As Israelis reel from the shock of the gruesome assault by Hamas militants over the weekend, Palestinians are bracing for a retaliatory ground invasion of the Gaza Strip that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Monday would reverberate for generations.
More than 1,000 Israelis have been killed, infants and elderly among them, while more than 100 people have been taken as hostages, complicating Israel’s pursuit of Hamas. Some 900 people have been killed in Gaza as the territory, one of the most densely populated on Earth, has been pounded by Israeli airstrikes that have hit mosques and a crowded market.
Foreign Policy spoke to Khaled Elgindy, director of the program on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli affairs at the Middle East Institute, about the timing of the attack, life in Gaza today, and the need for the international community to lay down guardrails as Israel prepares its response.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Foreign Policy: Why did Hamas decide that now was the time to launch these attacks in southern Israel? Do you see any kind of particular external factors that may have prompted this moment?
Khaled Elgindy: The triggers for this were many. Obviously, the whole context is 56 years of Israeli occupation with no end in sight. And this suffocating 16-year blockade on Gaza, which, as you know, has been the source of many rounds, many different eruptions over the years. Now you have the most extremist government in Israel’s history. Violence in the West Bank has ratcheted up. It’s been the deadliest year in the West Bank in two decades. You have a dramatic spike in terrorism by settlers. Various rampages through different Palestinian villages mostly in the north, and with more or less impunity from the Israeli army, sometimes even with the assistance of the army. And on top of it, there are these regular and increasing encroachments at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. It’s not a coincidence that Hamas named this operation the Al-Aqsa typhoon.
In the midst of all of that, the Arab world is moving on. The new game in town is Saudi-Israel normalization. The two-state solution is off the table. Palestinian freedom is off the table. Washington is distracted with other issues; it’s not a priority. So I think all of those are the context in which they’re saying, “Look, right now, Palestinians are the only people paying the price for the status quo.” The status quo is extremely comfortable for Israel, and the rest of the international community is complacent, because most of the costs are borne by the Palestinians. So at its core, Hamas’s calculation is to radically overturn that calculation.
FP: What came to my mind over the weekend was that the response to these attacks is only going to make life for people living in Gaza more intolerable. So what was their endgame here?
KE: That’s the million-dollar question. I mean, I’ve been struggling with what exactly is their endgame. They knew that was going to produce a much bigger response than anything they’ve seen before. But then that ought to tell us something about the mindset that goes into that. If you are prepared to launch something as outrageous and audacious as this, knowing full well what the consequences will be, then that tells us something about the sense of despair and the sense of desperation that exists. What does it take to push people to that sort of an act, not just in terms of killing other people, but also knowing the cost that you yourself will pay?
Look at Gaza, especially; suicide rates are going up. It’s not only that they’re living in miserable conditions, but it’s that there’s no end in sight. The Palestinians live in this state of despair, and we should be very, very afraid of despair, because people will do just about anything. That’s not in any way to justify, but it’s not a little thing to get to a point where you do something that ultimately is totally self-defeating.
FP: How do you think this is going to impact support for Hamas among Palestinians?
KE: At a superficial level, they will get a boost in their popularity. Anyone who is seen as inflicting damage on Israel is going to win points among the Palestinian public—especially in contrast to the leadership in the West Bank, where the contrast couldn’t be more stark. Here are the guys—[the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs parts of the West Bank] Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] and his people—they play by all the rules, they’re against violence, they’re for negotiations, they want to do things the right way. They jumped through all the hoops of the international community about institution building and finances and all of these things. Yes, they’re corrupt, but the corruption comes from the stagnation of Palestinian politics, the fact that there’s no parliament, there’s no oversight, which itself is a condition of the occupation. The U.S. and Israel don’t want elections; they don’t want a genuinely representative government that probably won’t be committed to things like security coordination with Israel.
So they do all the right things. They coordinate our security. And what did they get? Well, it’s a lose-lose, because they’re seen as collaborators by the people. That they’re subcontractors for Israeli security. But what did they get? Are they rewarded for their compliance and jumping through all the right hoops? Have they gotten the state? No, they haven’t.
