Israel’s response to the massacre of October 7 involves the entry of the army into Gaza. And it raises the uncomfortable question of knowing what the future will be of a territory on which the Jewish State has practiced a blockade that lasts 15 years.
Between September 15 and 18, 1982, hundreds of militiamen from the Lebanese Phalange entered the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila, west of Beirut. They were armed with guns, axes and daggers. There were murders of children, shots in the temples of the elderly, summary executions and rapes. When they abandoned the camp, they left 3,000 bodies.
The massacre of Sabra and Shatila is the antecedent, in ferocity and viciousness, of the Hamas massacre of October 7 in the Israeli communities near Gaza. The Christian militiamen did the dirty work. And the Israeli army the logistics. He handed over the jeeps to transport them and surrounded the perimeter to facilitate the work.
Sabra and Shatila caused divisions in Israel’s government. It was one thing to momentarily invade Lebanon and another to let the Maronites enter to carry out their revenge. But Israeli hawks were uneasy about Lebanon’s Palestinians. They had just achieved the expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from the country. The massacre could be the final shelving of the file.
Historian Lawrence Freedman says that in war it is important to align political objectives with military means. No matter how competent the means are, if they do not achieve the desired objective, they must be reconsidered. It may have seemed to the Israeli hawks that the punishment of the Palestinians of Lebanon was worth Sabra and Shatila. But the respite was short-lived and the offensive left lasting wounds. Where there were previously PLO guerrillas, Hizbullah soon arrived.
On October 7, Hamas surprised the Israeli army with an incursion that ended in the largest massacre since the founding of the Israeli State in 1948 (1,400 dead). They broke the Hebrew defense lines. They circumvented their intelligence systems. And they spread terror with all kinds of atrocities.
Israel has always thought that anti-Semitism is a universal evil that cannot be eradicated. And that no one is going to defend them better than themselves. Therefore, after the initial shock, they look for the appropriate response to an attack of these characteristics.
Why the cruelty of Hamas? Out of hate. Because in the modern dirty war the facts are recorded and disseminated. Because Israel is divided. To end the love affair between Tel Aviv and the Arab capitals. To tell the Israelis that they will never be calm. To gain followers. For call the atention. And then? Very simple: kidnap the enemy to negotiate and wait for him to enter hostile terrain. That is, the martyrdom of the population in whose name he claims to speak.
There are Palestinians in refugee camps in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. And populations in the West Bank and Gaza.
Gaza is the least powerful territory on the planet. The most isolated. Without geopolitics to protect it. It has no state. There are 2.23 million people in a territory the size of Maresme. Full of poor people and with an explosive demographic: the average age is less than twenty years (in Spain it is 41).
Until 1985 its economy was linked to Israel. The 2000 intifada and suicide attacks put an end to that. In 1998 they inaugurated an airport. Israel closed it months later. He also closed the fishing industry to prevent weapons smuggling. In 2005 Israel left Gaza. I didn’t know what to do with her. A year later Hamas won the elections.
Gaza was declared hostile territory. The blockade and periodic bombings are the only thing that half of its population has known in their lives. Hamas expanded the tunnel economy to live off smuggling from Egypt. But that also ended in 2013. Today, almost a million people in Gaza live off UNRWA, the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees.
Does anyone have a future for Gaza in mind? Not Hamas. Neither does Israel. He has always thought that the siege and oblivion could last forever. Furthermore, Israel is now very busy figuring out how far to go with the ground offensive. They come in to finish off Hamas and eradicate it. Without knowing exactly what that means and what price it will have on lives.
The Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, assures that they do not plan to stay when the operation is over. But that is a reflection to get by.
In Biden administration circles they remember what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and emphasize that we must think about the day after. Israelis, they reason, should not allow themselves to be blinded by anger and make the same mistakes as Americans after the 9/11 attacks.
But that thought must seem extraterrestrial to the Israeli government, full of extremists in favor of driving the Gazans from their scarce land. Some talk about expelling them directly. Others reduce their number by half. Or to confine them in an even smaller space. The Palestinians, meanwhile, fear another Nakba, an exodus like that of 1948.
Danny Ayalon, an influential Israeli diplomat, asked about the fate of the Gazans, says: “We are not telling them to go to the beaches or drown. [we tell them] to go to the Sinai desert… there the international community will build cities for them and give them food.”
Between Biden’s ideal and the temptation to kick them out of Gaza, there must be a middle ground that avoids a regional war, that washes away the dignity of the West and saves the lives of more unfortunate people. The Palestinian counter now stands at 4,137 deaths.
