Reuters World News - Hamas' calculus and the fracturing of Palestinian and Israeli politics

Episode Date: October 15, 2023

On Part two of our weekend special, our journalists examine Hamas' planning and what it sees as its endgame. And what that means for internal Israeli politics and the West's need for an interlocutor as the Palestinian leadership is weakened. Plus, words matter - navigating the facts in this conflict. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

These were scenes that shocked the world. Hamas gunmen storming Israel's border, brutally murdering hundreds and snatching hostages back into Gaza. A week after the attack that Israel has called its 9-11, join our correspondence on this special episode, unpacking what underpinned Hamas' planning and what its endgame might be. As Gaza buckles under Israel's bombs, we also examine the issues facing the Palestinian leadership.

Plus, we take a look at Israel's own politics and how that might shape this conflict. I'm Kim Vinal in Nicosia, Cyprus. I'm Dan Williams in Jerusalem. I'm Edmund Blair in London. And I'm Stephen Farrow. In part one of this weekend series, our journalists discussed the realities of a ground assault in Gaza and the threats of a wider conflict in the Middle East.

If you haven't had a chance to listen, go to our Reuters app or to your podcast platform. Today, I'm joined by two Reuters editors with decades of experience covering the region. Stephen Farrell was based for several years in Jerusalem, as well as other parts of the Middle East, and has co-authored a book on Hamas. Edmund Blair covered the Middle East for more than

two decades, from Cairo, Tehran, and in between. So Stephen, can I start with you? What was Hamas's calculation for launching this attack in the first place? Hamas said this attack was launched in defense of Alaksa, the third holiest site in Islam, which is in the old old city of Jerusalem. That was its overt stated reason for launching this attack. Many have suggested that may not be a coincidence that Saudi, one of the most regional superpowers, was preparing to maybe normalize a deal with Israel, and Hamas may have calculated that if Gaza was on fire, that would be very difficult for Saudi to do that. I was going to say one thing, if I may. The timing is quite interesting because it, obviously, one of the clear comparisons is the 1973 war where Arab states

launched a war against Israel on the eve of Yom Kippur. And it seems to mirror that. Now, what's striking on one level is that there's the adage that you don't intervene when your enemy is making a mistake. And you could argue that judicial reforms in Israel were dividing Israel. And that was really Israel making a mistake. And that's surely, if you oppose Israel, that's what Hamas would like to see. But that's precisely why it raises the question, of whether their real intention was to focus attention on what was happening in Saudi Arabia and between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and the idea to disrupt that as much as possible and using that kind of surprise tactic in order to cause maximum harm and maximum attention.

But what does disrupting the Saudi-Israel normalization deal do for Hamas? What does Hamas get from that? Saudi-Israel normalization is normalization with the largest economy in the Middle East. It's normalization with the world's biggest oil exporter. It's normalization with the country which probably has the biggest influence on the region and the ability to influence the region. Egypt has often painted itself as the great mediator in the region, but Saudi Arabia is the one with the money and Saudi Arabia is the one with the clout. So Israel and Saudi Arabia securing a normalization deal would be a great prize for Israel. And as a consequence, if you are an

organization which opposes the very existence of Israel, it is a huge detriment to your own cause. Stephen, what is Hamas's end game more broadly? When you talk to Hamas leaders, they often say words to the effect of, the world is in a hurry, we are not in a hurry. They have a long-term game plan. That game plan is to Islamize their own society, to become the most dominant Palestinian political and military force, to oust President Mahmoud Abbas's PLO, and to get rid of Israel and create a state of Palestine for the Palestinian people where there is now Israel

and the occupied Palestinian territories from the river to the sea. That is the end game. What do these attacks do for that cause, for that goal? I think what Hamas said to do primarily was to shock the day one of this operation,

those awful scenes of civilians being killed, bodies lying in the streets, they will not be forgotten. Israelis will not forget them when judging their own leaders. They will primarily, of course, blame Amas. There will be an appetite for revenge and deterrence, and we're seeing that gearing up in Gaza.