It doesn’t matter if Palestinians play by the rules because it doesn’t get them anywhere. And so the Hamas option looks much more appealing. Because, even if there’s a cost, well, we’re paying costs anyway. Every day, we’re losing land. Every day, we’re losing people, homes—villages are being evacuated, depopulated in the Jordan Valley—and so we’re losing anyway. At least they’re doing something. So I think that’s the mindset if you’re a Palestinian. The choice between the two, Hamas will pay a price for sure, but maybe they’re calculating that that price will be offset by being seen as the new vanguards of Palestinian liberation and maybe the future of Palestinian leadership.
FP: How would the PA feel about seeing Hamas brought down?
KE: What does it mean to bring it down? You can kill all the leaders, which Israel has done. Remember back in the early 2000s, they killed the no. 1, 2, and 3 in succession, and there will always be someone to replace them. I don’t think you can just erase a political movement or political idea, whatever you may think about it.
This is another reason why I’m frustrated: There are no grown-ups in the diplomatic world who are calling for some reasonable, measured response and not falling into emotional reactions to everything.
FP: But if I may push back there, the nature of these attacks feels like it was designed to provoke an emotional response.
KE: Yes, of course. And that’s normal. We’re human beings. My hope is that once cooler heads have prevailed, after that initial shock has worn off, you need to sit down and think about rational responses.
There needs to be pushback, to say 2.3 million people—civilians in Gaza—did not have responsibility. They’re not responsible for the carnage that happened over the weekend in Israel. Otherwise, we’re just kind of buying into the same logic as the terrorists.
FP: What are you hearing from your contacts in Gaza right now about what the situation has been like there over the past 48 hours?
KE: The situation is horrific. Most people I know in Gaza are fleeing their homes to relatives’ homes where they think there’s less likelihood of being attacked. But there’s really nowhere to go, because nobody knows what the targets are. The targets are very malleable. And we’ve seen apartment buildings, all kinds of civilian infrastructure—anything and everything can be a target.
Israel doesn’t have a very good track record of protecting civilians. And now, given the rage in Israel, it has much less appetite to think about any red lines. They are still human beings. When you hear the Israeli defense minister refer to 2 million Palestinians in Gaza as human animals, we should be afraid of that. We should be concerned by that. Because they will act on it. When you dehumanize your enemy, then anything and everything is possible.
Foreign Policy: Why did Hamas decide that now was the time to launch these attacks in southern Israel? Do you see any kind of particular external factors that may have prompted this moment?
Khaled Elgindy: The triggers for this were many. Obviously, the whole context is 56 years of Israeli occupation with no end in sight. And this suffocating 16-year blockade on Gaza, which, as you know, has been the source of many rounds, many different eruptions over the years. Now you have the most extremist government in Israel’s history. Violence in the West Bank has ratcheted up. It’s been the deadliest year in the West Bank in two decades. You have a dramatic spike in terrorism by settlers. Various rampages through different Palestinian villages mostly in the north, and with more or less impunity from the Israeli army, sometimes even with the assistance of the army. And on top of it, there are these regular and increasing encroachments at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. It’s not a coincidence that Hamas named this operation the Al-Aqsa typhoon.
In the midst of all of that, the Arab world is moving on. The new game in town is Saudi-Israel normalization. The two-state solution is off the table. Palestinian freedom is off the table. Washington is distracted with other issues; it’s not a priority. So I think all of those are the context in which they’re saying, “Look, right now, Palestinians are the only people paying the price for the status quo.” The status quo is extremely comfortable for Israel, and the rest of the international community is complacent, because most of the costs are borne by the Palestinians. So at its core, Hamas’s calculation is to radically overturn that calculation.
FP: What came to my mind over the weekend was that the response to these attacks is only going to make life for people living in Gaza more intolerable. So what was their endgame here?
