The October 7 attack in Israel by Hamas spells a major defeat for Israel as well as for the efforts at normalisation and peace in the region. For Israel, the failure involves poor intelligence and inadequate military preparedness. More importantly, the country’s reputation of military invincibility has been shattered. Israel is now resorting to a massive attack on Gaza to try to restore the deterrence it once enjoyed, yet it is far from certain that it can accomplish this even if Gaza is destroyed and re-occupied.
Furthermore, it is hard to see how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will survive politically given the loss of civilian Israeli lives and the large number of Israeli hostages now in Hamas’s hands. Of course, the Palestinians are also losers in that this attack is unlikely to get them any closer to establishing their state or to lead to the destruction of Israel, which is Hamas’s aim. What will happen instead is that more misery and violence will be heaped on the Palestinians in retaliation by Israel. Thus, the circle of violence continues unabated, and with greater ferocity in the Middle East with no winners on any side. But why did this attack happen now and what were its intended goals?
There are two immediate reasons why these attacks took place. First, Hamas has been vying with the Palestinian Authority (PA) for the leadership of the Palestinian cause and the success of these attacks is one way to achieve this. The PA is the official government of the Palestinians that signed the Oslo Peace Accords with Israel, which never resulted in the promised Palestinian state. Furthermore, the PA is riddled with corruption and misgovernance, and because it has restricted Palestinian resistance to occupation it is seen as being complicit with Israel and therefore has lost much of its legitimacy. Whatever the fate of Hamas in Gaza, there is no question now that it leads the Palestinian effort at liberation and self-determination. The second reason is the effort by Hamas, and with Iran’s support and guidance, to end the process of normalisation between Israel and the Gulf Arab states, especially with Saudi Arabia.
Recently, under President Joe Biden’s stewardship, the Saudis and Israelis were in the process of negotiating a peace agreement. Had this been accomplished, this would have created a new alliance between the Gulf states and Israel against Iran’s “axis of resistance” to Israel and American power in the region. With these attacks, and the likely devastating reprisal by Israel against Palestinians, it is unlikely that any peace agreement can be reached soon. The Saudi government will find it very difficult to make peace with a country that is pummelling an Arab population that is widely viewed among fellow Arabs as having been denied its rights and is living under brutal Israeli occupation.
What all this spells, for the moment at least, is the victory of Iran and Hamas’s vision of violent resistance as opposed to that of the Saudis and Emiratis, which has emphasised peace, stability and prosperity. Yet, both visions are flawed because they are each blind to an obvious reality. On the one hand, the eliminationist objective of Iran and Hamas, which is the destruction of the state of Israel, is never going to be achieved for the simple reason that Israel is too strong and is backed by all Western nations, especially the US. Note the unconditional support that America has offered in response to the attack. On the other, the Arab Gulf approach has not sufficiently emphasised, indeed insisted, on the creation of a viable Palestinian state as a necessary condition for a lasting peace. So long as the Palestinians live and suffer under Israeli occupation and are denied their right to self-determination, there cannot be peace. There will be spoilers, such as Iran and Hamas, who will make sure of this, as we are now witnessing.
Saudi Arabia, under the late King Abdullah, made an offer to Israel in 2002 in the name of all Arab states, which is called the Arab Peace Initiative. This offer can be the only basis for a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians and will require the creation of a Palestinian state on the lands Israel occupied in the Six-Day War of 1967. In return, Israel would be fully recognised and accepted. It is the rejection by Israel of this offer, especially by its present right-wing government with its annexationist aims over all the land, that has aggravated the situation and prevented a resolution of this conflict.
While understandable, the violent retaliation by Israel against Hamas in Gaza will not help resolve matters but only aggravate the situation and play into the hands of the spoilers on all sides of this conflict. Cooler heads must prevail and think of the longer term. This attack presents an opportunity that can be seized by the Biden administration, Saudi Arabia and the more centrist politicians in Israel. And this is to revive the Arab Peace Initiative because only by creating a Palestinian state can there be the hope of seeing this conflict end, peace prevailing, and the efforts of violent spoilers thwarted. Without accomplishing this, you can be sure that there will be many more rounds of violent confrontation after this one ends.
The writer is Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University
