Hamas' Miscalculation
Why The Group Thought It Could Get Away With Striking Israel
Article Summary and Author Biography
Two factors pushed Hamas to ramp up its bombing campaign: belief that its strategic environment had improved in the wake of the Arab Spring and competition from Salafi groups.
BARAK MENDELSOHN is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Haverford College and the author of Combating Jihadism: American Hegemony and Interstate Cooperation in the War on Terrorism.
Snapshot
Israel's operation in Gaza is meant to compel Hamas to stop shooting rockets into Israel and to better police its territory. But with Hamas unable to bend to Israeli pressure, and Israel unable to escalate or back off, it will be up to outside states to end the fighting.
Snapshot
With Israel and Hamas once again locked in a shooting war, it's time to think about what a more sustainable ceasefire might look like.
Snapshot
The latest round of fighting in Gaza gave Hamas room to paper over growing rifts between its Gaza-based leadership and its leadership in exile. But eventually the group will need to resolve internal disputes over working with Iran, working with Arab capitals, and negotiating with Israel -- or face decline.
Snapshot
Calm has been restored to Gaza and southern Israel, but if the cease-fire is to last, Israel and the international community need to engage Hamas diplomatically. Fortunately, the organization has shown a willingness to move beyond its hardline ideology and act practically.
Palestinians wave Hamas flags near Ramallah. (Mohamad Torokman / Courtesy Reuters)
The escalation in the fighting last week between Israel and Hamas caught many observers by surprise. Operation Cast Lead, Israel's 2008 campaign against Hamas, had led to an uneasy calm between the warring sides. And last year's release of Gilad Shalit (the Israeli soldier who had been kidnapped by militants in 2006) in exchange for a thousand Palestinian prisoners had even given observers hope that Israel and Hamas had found a way to manage their conflict. But then, Hamas attacked an Israeli mobile patrol inside Israeli territory on November 10 and Israel retaliated by assassinating Ahmed Jabari, Hamas's military chief. This time, the violence that has followed has not faded quickly; indeed, the fight is still intensifying.
Given the destruction wrought by Israel and Hamas' last major conflict, Hamas' calculations in the lead-up to this round of fighting are especially puzzling. The typical explanation is that Hamas ramped up its rocket campaign earlier this year in an effort to break Israel's siege on the Gaza Strip. Under fire, Israel had to retaliate.
That answer, though, is unsatisfying. In many ways, the siege had already been broken. True, the Gaza Strip is tiny, densely populated, squeezed between Israel and Egypt, and dependent on both countries for the passage of people and goods. And all of that makes it a rather claustrophobic place. Yet Israel's efforts to tightly control the area's borders, which started after Hamas won elections there in 2006, had gradually wound down. After the public relations disaster that followed Israel's 2010 mishandling of the Gaza-bound Turkish aid flotilla, the flow of goods over the Israeli border into Gaza increased substantially. Moreover, the tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border, through which most of the goods coming into Gaza are smuggled, became so elaborate that they resembled official border crossings. In fact, the volume of trade that travels through the tunnels could be up to $700 million dollars a year...