KE: That’s the million-dollar question. I mean, I’ve been struggling with what exactly is their endgame. They knew that was going to produce a much bigger response than anything they’ve seen before. But then that ought to tell us something about the mindset that goes into that. If you are prepared to launch something as outrageous and audacious as this, knowing full well what the consequences will be, then that tells us something about the sense of despair and the sense of desperation that exists. What does it take to push people to that sort of an act, not just in terms of killing other people, but also knowing the cost that you yourself will pay?
Look at Gaza, especially; suicide rates are going up. It’s not only that they’re living in miserable conditions, but it’s that there’s no end in sight. The Palestinians live in this state of despair, and we should be very, very afraid of despair, because people will do just about anything. That’s not in any way to justify, but it’s not a little thing to get to a point where you do something that ultimately is totally self-defeating.
FP: How do you think this is going to impact support for Hamas among Palestinians?
KE: At a superficial level, they will get a boost in their popularity. Anyone who is seen as inflicting damage on Israel is going to win points among the Palestinian public—especially in contrast to the leadership in the West Bank, where the contrast couldn’t be more stark. Here are the guys—[the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs parts of the West Bank] Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] and his people—they play by all the rules, they’re against violence, they’re for negotiations, they want to do things the right way. They jumped through all the hoops of the international community about institution building and finances and all of these things. Yes, they’re corrupt, but the corruption comes from the stagnation of Palestinian politics, the fact that there’s no parliament, there’s no oversight, which itself is a condition of the occupation. The U.S. and Israel don’t want elections; they don’t want a genuinely representative government that probably won’t be committed to things like security coordination with Israel.
So they do all the right things. They coordinate our security. And what did they get? Well, it’s a lose-lose, because they’re seen as collaborators by the people. That they’re subcontractors for Israeli security. But what did they get? Are they rewarded for their compliance and jumping through all the right hoops? Have they gotten the state? No, they haven’t.
It doesn’t matter if Palestinians play by the rules because it doesn’t get them anywhere. And so the Hamas option looks much more appealing. Because, even if there’s a cost, well, we’re paying costs anyway. Every day, we’re losing land. Every day, we’re losing people, homes—villages are being evacuated, depopulated in the Jordan Valley—and so we’re losing anyway. At least they’re doing something. So I think that’s the mindset if you’re a Palestinian. The choice between the two, Hamas will pay a price for sure, but maybe they’re calculating that that price will be offset by being seen as the new vanguards of Palestinian liberation and maybe the future of Palestinian leadership.
FP: How would the PA feel about seeing Hamas brought down?
KE: What does it mean to bring it down? You can kill all the leaders, which Israel has done. Remember back in the early 2000s, they killed the no. 1, 2, and 3 in succession, and there will always be someone to replace them. I don’t think you can just erase a political movement or political idea, whatever you may think about it.
This is another reason why I’m frustrated: There are no grown-ups in the diplomatic world who are calling for some reasonable, measured response and not falling into emotional reactions to everything.
FP: But if I may push back there, the nature of these attacks feels like it was designed to provoke an emotional response.
KE: Yes, of course. And that’s normal. We’re human beings. My hope is that once cooler heads have prevailed, after that initial shock has worn off, you need to sit down and think about rational responses.
There needs to be pushback, to say 2.3 million people—civilians in Gaza—did not have responsibility. They’re not responsible for the carnage that happened over the weekend in Israel. Otherwise, we’re just kind of buying into the same logic as the terrorists.
FP: What are you hearing from your contacts in Gaza right now about what the situation has been like there over the past 48 hours?
KE: The situation is horrific. Most people I know in Gaza are fleeing their homes to relatives’ homes where they think there’s less likelihood of being attacked. But there’s really nowhere to go, because nobody knows what the targets are. The targets are very malleable. And we’ve seen apartment buildings, all kinds of civilian infrastructure—anything and everything can be a target.
Israel doesn’t have a very good track record of protecting civilians. And now, given the rage in Israel, it has much less appetite to think about any red lines. They are still human beings. When you hear the Israeli defense minister refer to 2 million Palestinians in Gaza as human animals, we should be afraid of that. We should be concerned by that. Because they will act on it. When you dehumanize your enemy, then anything and everything is possible.