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Ezra Klein asks:
Can anyone seriously claim that Israel’s attacks will not amplify Palestinian anger? Will they not be strengthened by pan-Arab, and even international, solidarity?
It’s worth remembering that, as Gershon Shafir just wrote, Hamas’s 2007 forcible conquest of Gaza isolated it from the Arab world, which prefers to consider the fanatical terrorist group an agent of (non-Arab) Iran. That’s why Hamas’ ally Hezbollah is condeming Egypt the Egyptian government — which really doesn’t like the idea of living next to Hamastan — and other Arab states for "collaborating" with the Israeli bombings. That makes the continued isolation of Hamas from other Palestinians and the Arab world strategically important to Israel.
The longer this campaign goes on, the less tenable that isolation will become. What the Arab world is seeing isn’t Hamas being attacked, but collective punishment against Palestinians. Take a look at Marc Lynch’s overview of Arabic-language media:
There are already some cracks in the anti-Hamas front — three years of the Hamas- Fatah conflict dividing Arab attitudes towards and Arab media coverage of Palestinian politics do not seem to have dulled the intensity of the response to the images of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Here, it’s instructive to compare Homayed’s leader for al-Sharq al-Awsat (blaming Hamas and equating it with Hezbollah) with the leader by the editor of the Saudi-owned al-Hayat Ghassan Cherbel focused on stopping "the massacre" — bemoaning the "monstrous attacks" and declaiming that there is no time to resolve deep inter-Arab conflicts before ending the killing in Gaza.
Steve Clemons opens up his blog to secular Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti. You should really read Barghouti’s remarks in full. It’s vitriolic and furious — "Palestine’s Guernica" is half of the title — and shouldn’t surprise anyone. No leader would be calm in the face of his or her people’s bombardment — which is something that also applies to Israeli leaders who saw the Qassams fall on Israeli citizens — but the broader point is that he’s neither an ally of Hamas nor particularly inclined to view the attack as anything but an attack on Palestinians:
First and foremost, missiles do not differentiate people by their political affiliation; they simply kill everyone in their path. Israel knows this, and so do Palestinians. What Israel also knows, but is not saying public ally [sic], is how much their recent actions will actually strengthen Hamas – whose message of resistance and revenge is being echoed by the angry and grieving.
And that’s the case right there for international involvement, mediation and enforcement.
Crossposted to The Streak.
9 Comments
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Collective punishment is a war crime, as is disproportionate response.
Where are the voices for peace?
I am reporting that story now.
Spencer, you really understand very little indeed about Middle Eastern societies if you write something like this, “Egypt– which really doesn’t like the idea of living next to Hamastan.” What Egypt are you talking about? Have you been there at all recently? Do you have any idea how high feelings are running in Egypt these days against Israel, and in support of Hamas?
Maybe you should lose your smirky tone when you write about the tragic and momentous events unfolding in Gaza, and try to learn something about the actual political dynamics at work there and in neighboring countries? (You could start with some of the things I’ve been posting on Just World News these past couple of days, like here, or here, or here.)
So you come into my place to insult me over making a point that’s pretty similar in the final analysis to yours; then throw in links to your work; and then say I have to work on my tone?
thank you. i don’t know very much about egyptian society – but i’ve learned a lot about how wrong it is to characterize a country by it’s rulers (see george w bush).
my opinion may not matter much (at all?) – but i don’t think the issue is tone (yours or hers). i think it’s about accuracy.
so what’s really happening? do egyptians really not like hamas or are they more likely to support hamas?
also, how isolated is hamas from other palestinians? i’ve been reading of protests in villages in the west bank – is it very different among palestinians in jordan, etc.?
I suppose I could have been more precise and said that the Egyptian government doesn’t like Hamas, which seems pretty inarguable. I thought that was clear enough — it’s standard practice to use the name of a foreign country to refer to its government — but will correct if that’s clearer.
The insulting manner in which you’re addressing Spencer is the kind of hate speech that just shouldn’t be allowed.
Shame, shame!!!
The name HAMAS itself is telling of the relationship between the two groups – it is a Hebrew word for violence.
Violence seems to be the only way these two groups can seem to communicate. And even though Hamas itself is a fairly young group, and from the outset, Israel attempted to support Hamas in an anti-Arafat sort of movement, there is a deep seeded hatred and intolerance between the two groups. The religious and territorial underpinnings of this conflict are almost one hundred years old, and have been fought in much the same way as today (just with bigger weapons). Something clearly needs to be done in order to break this cycle of violence between the two groups, but it needs to be more than the UN’s standard “lets all be friends” call for peace.