They play, they provoke each other. From time to time, they say to each other: Don’t you want to play with me? This description, given by a Gazan in the summer of 2014, as Gaza’s only power plant burned and food and water were scarce even in the most press-safe hotel, was less sardonic than it seems. All wars between Israel and Hamas have begun with provocations (except the massacre of October 7, which surpassed everything known) and always ended, until now, with a ceasefire and one side and the other claiming victory; in the case of the Hamas leaders, sitting on a mountain of rubble and corpses. So, until next time, when the arsenals are full again.
In 2006, the year after the Israeli disengagement from Gaza and in the absence of the settlers evacuated or evicted by the Government, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) no longer had any impediment to applying in Gaza the same treatment as in Lebanon during the war with Hizbullah that same summer, that is, massive bombings, according to the principle of the then head of the Northern Command, Gadi Eizenkot, that “for us, cities are military bases.”
That year Israel encountered two fronts. In the north, Hizbullah rockets (they tried to reach Haifa), after the capture of two Israeli soldiers, and in the south, another capture, that of soldier Gilad Shalit by Hamas.
Although a war is not won with aerial means alone, what the Israelis call the Second Lebanon War (July 12 to August 14) ended up being a failure in its ground phase. The raids on Gaza to free Shalit did not go well either: it would not be achieved until an exchange in 2011 for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. Recovering the bodies of the two Lebanese soldiers cost another 1,500 prisoners, including the current Hamas military chief, Mohamed Deif.
But from that war the so-called “Dahiya doctrine” would remain, after the Shiite neighborhood of Beirut destroyed in bombings. It was based on the “disproportionate use of force,” theorized at the Institute for National Security Studies, approved by the IDF legal services, and not disavowed by the Supreme Court as contrary to international law. This would be applied in December 2008, after Hamas broke a six-month truce by firing its homemade Qasam rockets because Israel did not lift the blockade. The Israeli objective was the Hamas tunnels, but not only the military ones but also the commercial (and private) ones with which the Gazans evaded that blockade from Egypt and through which they could pass everything from cows and cars to weapons and cement to open more tunnels. .
Operation Cast Lead was something never seen before. The bombings included the use of white phosphorus, which was denounced by Human Rights Watch, the French Government and the Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights, which also received evidence from cooperating Norwegian doctors of the use of an experimental explosive called DIME that caused serious injuries. tissue tears and left metal dust with possible carcinogenic effects on the wounded. Both weapons, they said, had been used previously in Lebanon but also in Gaza in 2006. Hamas, meanwhile, was only able to fire about 30 rockets a day at Israel. He warned, before the tanks entered Gaza, that Gilad Shalit would have “new friends,” but he did not get any more hostages.
The raid left its mark on Israeli soldiers. The NGO Breaking the Silence – made up of reservists – would publish a devastating report, months later: Gaza was approached as a large enemy base and not as a super-inhabited space, with 5,000 people per square kilometer; the troops were not instructed about the civilian population.
Those soldiers knew nothing about Gaza, like most Israelis. Since 2005 they have not been able to enter, not even journalists. All they knew then is that rockets are fired from there. What a few Israelis, such as historian Ilán Pappé, have described as “the dehumanization of Gaza” by the government in power. Now, since October 7, the identification of Gazans with Hamas is served.
Breaking the Silence’s report after the 2014 war was even harsher, from the harangues to soldiers (“No Remorse”) about to enter Gaza at night, scared to death, to the shootings of civilians, the deaths of children by drones, the bombing of hospitals, mosques, markets, warehouses and schools of the UN Refugee Agency, the destruction of 17,800 homes… Protective Edge was the operation to end the tunnels through which Hamas threatened to penetrate Israel, so the entry of troops and armor especially affected the towns closest to the closed and guarded perimeter, such as Beit Hanun and Shijaya. Overall, it was business as usual but in worse conditions than five years earlier, when Israel allowed at least 400 trucks with aid to enter over eleven days and about 400 people with passports were allowed to leave.
In 2009, talk of a truce did not begin until there were a thousand deaths. In the summer of 2014, the number was quickly surpassed, but half the world was on vacation. The European Union, a participant in the Gaza blockade, did not even recognize the existence of a crisis. As journalist Gideon Levy, one of Israel’s bravest voices, said, “with friends like these…”.
