Gaza is not Just a Battle, it’s About a Generational War

Any analysis of Israel’s military actions in Gaza and its strategy of collectively punishing the Palestinians must look at the longer trajectory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict instead of beginning with the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.

The focus on October 7 makes it easier to justify Israeli actions by dehumanising Hamas and, by extension, the Palestinians. But in taking the easy way out it misses the factors that have kept relations between the two sides fraught and violent.

Focusing on immediate events is also problematic because it reduces the analysis to a snapshot and the military-operational side of violence — e.g., how will the Israel Defence Forces take on Hamas; what is their strategy for rescuing the hostages; what was Hamas thinking; how will the group use the urban environment to its advantage, and so on.

Israel’s insistence that it is acting only in self-defence not only obscures its continued brutal occupation of Palestinian lands and denial of their rights but provides moral justification for Israel’s destructive military actions that have been described by legal experts as war crimes and bordering on genocide.

In short, both from an historical perspective as well as from a politico-strategic perspective, starting from October 7 makes us miss the woods for the trees.

The Broader Picture

Why did Hamas carry out the October 7 attack? This question cannot be answered simply by saying that Hamas is a “terrorist” group bent on destroying Israel and the latter’s retaliation, including the carnage in Gaza, is merely an act of self-defence.

Israel’s insistence that it is acting only in self-defence not only obscures its continued brutal occupation of Palestinian lands and denial of their rights but provides moral justification for Israel’s destructive military actions that have been described by legal experts as war crimes and bordering on genocide.

But this narrative, historically flawed though it is, is not without reason in selecting some facts and ignoring the deeper causes. It is a strategic tool employed by Israel to deny the legitimacy of Palestine’s existence and to justify violence against Palestinian. The hollowness of this narrative is exposed by simply examining for this year Israeli violence in the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. In 2023 alone, Israel had killed 200 Palestinians there even before October 7. That violence had nothing to do with Hamas (since Hamas does not control the Occupied West Bank) but all of it was, and remains, consistent with the structured violence that has defined Israel’s approach towards the Palestinians since the 1948 nakba.

Politico-Strategic Objectives — Israel

Israel’s immediate response has to be seen in the longer trajectory of a settler-colonial project which seeks to slowly purge Greater Israel of Arab Palestinians.

Eretz Yisrael, whose territorial expanse matches what’s given in the Bible, is generally associated with extreme rightwing Jews. In reality that ideology has been Israel’s non-spoken official policy since 1948. The territorial maximalism of Revisionist Zionists, the forerunners of Likud, is a matter of record. Menachem Begin was reported to have said to a journalist that Israel’s borders were given in the Bible. Yitzhak Shamir, as prime minister, gave a nod to the illegal settlements and legitimised them.

The current Israeli government, the most far-right such cabinet in the country’s history, has two illegal settlers as important cabinet ministers. Another far-right minister, Amichai Eliyahu, thinks nuking Gaza is an actual option, though he has since tried to walk back on it. It’s a matter of record that various influential voices in Israel, including official ones, have been calling for the annexation of West Bank and Gaza even before the Hamas attack. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, took a map of Israel last September to the United Nations which showed all the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Golan Heights as part of Israel.

This is the broader, internal context in which Israel’s repressive policies are implemented. This context steadily marginalises the idea of Palestine, reducing Palestinian existence to a sub-human level. If Israel has not tried to exterminate the Palestinians at a large scale so far, it is because it needs American and Western support and is cognisant that such an overt genocide will result in massive international backlash. Doing it slowly and incrementally achieves the same goals, but with manageable levels of criticism.

There was one missing link in all this, however. Arab support. Why? Because Israel needs legitimacy from the Arab states in order to more effectively delegitimise the Palestinians. Western support gives Israel military and economic heft but not legitimacy. That only comes, in theory, from recognition by Arab states.

If Israel has not tried to exterminate the Palestinians at a large scale so far, it is because it needs American and Western support and is cognisant that such an overt genocide will result in massive international backlash. Doing it slowly and incrementally achieves the same goals, but with manageable levels of criticism.