But I doubt they're going to forget or forgive this of their own leadership. And I think Hamas may have seized a moment when it felt that Israel was divided. We've all seen in recent months, the struggle between the secular and the right and ultra-right in Israel. They may have sensed weakness there. They may have sensed weakness on the part of their internal rival, President Abbas, who's been totally marginized by all of this out on the sidelines. And yes, they may have sensed that there's an opportunity to stop Arab normalization deals

with Israel and reassert the Palestinians' cause. Israeli politics were fractious before the bloodshed of this week. There's got to be a friendly, like brothers, compromise in the Knesset. For years, politicians were unable to form a government, forcing multiple elections, shaped by a bitter rivalry between Prime Minister Netanyahu and his former defense chief turned opposition leader, Benny Gans. I wish there was a better leadership on both sides that can bring us together to a compromise over a reform that everybody is in favor of

that brings peace to the table, not conflict and division. This attack has spurred the formation of a unity government. Dan Williams has been covering Israel's politics. So Dan, are they entirely united on how to proceed given the divisions of the past?

Given the public statements, they are just as aggressive on what needs to be done in Gaza as members of the previous government, of the incumbent government. There really is no disharmony on that. Keep in mind that Gans is a former general, former chief of staff. The military is in his blood. He's probably feeling the same rage that many Israelis are,

or more so, given that he, just a few years ago, commanded the military, and it's worth recalling that one of his junior partners in his party list, now also in the coalition, is himself a former general and himself a former chief of the IDF. So you have two generals, centrist generals, joining Prime Minister Netanyahu in government. And I think that gives him more credibility. And it certainly gives him two professionals who are feeling the same rage and may even be able to provide operational, tactical, professional advice to help him and his serving defense minister work out how to proceed with this. What happens when the unity government says mission accomplished?

Could there be new divisions or the reemergence of old ones? I think that's an excellent question, but from what I can tell, and I could be wrong, mission accomplished in Gaza is something we would only hear weeks or perhaps even months down the line. Much could happen until then. When the dust settles, there will be a huge reckoning in Israel with the leadership, with Netanyahu, with his defense minister, with the military chiefs, because they will want an accounting here. It's very hard to anticipate a situation where there isn't major public blowback fornitted. So it's almost a commission of inquiry, calls for resignations, terminations, and the like. The chief of the military, the current chief of the military, has already noted, has already said publicly, that the military made mistakes. They will be investigated. The Israeli defense minister has spoken similarly. For now, everyone is focused on this campaign.

That will be maintained, at least in the early days. I assume that if it doesn't go well, there will be recrimination within Israel. There's an assumption here that Israel will, quote unquote, get the job done, whatever that entails. What are the challenges facing Netanyahu right now? There's some grim irony in the story in that the crisis that was most dogging Prime Minister Netanyahu for the months prior to this Hamas attack from Gaza. And the Gaza counteroffensive that ensued was domestic rancor at, his judicial reform plans. Yeah, those protests were huge, right?

I mean, there were so many people out in the streets. They certainly were, and they even included, and this was previously crossing a red line in Israel, they included vows by a number of military reservists, including in the Vanguard, which is the Air Force, to stop turning up for routine reserve duty, something that worried Israelis that it would sap operational strength, that it would sap war readiness. now there is a war. So that political dispute, those political polarizations have put on one side, I doubt they've been forgotten. And when the dust settles in Gaza and when there are calls for an investigation into how Israel could have been so easily hoodwinked by an enemy that it's so clearly outguns,

I think people will remember the dispute over his judicial plans. Some will ask whether he was so distracted with shoring himself up against that and pursuing judicial reforms. Those two things may form a perfect storm for him in terms of his domestic standing, in terms of his approval rates, and it will be very interesting to see if he can weather that. New tragedies in Gaza are added to the shock and awe of the Hamas attack each day. Edmund, as Israel threatens to obliterate Hamas, How does the group intend to come out of this?

