THESE two works complement each other. The Hamas study indicates why the Gaza conflict is so intractable; the other offers a possible way out of the tragic impasse in which both sides seem trapped.
Michael A. Horowitz, whose expertise is geopolitics, breaks new ground as he maps the dramatically changing regional and geopolitical landscape in the Middle East, involving great power competition, and how this impacts the Israel-Palestine conflict. His masterly account is often surprising: for example, how China’s growing involvement in the area, given its growing dependence on the region’s oil, paradoxically adds a stabilising influence, since Beijing and Washington share a desire to avoid disruptions, especially with regard to energy and trade.
In discussing how such developments might exert a positive impact on the conflict, he wisely refuses to rehearse the sterile competing narratives of who is to blame — a “lazy replacement for a much-needed discussion on how to resolve the conflict”. Since he fears that the space for rational debate is shrinking, he examines the tension between hope and despair, and attempts “to see what future challenges may lie ahead for Israel, both in terms of security and beyond”.
As he does so, his work assumes much of the historic ground covered by Milton-Edwards and Farrell, academic and journalist, in the update of their acclaimed 2010 study, the fruit of four decades interviewing “Hamas’s founders, leaders, fighters, social activists, victims, political supporters and opponents”.
Unlike Horowitz, they do not concern themselves with the preconditions for peaceful co-existence, once this latest and most destructive cycle of violence has ended. Their task is, rather, to document Hamas’s emergence in 1987 — with roots in the radicalism of Islamist sheikhs in the 1930s — and show how it “grew and thrived in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem”, becoming a formidable fighting force, driven by religious nationalism, committed to the destruction of the State of Israel, and able to blind-side and humiliate its more powerful enemy in its savage 7 October attack.
After a year’s blanket coverage of the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza, much of the narrative of Milton-Edwards and Farrell is familiar: how Hamas consistently wrecked peace initiatives, beginning with the Oslo Accords in 1993, through rockets and suicide attacks; and their cynical calculus that when Palestine burns, recruits to Hamas multiply. As hope in peace receded, extremism in Israel grew, culminating in Rabin’s assassination at the hands of religious Zionists in 1995.
Since Benjamin Netanyahu’s election as Prime Minister in 1996, he has consistently thwarted attempts to create a Palestinian state. This would fatally weaken Fatah vis-à-vis Hamas.
Horowitz makes clear that, for Israelis, their unilateral withdrawal of settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005 reflected a loss of confidence in the possibility of peace. This was trumpeted as a victory by Hamas, which went on in 2006 to become the first Islamist movement to gain power in the Middle East through the ballot box, by defeating Fatah in Palestinian elections. Eighteen months later, they brutally seized control of Gaza.
Meanwhile, Israel intensified its settler expansionism in the occupied West Bank, and contented itself with containing rather than resolving the conflict. There followed an ever more destructive cycle of Israeli military interventions in Gaza after each Hamas provocation: in 2012, 2014, 2018, and 2021.
Within this bleak analysis, Horowitz, none the less, discerns grounds for hope amid the convulsions and uncertainties of the past 20 years. He reminds his readers that for the first 30 years of Israel’s existence, it feared annihilation at the hands of its more populous Arab neighbours. Such fears largely disappeared after the peace treaty with Egypt (1979) and Jordan. Now, Israel has to navigate a new set of problems created by Arab weakness.
Such weakness enabled Iran to expand its influence across the region. Saddam Hussein’s removal opened the door to Iranian expansion into Iraq; as the Arab world and the West held aloof from a Hamas-controlled Gaza, Iran stepped in with military and economic support. During the Arab Spring, Iran was quick to align itself with Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Iranian influence now stretched across a connected land corridor from western Iran to southern Syria, enabling it to rearm Hezbollah in Lebanon and attack Israel through numerous proxies.
Iranian expansionism, however, created alarm, especially among the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia. This, in turn, has generated a new openness from Gulf states to trading with Israel, especially valuing its military and surveillance technology. Horowitz foregrounds the significance in 2020 of an article penned by the ambassador to Washington of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), published in one of the most widely circulated newspapers in Israel.
The diplomat argued that Israel had to choose between two mutually exclusive paths. One was continued “isolation” from the Arab world by annexing the West Bank, a move that Mr Netanyahu, increasingly dependent on far-Right parties, was openly discussing: such a “misguided” provocation would “ignite violence and rouse extremists” and “send shock waves around the region”. The alternative was “engagement” with the Arab world, in which, for example, the UAE and Israel would collaborate on a variety of issues, from terrorism to climate change, water and food security, and technology.
The ambassador had clearly hit a nerve: two months later, a survey showed that a clear majority of more than 75 per cent of Israelis preferred normalisation with the UAE over the annexation of the West Bank, supported by only 16.5 per cent. As a result, Mr Netanyahu opted for engagement, supporting the US-backed Abraham Accords in 2020 between Israel and the UAE, later joined by Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. This was seen as opening the possibility of an Israel integrated into an Arab “common market” with its huge potential. Saudi Arabia was even expressing an interest. This was anathema to Hamas and probably contributed to the 7 October attack.
In the long view, after a political settlement of the Gaza conflict — both studies are adamant that no military victory is possible — Horowitz hopes that Israel will resume the difficult path of engagement, normalising its relations with its Arab neighbours. Such an engagement, promising recognition of Israel and economic benefits, could also act as a break on further expansionism in the West Bank and an incentive finally to resolve rather than contain the conflict. He is aware that such a possible scenario is fraught with many pitfalls. It does, at least, offer a ray of light in the gathering gloom.
Dr Philip Lewis is a consultant on Islam and Christian-Muslim relations, advised Bishops of Bradford for some three decades, and taught in Peace Studies at Bradford University.
Hope and Despair: Israel’s future in the new Middle East
Michael A. Horowitz
Hurst £30
(978-1-911723-19-6)
Church Times Bookshop £27
HAMAS: The quest for power
Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell
Polity Press £17.99
(978-1-5095-6493-4)
Church Times Bookshop £16.19