and] would boost efforts towards a two-state outcome.” 

The plain facts tell a quite different story.  Every one of the numerous Israel-Palestinian peace negotiations over the years – each of which, as an obvious sine qua non, incorporated  recognition of Israel – has fallen at the last hurdle.  Embracing a two-state solution implies a voluntary end to the delegitimizing of Israel.  It means abandoning the key elements in the charters of the two main political Palestinian movements, Fatah and Hamas, both of which state unequivocally that the whole of what was once Mandate Palestine is Arab land, and it is the God-given duty of Palestinians to fight for its recovery.

A two-state solution means that one of the two states is Israel.  Many, perhaps most, of those who support the “Palestinian cause” believe that Palestinians are fighting for their own state alongside Israel;  many others understand clearly that “From the river to the sea” means what it says – the removal of the state of Israel.  To be blunt, while the two-state solution appeals to world opinion, it is not what majority Palestinian opinion favors.  The latest authoritative poll, undertaken in December, revealed that no less than 64% of Palestinians are opposed to a two-state solution.

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reviled by two-state supporters as having consistently rejected Palestinian statehood.  He may oppose it at present, given current circumstances, but this was not always the case. 

Barack Obama came to the US presidency in 2009 determined to change the dynamic in US-Muslim relations for the better.  He chose Cairo as the location for a speech to be known as “A New Beginning”.  Having pledged America’s support for Israel, Obama continued: “The Palestinian people—Muslim and Christians—have suffered in pursuit of a homeland.. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation.  So let there be no doubt, “ he continued, “the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. And America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.”

Like Obama, Netanyahu had only recently won an election, and it was too early for a head-to-head clash. Instead Netanyahu decided to show Obama that on certain issues, with certain conditions, he was willing to bend for the greater good, although never when it came to Israel’s survival.  Ten days after Obama’s speech, Netanyahu gave an address at Bar Ilan University.

Speaking to the Palestinian people direct, he said: “the simple truth is that the root of the conflict was, and remains, the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own, in their historic homeland.

“But we must also tell the truth in its entirety,” he continued.  “Within this homeland lives a large Palestinian community. We do not want to rule over them, we do not want to govern their lives, we do not want to impose either our flag or our culture on them.  In my vision of peace, in this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side-by-side, in amity and mutual respect.  Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government. Neither will threaten the security or survival of the other.” 

Then he added:  “I told President Obama when I was in Washington that if we could agree on the substance, then the terminology would not pose a problem. And here is the substance that I now state clearly:  If we receive this guarantee regarding demilitarization and Israel's security needs, and if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the State of the Jewish people, then we will be ready in a future peace agreement to reach a solution where a demilitarized Palestinian state exists alongside the Jewish state.“

These honeyed words fell on deaf ears.  Hamas, rooted in rejectionism, had already seized the Gaza Strip.  Their total raison d’être was and remains to eliminate Israel.  Fatah and the Palestinian Authority continued to pursue the strategy set by Yasser Arafat, which was to court world opinion by appearing to support a two-state solution while retaining the ultimate objective of ousting Israel from the Middle East.

          Nothing has changed except that since the massacre of October 7, Hamas has gained unprecedented support within the Arab world in general, and among the Palestinian populace in particular.  That means Palestinian statehood means something quite different to majority Arab opinion than it does to the ardent two-staters. In short, the two-state solution is anathema to most Arabs – a fact of life which Anthony Blinken, Lord Cameron, and all who espouse it wilfully refuse to recognize.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post on line under the headline: "The two-state solution is anathema to most Arabs", 7 February 2024:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-785525

Published in Eurasia Review, 9 February 2024:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/09022024-the-palestinians-dont-want-a-two-state-solution-oped/#:~:text=To%20be%20blunt%2C%20while%20the,to%20a%20two%2Dstate%20solution.

Published in the MPC Journal, 12 February 2024:

https://mpc-journal.org/the-palestinians-dont-want-a-two-state-solution/