You've got to bear in mind that Israel has declared on numerous occasions that its goal is to dismantle the, what they would call terrorist infrastructure in Gaza. They have intervened on two major occasions since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007. Israel intervened in 2008 and intervened in 2008 and intervened in 2000. and 14 with land incursions. And each time so far, Hamas has re-emerged, in fact, more potent than ever. And this latest strike, which was, I think, took even Hamas by surprise at how capable they were of getting so far into Israeli territory, I think indicates just this ability of them to rebuild themselves each time, and also indicates the inability, ultimately, of Israel to actually dismantle the infrastructure

through those means. Whether they can do it this time, they are promising the most a conflict of a scale that they haven't delivered before. So perhaps it all changes. But if you were looking at what has gone before, which is possibly the only guide we have at the moment, you would say that it's going to be very difficult for Israel to achieve that. Stephen, if Hamas is severely weakened or wiped out, what does that mean for the future of Palestinian leadership? Israel right now is hurting, it bleeding. It regards Hamas as an implacable existential threat and will seek to crush it.

But Hamas has long calculated that it grows and gets stronger when the region is on fire. It has a consistent policy of doing that. It was born in the opening days of the first Palestinian uprising against Israel in 1987. It has slowly and steadily laid down roots to target not only Israel, but to marginalise and then supplant its more secular rivals. Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. Now Led my Mahmoud Abbas, they are more secular, they advocated talking with Israel, they spearheaded the 1990s Oslo peace talks. Discipline is very important and we will not accept any challenge for the discipline in the Palestinian territories.

And every person has to respect the discipline. Hamas ruthlessly and calculatedly says you are not going to get what you want through peace. There is only one way to do it. It is through force of arms. This is just a continuation of that long, long policy, which hits two targets at the same time. It hits Israel, whose destruction it wants to see. And it hits Abbas and the PLO, whose marginalization and ultimately disappearance. It also wants to see to impose its brand of Islamist politics on Islam.

its society. You can also put it in these terms that in the, by the 1980s and the Intifada, the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was based abroad and which was seen as an umbrella group for secular Palestinian groups, they felt they were losing traction because of what was going on inside the West Bank and Gaza at the time. When the Madrid peace talk started after the First Gulf War, that's what prompted them to jump in and secure the Oslo Peace Accords, which effectively torpedoed those peace talks and got them back into the West Bank and Gaza. But they had already effectively lost the populace. And Hamas sort of grew, had a much better pulse with at least a proportion of the people. And while the PLO found itself hamstrung by the Oslo

Accords, which contained it to certain areas of the West Bank and effectively restricted its movements, Hamas never had any of those controls on it. It had no deal with Israel and didn't have to worry. So now you've got the PLO in the West Bank. You've got Hamas in Gaza. but it's the PLO and Mahmoud Abbas that the West seems to want to deal with. How might the West and regional powers look to try and empower Abbas? Arguably, the West does not have an interlocutor with the Palestinians. Mahmoud Abbas is almost hold up in his presidential home in Ramallah. he is in charge of a territory which is utterly fragmented and cantonized.

He has very little control over several towns in that area. There is really nothing that, in a sense, he can really offer the West as an interlocutor. And obviously, the West cannot and will not deal with Hamas. So the challenge for the West is finding someone who can speak to them, and more importantly, someone who can and could speak to Israel. So who is that, Edmund? Who is that? What are the options? That is my point. At the moment, there are very few options. So it leaves the West in a bind because they either deal with Hamas, and they won't deal Hathmas, for obvious reasons, or they deal with Abbas, the Palestinian president, who has very little or no control over a fragmented and fractured territory.