While Israel had normalised with Egypt and Jordan and got the US to take out Iraq, Syria and Libya (threats in the outer circle), it needed to normalise with the remaining Arab states in the MENA region. The Abraham Accords delivered the first tranche. The jewel in the crown was, and remains, Saudi Arabia. That was where the US and Israel were headed. The idea made  eminent sense: secure Israel by having Arab embassies in Tel Aviv and make the Palestinians irrelevant. Once that had happened, the assumption was that the Palestinians could be bought off with a minor deal or, alternately, Israel would keep oppressing them in a more permissive Arab environment.

Politico-Strategic Objectives — Hamas

The October 7 attack by Hamas has scotched that plan. In this calculation, Israel, while the Goliath next door, is also secondary. The bigger fish is the United States.

Take a look at the world. Unipolarity is gone. We are now in a multipolar world: the US (still the strongest, but clearly stretched power), China (the rising peer competitor), Russia (weakened, but still a great power and now allied with China) and, some would say, the Global South.

Internally, by all discerning counts, the US is divided and its democracy weakened. A number of events, not least the Russo-Ukraine War, have stretched the limits of US power. The weaponisation of the dollar (through sanctions) has ironically resulted in increased demand for the de-dollarisation of the global financial system. Of course, these are only trends. But these trends indicate “global discord,” as well as greater global chaos.

The IDF’s reputation as a fighting force has been dented. If Hamas can continue to bleed it, the rising casualties will bring more political pressure on an already unpopular Israeli government. 

Chaos in Israel has to be seen in this backdrop. The dominant pro-Israel narrative is not only being challenged but pushed back. While western governments have lined up behind Israel, their citizens are protesting loudly. Bolivia has cut off ties with Israel; Chile and Colombia have recalled their ambassadors. Western cities and capitals are witnessing huge pro-Palestinian and anti-war rallies.

It’s the same in the Arab world. Even as most do not support Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, public pressure and the everyday scenes of death from Gaza are forcing their hand. Protestors in Turkiye want the government to ask the US troops to leave the Incirlik AirBase. It is one of the most important US operational and intelligence gathering base in the region. Israel’s attempt to normalise with the Arab states without addressing the Palestine question now lies in ruins — at least in the short term.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah in Lebanon is engaging the IDF at points of its choosing. It does not want a direct confrontation that can invite destructive Israeli aerial power, but it has kept the option of horizontal and vertical escalation open, as was clear from Hassan Nasrallah’s speech last Friday.

To wrap up this analysis, here are a few more points to consider,

1. The US was never an honest broker but its standing in the Middle East is now in tatters. Domestically, US polls indicate that support for Israel is declining with younger votes and Democrats while Americans generally are wary of being drawn into a Middle East war.
2. This trend impacts the US’ geopolitical standing in the Middle East and opens up more space for China and Russia, especially as power relations continue to shift and undergo major changes in favour of US competitors.
3. Israel, looking for greater security externally and internally, has ended up further eroding what security it had. Even if it were to “defeat” Hamas in this battle, the war will go on. It will either have to occupy a deeply hostile Gaza, or create much wider and concentric circles of defence with permanent forward deployments. Neither will lead to peace. Developments in the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem with Israeli forces and settler retaliation against the Palestinians will make the situation within Israel further perilous.
4. Israel’s economy is taking a major hit. S&P has downgraded its credit outlook to negative while estimates show it is spending $246 million per day on its war effort. It needs a major cash injection from the US.
5. The IDF’s reputation as a fighting force has been dented. If Hamas can continue to bleed it, the rising casualties will bring more political pressure on an already unpopular Israeli government. It is already under pressure from families of hostages in Gaza.
6. The Arab states now know, even if begrudgingly, that they cannot normalise with Israel in the short term, at least not without a credible solution to the Palestinian issue.
7. Other western states supporting Israel are also steadily weighing their options and interests. Pressure will incrementally begin to mount on Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians and roll back illegal settlements.
8. These developments will put pressure on Israeli rightwing and religious Zionists, who have emerged as an important political bloc within Israel, and create a bigger internal problem than when Israel had to roll back some settlements after the Oslo Agreement and when it withdrew from Gaza.
9. Finally, this is a generational war for Palestinians, one with many battles. What happens on the ground is important. But equally important, though less immediate, are the geopolitical developments, which will have a direct and indirect bearing on this seven-decade long conflict. To ignore history and the broader trends is to misunderstand the nature of this war.