Krystian Kamiński: Palestinians no longer had much to lose

The comments on the Hamas attack, or, more broadly, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Israel, ask, "Why now?" There are many answers, and in Poland there are besides conspirators (the long hand of Moscow) and the more fantastic the answers appear, the more amazing they reveal. And here's the first part of the answer. Why now? – precisely due to the fact that nobody, including the Israelis, was.

Hamas utilized the vacation of Jom Kippur and the Sabbath, any of the soldiers occupying usually borderlands with the Gaza Strip were inactive on vacation passes. Thus, the Palestinian organization repeated a trick from half a century ago. In Yom Kippur 1973, armies of Egypt and Syria collapsed on Israel effectively amazing Israelis. At that time, they came out of the war with the top difficulty and caused a political earthquake in Israel.

The war that started on Saturday we can already call Yom Kippur 2. Theoretically, its military nature is more limited in terms of territorial scope (yet?) and resources involved. In practice, the political effect is just as crucial if not more important. Israel was injured. And not by the full coalition of states, but by a non-state military-political organization surrounded by a tiny exclave, the Gaza Strip. Israel's bleeding.

Palestinians and the full arabian planet saw Israeli blood. The story of omnipotence and the powerful resilience of Israel has collapsed. Hundreds of civilian and military casualties. Not only soldiers were captured, but most likely officers who, as any audiovisual recordings suggest, could not resist. Damageing the Merkawa tank with a simple drone and taking control of respective more, as well as another dense military equipment. The business of Sderot Police Station by Palestinians for respective hours. Israeli soldiers panicking in barracks. mobilization problems and parents picking up reservists for private car collection sites. These paintings will become a story and will feed Palestinian morale for many years and possibly fuel the support of the arabian street for their fight.

This is simply a disgrace to Israel's armed forces, which left the border with the Gaza Strip poorly protected. The arrogant technological advantage of Israel believed that safety would supply them with all the sophisticated, partially autonomous monitoring and informing systems they had constructed at the border. It wasn't enough.

The price is bloody. Hundreds of victims. The price is besides advanced by the number of prisoners and hostages taken by Palestinians. For 1 Israeli private, Gilad Shalit, included in 2006, the Palestinians received the release of 1027 Palestinian prisoners in 2011. Now the prisoners and hostages are at least a fewer dozen. This will be a military challenge - prisoners and hostages, at least in part, will be held in the Gaza Strip where Israelis must take revenge. This will so be a political challenge for the Netanyahu government.

Hamas carried out a perfectly planned, sophisticated and adequately supplied asymmetrical military operation. A landing organization with paragliders and boats far abroad, crossing the land border, a volley of thousands of rockets, in most simple structures, not very customs, but suitable for exhausting the anti-air defence capabilities of the opponent and terrorizing his population in a crucial area. In addition, an information war to sow fear and chaos. Thousands of pictures and recordings of Hamas channels flowed at a time erstwhile Israeli media were subject to quasi-censorship. Thousands of Israeli citizens rushed to flee and filled the road. safety services have not always been flooded with justifiable reports of “any suspect”.

Thousands of militants and logistics support networks must have been active in the preparation of specified operations. The fact that Israel's political leadership is unaware of Israel's peculiar services, considered to be perfect.

We have not seen specified military operations performed by Palestinians since the 1980s. possibly from the displacement of the main part of the Palestine/Fatahu Liberation Organization from Lebanon under force from the Israeli offensive in 1982. This is not another Intifada, a common decision of street youth gradually replacing slingshots and stones with rifles and bombs. It's a military operation.

This operation has already undermined the prestige and credibility of deterrence of Israel, so I do not share the explanation that behind it lies Netanyahu's makiavely tactics allowing an attack to get an excuse to completely destruct the positions of Palestinians and consolidate Israeli society around itself. In the short run, it can accomplish “unification around the flag”. On the another hand, after the war, he may be faced with something akin to the Agranat Investigative Commission after the Jom Kippur War, under which the Prime Minister resigned as a politician of that rank as Golda Meir. She's not back in politics anymore. How much harder it will be for Netanjah, who has long been severely conflicted with the ultimate Court of Israel against the background of his reforms.

The main legitimacy of the uprising and the existence of Israel is the anti-anti-Semitic story that Jews needed and request their own state, due to the fact that each other's life was and will always be threatened by persecution or even death at the hands of the anti-Semitic environment. Ensuring physical security, in conditions where real enemies be in the mediate East, is always an absolute condition for governing Israel. Regardless of how much Netanjahu will be able to retaliate the Gaza Strip, or even Palestinians in the West Bank of Jordan, he can already be considered by many of his fellow citizens to have failed to uphold this basic condition of power.

Nota bene socio-political conflict against the background of these reforms of the justice strategy imposed by Netanjah's cabinet, the powerful street manifestations in which soldiers participated, the reservists' declarations of leftist and liberal views that they would not participate in the protest exercises were besides part of the weakening of the efficiency and resilience of the Israeli state and society. That's another part of the answer to why Hamas hit right now.

The most crucial part of the answer to the question now, however, is the knowing that the Palestinians did not have much to lose. Jaser Arafat through the 1993-1995 Oslo Agreements led to the Palestinians' real hanging of the weapon on the stake. The agreements defined Palestinian national headquarters, legal and political autonomy by presenting it as a way to its own statehood. Autonomy was a fiction. The West Bank of Jordan was shredded in areas of Israeli military jurisdiction and illegal under global law by judaic settlements that took over the best land, water, reserved for themselves exclusive many of the best roads. An Israeli business army was set up to defender this state of affairs. The Gaza Strip is 1 large ghetto of 2 million people who cannot bring in goods as basic as cement, who frequently cannot go fishing for fish, so as not to be chased by Israeli ships. It is primarily the work of those who, after Oslo's agreements, effectively controlled the situation and had a majority of political assets, Israel and the United States protegating it.

