Many Palestinian Islamists are well-acquainted with Israel, as many of their leaders and activists have learned Hebrew after long years in prison. Therefore, they cannot be taken aback by the intensity of the Israeli retaliation and the destruction it has already inflicted on the Gaza Strip. Not only were Hamas leaders prepared for this, but they also planned the systematic cruelty of the October 7 terrorist massacres so that the Israeli retaliation would reach precisely this paroxysmal level.
Benjamin Netanyahu's government and its foreign backers would be mistaken to harbor any illusions about the efficacy of the ongoing campaign, even when humanitarian concerns are not factored in. Instead, they need to consider the trap that Hamas may well be closing on Israel in Gaza.
In September 1973, the Israeli governor of Gaza took part in the inauguration ceremony of the mosque of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Palestinian enclave, which had already been occupied for six years. The Israeli authorities had decided to play the Gaza Islamists against the nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), whose low-intensity guerrilla warfare was crushed by General Ariel Sharon. This gamble on the Palestinian Islamists provoked lively debate within the Israeli army and intelligence services but was settled in favor of Yassine, who obtained authorization to receive foreign funding in September 1979.
The ensuing clashes between PLO supporters and Islamists in Gaza strengthened the "divide and rule" approach in Israel. They even welcomed Yassin's creation, in December 1987, of Hamas, the Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, which weakened the Intifada, the PLO's unarmed uprising in the occupied territories.
While thousands of PLO militants were imprisoned, it was not until May 1989 that Yassin was arrested by Israel and sentenced to life imprisonment for terrorism. In December 1992, hundreds of Palestinian Islamists were deported to Lebanon, where they formed an important alliance with Hezbollah in the proliferation of suicide attacks, in the name of rejecting the peace agreement signed between Israel and the PLO.
In July 1997, however, Netanyahu released Yassin in exchange for two Mossad (Israeli intelligence service) agents who had failed to assassinate another Hamas leader in Jordan. The Islamist leader's triumphant return to Gaza dealt a severe blow to Arafat and his Palestinian Authority. The peace process collapsed with the second Intifada, marked in March 2002 by the Israeli reoccupation of the West Bank. Sharon, then prime minister, nevertheless refused to liquidate the Palestinian Authority, while decapitating Hamas with a murderous raid on Yassin in March 2004. Sharon's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005 consolidated two Palestinian enclaves, one controlled by the PLO in the West Bank and subject to the pressure of colonization, the other in the hands of Hamas in the blockaded Gaza Strip.
You have 42.36% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.