The imperative of removing Hamas

(JNS) — In the summer of 1982, following the attempted assassination of Shlomo Argov, Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Israel launched Operation Peace for Galilee, also known as the First Lebanon War.  

In so doing, Israel reacted to the continual Katyusha rocket fire being lobbed into northern Israel that disrupted the lives of its citizens for many years. At the time, the Palestine Liberation Organization led by Yasser Arafat broke every ceasefire arranged by Philip Habib, a senior State Department diplomat sent to the region by the Reagan administration.

Following Hamas’s rise to power in Gaza in 2007, the aftermath of broken ceasefire agreements with more than 20,000 rockets filling the skies of southern Israel, and finally Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, Israel embarked upon the Swords of Iron War. 

There are other parallels between these historic events. In the summer of 1982, Israel’s Labor party and its leftist supporters organized massive demonstrations in Israel while the Israel Defense Forces were fighting in Lebanon. Prior to Oct. 7, the political left in Israel had organized widespread demonstrations in opposition to judicial reform, though their aim was to bring down the Netanyahu government. 

Then, over the last nine months the same people have protested allegedly in support of the Israeli hostages but called for immediate elections. In 1982 and now, Yahya Sinwar, like Arafat before him, carefully monitored the Israeli domestic situation and their positions hardened while counting on demonstrators to pressure the Israeli government to make unacceptable concessions to terrorists.

In 1982, the demonstrations in Israel were against the siege of Beirut; the action that forced the PLO’s expulsion from Lebanon. The demonstrations, however, caused delay in the evacuation of the PLO terrorists and encouraged the Reagan administration to put pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. 

Arafat then and Sinwar today capitalized on the pressure placed on Israel by foreign actors and especially allies like the U.S. Both Arafat and Sinwar were able to delay their inevitable demise by the inadvertent support they received from the United States, the Europeans and Israeli leftist demonstrators.

The irony is that, today, IDF soldiers—both draftees and reservists—want to finish the job of destroying the Hamas terrorist infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. Their common sense tells them that if Hamas operatives remain in Gaza, they will once again be armed and funded by Iran and other enemies of the Jewish state. Moreover, the deaths of the soldiers killed in this operation would be in vain and perhaps their children would have to go to war again.

Operation Peace for Galilee was initially supported by the Israeli public. The provocative terror that had been coming from “Fatahland” in southern Lebanon came from a PLO regime that constituted a “state within a state” that was, to a large extent, responsible for the civil war in Lebanon. Palestinian terror from Lebanon was waged with impunity. 

With no one in Lebanon to prevent the cross-border terror, Israel was compelled to act. While some labeled Peace for Galilee as an “unnecessary war,” it did give Israel a respite from Palestinian terror for several years. It also had the potential to foster peace between Israel and Lebanon. Regrettably, the assassination of Lebanon’s president-elect Bashir Gemayel by the Syrians ended that chance.

Operation Swords of Iron is certainly a defensive war that has united the entirety of the Israeli public. While the arrogance and complacency of the IDF’s top echelon was to blame for the horrible debacle that occurred on that awful Saturday of Oct. 7, it was the horrific cruelty of the Hamas terrorists that made war unavoidable.

Hamas is not only a cruel terrorist organization that seeks to murder Jews and eradicate the Jewish state, but it is also widely understood in Israel that there can be no accommodation with an entity whose religious “obligation” is to wage jihad against the Jewish State of Israel. Hamas leaders have made it clear that, if they should survive the current war, they would instigate endless Oct. 7s. “We will repeat the October 7 attack time and again until Israel is annihilated,” Hamas official Ghazi Hamad said.

On June 9, 1982, U.S. President Ronald Reagan, under pressure from the Soviet Union to force Israel into a ceasefire, demanded that Israel stop outflanking of the Syrian army in the Bekaa Valley despite the fact that the Syrian army, along with Palestinian terror groups, continued shelling Israeli communities in the Galilee. IDF forces were able to destroy Syria’s Russian-made SAM missiles, which rendered both Syrian and, ultimately, Soviet defenses vulnerable. A parallel exists these days with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris demanding Israel to agree to a ceasefire while Hamas is still lobbing rockets at southern Israel.

In the midst of the heated debate in Israel over the handling of the current war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated clearly, “Israel has only one choice: To achieve total victory, which means eliminating Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, and releasing our hostages. This victory will be achieved.” 

Yet Hamas has consistently said that any ceasefire agreement should include an end to the war and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. Netanyahu has suggested he would only be open to a temporary pause in the war for several weeks.

Regarding the Israeli hostages held in Gaza, it seems that the Israeli public is divided. The Netanyahu camp believes that only through military pressure will the hostages be released. Those in the opposition believe that a ceasefire should take place now regardless of the impossible conditions that Hamas has set forth; including the release of high-ranking Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, currently imprisoned by Israel.

If Israel has learned anything from its 1982 experience with the PLO terrorists, it is that relentless military pressure is what finally forced the PLO expulsion from Lebanon. It is therefore imperative that the IDF continue to uproot the Hamas fighters and their infrastructure in Gaza. Once that happens, the Israelis who were forced out of their homes in the south will be able to return.