What Hamas’ Leader in Gaza Really Said About War With Israel
If Israel does something stupid we’ll crush it,”
“If Israel starts a war we’ll crush it” — these were the top headlines
in most Israeli newspapers and news sites, quoting the Hamas leader in Gaza,
Yahya Sinwar, at a media briefing a month ago. Why did Israeli editors
choose these headlines, noting only in the subhead or body of the item
that Sinwar also said Hamas doesn’t want a confrontation with Israel?
The
answer is clear. The headlines matched the populist “there’s no partner
for peace” attitude, that reassures the Israelis and obviates the need
for them to think. Did any journalist mention that Israel has made the
same warning — “attrition will be met with a pounding” (as Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in 2014)?
For
Israel, such belligerence is part of the heroic talk that makes us
stand tall, puff out our chests and remind everyone in the regional
neighborhood of our power. But when the Palestinians take the same tack,
it’s a threat that reminds us once again of “the nature of our
adversary,” and that there’s no possibility of change.
And
so, instead of settling for the interpretations in the Hebrew media, I
offer an annotated summary of Sinwar’s remarks in Arabic.
1.
“Hamas is not at all interested in war with Israel. The longer the war
is postponed, by an hour, a year or years, it serves the Palestinian
interest, and it’s better to put it off as long as possible. If the
occupation government dares to attack militarily, the resistance forces
will regain what they lost in the last war, and they’re willing to
conduct the next confrontation over a long period and even to crush the
Israelis. Hamas has weapons of deterrence that make Israel think 1,000
times before attacking Gaza, and if it behaves foolishly, it is liable
to regret it.”
2.
“Hamas coordinates closely with the Jerusalem Brigades, the military
wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and is ready to cooperate with
all factions of the armed resistance.” Sinwar needs his political rivals
in Fatah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine to prevent the erosion of his political
legitimacy and his patriotic image in light of the security coordination
with Egypt, but also to warn the Hamas leadership on the West Bank and
abroad against getting close to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
behind his back.
3.
“Hamas is considering creating a national liberation army of all
Palestinian resistance factions, each of which can preserve its
organizational structure, ethos and ideology.” Sinwar judges that Israel
will likely see this as an escalation. In fact, it would actually
enable Hamas and the other factions to disband the existing military
structure gradually, without humiliation, in favor of a single one,
subordinate to a single government entity.
4.
“Hamas institutions are examining the personal opinions (ijtihadat) of
members of the Al-Qassam Brigades who proposed creating a political and
security vacuum in the Strip, but any decision on the matter will be
subject to a ‘national consensus’ of all nationalist and Islamic
factions.” It is not by chance that Sinwar said “ijtihadat” — “opinion”
or “independent religious ruling.” His message is that when political
and military views disagree, “national consensus” wins out.
5.
“Hamas sees the break between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as
suicide for the Palestinian national liberation project. Thus it does
not discount the possibility of reconciliation with the Palestinian
Authority and Fatah. ... Hamas created its executive committee due to
the vacuum left by the national consensus government, and is ready to
disband it if the national consensus government performs its duties in
Gaza.”
6.
“Hamas believes its relations with Egypt are developing and improving,
and opening the Rafah crossing and the understandings reached in Cairo
will lead to a decline in unemployment and poverty.” Sinwar chose
security coordination with Egypt (the creation of a security strip on
the Gaza-Egypt border and the arrest of infiltrators), at the expense of
distancing itself to some extent from Qatar and Turkey, because the key
to Gaza’s economic crisis is held by the state that borders it.
7.
It’s important to preserve the general freedoms, including the freedom
of speech and thought, as a condition for development and change,” he
said, promising “to fight corruption and to study incidents of
exaggerated force.” This can be seen as an acknowledgement of the
growing discontent of Gazan intellectuals, journalists, lawyers and
businessmen against the Hamas government and his fear that Hamas will go
the way of the Islamic State.
Sinwar
is no Zionist and won’t recognize Israel, but he wants to take
advantage of the one-time opportunity to become a legitimate son in the
eyes of the PA, Arab leaders and the international community. The motif
of “national consensus,” which the Hamas leadership once used to explain
its retreat from the maximalist vision of a Palestinian state from the
river to the sea, and its acceptance of the goal of a Palestinian state
within the 1967 borders, is also repeated: not in the context of Hamas’s
goal (the borders of the future state), but regarding the nature of the
government in the Strip and the type of anti-Israel struggle it will
dictate.
While
Hamas’s military wing wants the political wing to cede responsibility
for governing the Strip, in order to create a political and security
vacuum that will lead to chaos, Sinwar explains that Hamas and the
Al-Qassam Brigades will take no action without the consensus of all
factions. Thus Sinwar’s remarks can be understood as a message of
restraining the military wing and a willingness to continue to act
responsibly — contingent on Israel’s willingness to lift its blockade
and on an end to the PA’s punitive measures against the Strip. In that
case, a more accurate headline about the briefing to Palestinian pundits
is: “Yahya Sinwar: Hasten national consensus, put off war with Israel.”
Ronit
Marzan is a research fellow at the University of Haifa and the Forum
for Regional Thinking, focusing on Palestinian society and politics. An
earlier (Hebrew) version of this op-ed was published on the forum’s
website.
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