Hamas Is a Symptom, Not the Source, of What Is Wrong in the Israeli-Arab Conflict

"Free Gaza from Hamas." It is a refrain I have heard from my pro-Israel friends since Hamas carried out its horrific attack on Israeli citizens on October 7. Hamas is an anti-Semitic, homophobic, genocidal terrorist organization that runs an autocratic regime in Gaza and oppresses its own citizens. It shows zero regard for its citizens, as is illustrated by using Gazan civilians as human shields. Hamas official Ghazi Hamad declared on Lebanese television that Hamas will repeat what happened on October 7 until Israel is wiped out. It makes sense that Israel's more immediate military goal is to remove Hamas. 

The idea behind "Free Gaza from Hamas" is that if you remove an element as radical as Hamas, more moderate elements will fill the void, which will result in more peaceful relations between Israel and Palestine. I remain unconvinced that freeing Gaza from Hamas is going to solve woes between Israelis and Palestinians. 

There is little evidence of Gazans protesting or uprising against Hamas. To say that Gazans do not protest or uprise because they are in an authoritarian regime is a copout. There have been multiple revolutions and revolts in authoritarian countries throughout history when the people have had enough with the ruling government. In spite of its crackdowns of protestors, even a country as totalitarian as China has its dissenters. 

It is more than a lack of public dissent, even in spite of the high rates of unemployment and poverty in Gaza. It goes beyond "ordinary Palestinians" cheering in the streets at Hamas' October 7 or even gathering intelligence to help out Hamas. I found survey results from Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR). PCPSR is a Palestinian research organization based in Ramallah, which means no one can accuse them of being pro-Israel. These results from PCPSR will give you a sense of how most Gazans view Israel and having Jewish neighbors:

• As of September 2023, 51 percent of Gazans support armed resistance against Israel and 67 percent are opposed to a two-state solution. 
• In June 2023, 38 percent of Gazans view the creation of Hamas as the single best thing to happen to Palestinians since the creation of the state of Israel (PCPSR, p. 3-4).
• If there were an election between Ismael Haniyyah (the current Hamas leader), Mahmoud Abbas (the current PLO leader), and Marwan Barghouti (the leader of the first and second Intifadas), 45 percent of Gazans would chose Haniyyah, 37 percent for Barghouti, and 16 percent for Abbas (ibid., p. 14). Even if you expand the candidate list, Haniyyah and Barghouti would still have half the Gazan votes. Other potentials include Hamas co-founder Khaled Mashal and Gazan Chief of Hamas Yahwa Sinwar (ibid., p. 15).
• Gazans think that the so-called "occupation" is more pressing than unemployment or corruption (ibid., p. 17-18), which is another sign of how Gazans would rather blame Israel than the terrorists governing them.
• When asked what is the most important lesson since the creation of the state of Israel, only 15 percent of Gazans said it was the need to seek political solutions to the conflict with Israel. 28 percent said it was staying steadfast on the ground, with an additional 32 percent saying to build military capacity to liberate so-called "occupied territories" (ibid., p. 23).
• Gazans show no moral qualms with harming Israelis. In March 2023, 71 percent of Palestinians said that they supported Palestinian terrorists attacking and killing two Israeli brothers who were simply driving on a road near Huwara. In September 2019, 80 percent of Gazans were fine with planting the IED and subsequent bombing that killed 17-year-old Rina Shnerb, as well as injuring her family. In December 2015, 85 percent of Gazans were supportive of stabbing Israelis with knives. 

This is not to say that all Gazans are Hamas or supportive of Hamas. At the same, there is strong Gazan antipathy towards Israel and strong support for Hamas and its genocidal intent. Those in the West think that pluralism and democracy are norms. It seems inconceivable that there would be a group of people that by and large despises its neighbor for being of a different religion and ethnicity. That is precisely the problem of imposing Western values and understanding onto a situation in a different culture: it does not work. It is the same sort of thinking that got the United States in trouble when trying to bring democracy to Iraq.

Sadly, this phenomenon of despising Israel is nothing new. In 2010, Pew Research found that only 2 percent of Gazans viewed Jews favorably. Speaking of history, let us take something else into consideration. Hamas was founded in December 1987. The Israeli-Arab conflict predates Hamas. It also predates Benjamin Netanyahu, settlements, the creation of the Palestinian state in 1967, and the armistice lines of 1967. Arab nations were denying Israel's right to exist well before Hamas was even a thought.

We can talk about the nuance of the Middle Eastern conflict. As someone who studied international relations in his postsecondary studies, I can tell you that any conflict in international relations has its history and complications, even between Ecuador and Peru. What I will say is that the complication in the Israeli-Arab conflict has a simple undercurrent: Each time peace has been offered to Palestinians (or in the earlier pre-1967 renditions, for [Jordanian] Arabs), they have responded with a resounding "Hell no!" 

There have been multiple times where the Arabs were offered "land for peace": the Peel Commission of 1937, the UN Partition Plan of 1947, UN Resolution 194 (1949), UN Resolution 242 (1967), the Camp David Accords (1978), the Oslo Accords (1993), the Camp David Summit (2000), the Olmert Peace Plan (2008), and John Kerry's Peace Plan (2013). If the Palestinians wanted peace, they would have had it by now. 

Hamas has got to go, no question about that. Conversely, the issue is not with Hamas per se, but with one group of people who does not want Jewish neighbors in its backyard. Unsurprisingly, Israel is not willing to compromise on its existence. Getting rid of Hamas will not get rid of decades of anti-Semitism that has been so engrained in the minds of Palestinians. Until Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza wanting to live side-by-side with Jews is a norm rather than an aberration, there will continue to be violence and strife in the Middle East.