Why did Hamas attack Israel now?
On October 7, that is the question I asked. There must be, I thought, something going on that would start a new peace process or some kind of rapprochement toward a kind of life where the people of Gaza, Israel, Palestinians and more of its neighbours. And then, behold, there is such a reality. In fact, there are three.
But before we see that, what would people like Hamas do if they could no longer play war games with other people’s lives? Go back to school and learn about the wider world of humanity, rather than constant chewing on hate? Its individual members could do whatever they might wish within their gifts, aside from killing babies and using innocents to protect themselves.
Prof. Yair Hirschfeld penned the three processes to which me referred, (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yair_Hirschfeld) He, “is an Israeli lecturer at the University of Haifa. Hirschfeld was a key architect of the Oslo Accords in 1993. He was born in Vienna and has been a strong supporter of the two-state solution, and has urged the Palestinian National Authority and the Israeli government to accept some form of this solution.” He is also connected to the Wilson Center in the U.S. (https://www.wilsoncenter.org).
The title of his short piece is, The Cause of the War Was a US-Lead Struggle for Peace.
“During the months, weeks and days before the Hamas terrorist attack, three complementary peace efforts were underway:
- The USA, Israel and Saudi Arabia were negotiating a regional peace understanding;
- The European Union started at the UN an intense dialogue with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan combined with a parallel separate dialogue with Israel and the Palestinian Authority aimed at creating the national infrastructure for Palestine as part of a wider regional stability building effort; and
- An unofficial Israeli-Palestinian dialogue aimed at reaching first territorial understandings for Palestinian state-building aimed to change realities on the ground, restart a process of mutual trust-building and pave the way for the renewal of a well thought out peace-building process.
On the global level, the multi-layered peace effort aimed at normalizing relations between Israel, Malaysia, and Indonesia would bring most of the Arab and Muslim world into the Abraham Accords. This effort threatened the interest of Hamas, particularly of its military wing, as well as the interests of Iran, its proxies, and Russia and became the motivation for Hamas to start this war.
So, Hamas cannot consider any solutions that would allow people the choice of hope or, to put it from a line in the Tanach: ‘…they shall sit every man [all people] under his own vine and fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it.’ By its brutal acts of murder, Hamas has manipulated Israel into responding as it is, make use of Palestinian people for Hamas’ own gain, other Arab states who, while refusing to damn Hamas as they damn Israel, were trying to establish something of a step or two toward coexistence and have manipulated various other countries and voices into supporting them by joining in the damnation chorus. How does it feel to be manipulated?
Good people from all sides of this multi-generational killing process, who can see the other as human, for the sake of their own countries, families and especially their children have to beat back the forces like Hamas who kill because it gives their lives meaning, but the opposite for everyone else.