Politics, as Otto Von Bismarck famously said, is all about the art of the possible. The unification of Germany that he ruthlessly forged in the late nineteenth century showed that that the German statesman was no dove. Nevertheless, even he would have wondered at the wisdom of Hamas aggression in the latest resumption of hostilities between between Israel and the Bantustan that passes for half a Palestinian state on the Gaza Strip. Despite the worldwide sympathy that Palestine appears to have garnered after the three-day pounding it received from Israeli warplanes, it is difficult to understand why Hamas, the extremist group that won the Palestinian elections, took the initiative to launch attacks on Israeli territory when the ceasefire ended. Unless its leadership is seriously deluded, it should know that Palestine is not in a position to sustain any war with Israel, something that that country’s exaggerated counter-offensive with sophisticated military hardware has demonstrated. To provoke a war with a hostile, better-armed enemy that is overtly backed by the world’s lone superpower may imbue the Palestinian cause with a David-and-Goliath heroism. But as far as realpolitik goes, or even in terms of promoting lasting peace in a region torn by war for 60 years, it speaks of plain stupidity. It should be evident to even the most casual observer that firing a couple of rockets into the territory of a well-armed country, one that holds all the cards in terms of the survival of Palestine, is unlikely to frighten Israel into submission or détente (and it hasn’t, so far). More so when it has become abundantly clear that the realities of oil politics are unlikely to stir Palestine’s Arab “brothers” to give meaningful support— Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have amply demonstrated this over the past decade.
The inconvenient truth that the Hamas leadership needs to face squarely is (a) bar global sympathy, it is on its own, and (b) the series of peace accords from Oslo to Geneva have left Israel holding all the cards, not least because of poor negotiating by the Palestinians, including the late Yasser Arafat. It is Palestine that stands as a country divided, not unlike East and West Pakistan after the partition of India in 1947, into two shreds of land near the sea (Gaza) and the West Bank of the Jordan river. And it is Israel that controls most of the exit and entry points for Palestinians to and from their country. This, of course, should not preclude the Palestinians from bargaining hard and sensibly for their legitimate rights. For the history of this conflict should have made it clear that the cycle of violence has solved nothing.
This is not to say that Israeli intransigence is at all acceptable. The country is being short-sighted when it thinks that a massive attack will spook the Palestinians into surrendering— Palestinian resistance has intensified every time Israel ratchets up hostilities. With peace negotiations in the past having been embroiled in the hostile nitty-gritty of who will surrender which strip of land, both sides have missed the real art of the possible, of sober negotiations that replace arguments about the past with a focus on realistic solutions. This means that Israel must recognise that herding Palestinians into two unpromising strips of territory, stifling economic life and controlling their rights of exit and entry don’t add up to a lasting peace. By the same token, the Palestinians need to understand that the Israeli state is a lasting reality and provoking it at the cost of its own people hardly makes for coherent state policy. As one blogger succinctly put it, “The only way to solve this is for both sides to improve. Blame Israel or Hamas all you want …but they’re both to blame.”