The regular lives of Palestinians, almost 3 decades after the Oslo agreements were signed, are frequently occupation shortages, or poorness despite work, in the Gaza Strip deficiency of power due to bombarded generators, burdensome and sometimes humiliating controls on many check-points, aggression, sometimes vandalism from judaic settlers, land occupations, bulldozering houses, police raids and troops to Al Aksa mosque, which for spiritual society is of large importance. It's normal. Under the conditions of the next escalation, it is death from a stray and sometimes intentionally fired bullet or bomb as part of another Israeli operation aimed at militants.

Polish commentators present item the cruelty of Palestinians killing civilians. Among them are those who have Western citizenship, which further undermines sensitivity. In fact, this deserves farthest condemnation. However, for Palestinians, this condemnation coming from Poland and the wider West will no longer matter. Not just due to the fact that the West hasn't truly done much for their national self-determination. besides due to the fact that akin expressions of regret and outrage did not accompany the death of unarmed and innocent civilians at the hands of Israelis.

Were we outraged erstwhile three-year-old Mohammed al-Tamimi died in Ramallah on June 6, that year, along with his father, being shot in the car by soldiers who later claimed they thought they were militants? Did we resent the death of 5 children of Samiha al-Aktash, killed in Zatar in February, the victims of a series of Palestinian village pogroms in the Nablus area decorated by illegal judaic settlers? Did we resent being shot by soldiers of writer Szirin Abu Akleh in Genien last May? Only during the first half of this year, at least 156 Palestinians were killed by the Israelis. Were we curious in how many innocent civilians, women, children among them? And it wasn't a peculiar year in fresh years.

Therefore, Palestinians no longer care about Western public opinion. Their paroxysm of brutality with which they treat during this war any Israeli encountered would not offend them with arabian or more Muslim public opinion. Why are you asking now?

Because the situation of the Palestinians and the position of their national affairs on the planet phase has already fallen so low that Hamas felt that all way to rise the second would be good, and the losing conflict is better than the marazm and the decay of the current realities. The situation of the Palestinians, in fact almost hopeless in terms of national-state aspirations, makes the bill of sharing of blood through political interests give the Palestinians, and especially the militants, a different value than the citizens of the average state surviving in peace.

The Palestinians will now be crushed by Israel, but will they be crushed? OWP-Fatah were decimated and thrown out of Jordan and Lebanon. The minute it seemed that Arafat could only last his defeat in exile in far-off Tunis, the first Intifada broke out in 1987. So I think that even the full pacification of the Gaza Strip will not end the Palestinian armed conflict and will not politically end the Palestinian issue.

In fact, I believe that the pacification of the Gaza Strip will not be that easy and fast. In 2006, Israel failed to destruct the possible of Hezbollah in Lebanon, although the Palestinian Exclave is, however, an easier target, due to its territorial form and dimension.

At the global level Hamas one more time tries to play the Panarabian note, to break out of expanding indifference for the Palestinian origin the full arabian world. Undercut the Saudi plans preparing themselves like the UAE and Bahrain to normalize relations with Tel Aviv. On Sunday, Qatar's diplomacy declared that the blame for the outbreak of fighting lies with Israel.

Hamas has already had powerful political allies in the form of those who collectively call themselves the "eight of resistance" – Iran, Lebanese Hezbollah, Syria, Yemeni Hutich, Iraqi Shiites. Palestinian actions prosecute the objectives of Tehran's regional policy, which, of course, does not automatically mean that the Palestinians are a pawn of the Iranians, even if they benefit from their support, both material and training, which suggests the quality of the armed action taken on Saturday morning. Hamas, as I tried to argue, had adequate of his reasons. All the more reason to apply this to conspiracy theories that Hamas' action was the action of the "long arm of Moscow". This kind of speculation and its dissemination by Polish commentators is another example of a serious flaw in our national mentality, which hinders the appropriate knowing of socio-political processes, even in distant areas of the world.

Hamas will be strengthened by his offensive as the main political expressor of Palestinian aspirations and the banner of their national affairs. It is joined by successive factions, even as ideologically distant as the Socialist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Fatah, OWP, authoritative authorities of the Palestinian Authority, the political heritage of the late Arafat is now further delegated. Thus the West loses its ‘partner in dialogue’, which it has for years been so keen to make so comfortable for him that he is little and little typical of those whom he is to represent.

The war continues and has the possible to grow to a scope with unpredictable effects. Everything depends on what is the consequence of calculations presently conducted in Iran. In Lebanon, beyond the northern border of Israel there are thousands of fighters and Hezbollah missiles with resources and operational know-how greater than Hamas. The Israelis have besides transferred considerable force to this border. For now, however, it seems that Tehran has been said to wait.

Commenting on the bombing of the Gaza Strip in 2021, I wrote that the only possible solution to this conflict is the establishment of a full sovereign, integral territorially, economical base of the State of Palestine, in accordance with resolutions of the General Assembly and of the UN safety Council starting with Resolution 181 of 1947. It is worth reminding that Poland recognized the statehood of Palestine in 1988.

Who through political play, the usage of armed violence, especially against civilians, terrorism, armed occupation, colonization and expulsion, ghettoization prevents the implementation of the two-state model, is liable for the continuation of this conflict, threatening the region, possibly besides for Europe.