It does raise big questions about whether there's really any way that it's still possible to talk of a two-state solution in such a fragmented territory with no one apparently to speak to. It's hard to see what way, what route there is at the moment for outside powers to build some kind of peacemaking process again. Is there an opportunity for an outside Arab nation to step in and play the mediator? Palestinians with long memories will remember the days when the West wanted to talk to somebody about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the Arab side, they talked to the King of Jordan or the President of Egypt or the Syrians, the Saudis. They do not want to go back to those times.

That is absolutely one of the reasons Hamas is doing this. We are the Palestinian solution, is their motto, if you like, their belief. Mahmoud Abbas and his. moderate secular Palestinian factions strongly argue that they are the only way that a peace deal can be done with Israel. So you have regional powers wanting to portray themselves as the guardians of Alaksa, the third holiest site in Islam, and you have Palestinians absolutely determined that they're not going to be squeezed out and marginalized by a regional Arab power looking to push them

down and do that. One indication of where Arab governments stand in relation to the Palestinians would be looking at how many of them have been signing up to normalize ties with Israel. They have effectively been doing it over the heads of the Palestinians. It began with Egypt in 1979 signing a deal and it has continued there on and off. at least many of them have come to the point that they feel that if it can't be solved, they'd like to sort of try somehow and move on. We effectively saw that before this flare-up now in Gaza. The indications that Reuters had from its reporting was that Saudi was so determined

to get a defense pact with the United States, because of its concerns about Iran and regional security, that it was talking about a normalization with Israel without making major demands on Israel towards the Palestinians and towards their bid for a state. Stephen Edmund, I think many people are feeling that this is such a complicated conflict to talk about. We've seen some nasty moments at protests

and on social media. But what we say matters. How do you approach that in your work? How do we find a way through what's being said on both sides? Is there room for moderate voices? The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one in which everyone has an opinion and few minds are ever changed. You see protests around the world.

You see the Twitter storms. and they're very, very loud, and that doesn't mean, however, that they speak for everybody. The moderate voices out there, it's often hard for them to be heard amid the righteous anger on both sides. I mean, Israelis absolutely incandescent with fury at what they see as an existential attack on themselves, and Palestinians saying, well, okay, the world is paying huge attention to you and what's happening there. Where's the attention paid to us when it has? happens to us, when hundreds of our people die, positions solidify very quickly and you have to be extremely delicate feeling your way through that.

I would say the only way to cover this story, which is highly emotive, not only in the Middle East, but around the world, the only way to cover it is rigorous balance. The real challenge is that people can't even agree where the middle of this debate is. So the only way to report it and the only way to write about it is making sure you are extremely carefully writing both sides. It can sometimes make for a slightly tortuous process. But as an example, as I was editing and working on a story with colleagues, about Gaza. I was speaking to one colleague who was speaking to his sources in Israel and he was

based in Jerusalem and another colleague who was speaking to his sources and reporting from Gaza. The dangers were clearly evident for both, but particularly for the colleague in Gaza and yet both sides, as we were chatting together, working through how we were. we would do the story were both wishing each other, you know, stay safe, look after yourself. And I think that ensuring that we can have that reach, we can have that balance, which is frankly quite remarkable and very rare in a conflict to have that kind of level of cooperation, particularly one as a motive as this, is testimony to professionalism, but it's also testimony to the challenge of making sure that we do offer a fair account.

that we present the facts and everybody else can decide what their opinion is. A big thank you to Edmund Blair, Stephen Farrell, Maya Jabali, James McKenzie, Labib Nasir, Jonathan Saul and Dan Williams for being so generous with their time. And to all our Middle East correspondents in the field reporting the facts, please be safe. Reuters videographer Isam Abdallah, killed on Friday in Lebanon, is dearly missed across the organisation. and we wish the other journalists injured a speedy recovery. We'll be back on Monday with our daily news show. To make sure you know what's going on in the world,

listen in for 10 minutes every weekday. And don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast player or download the Reuters app.