The Journal. - Why Israel and Hamas Could Be Headed Into a Forever War

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

Seven months into the war, Hamas is far from defeated. The Islamist militant group is using guerrilla tactics and a vast underground tunnel network to evade Israeli forces. WSJ’s Jared Malsin reports on how the group’s resilience is stoking fears in Israel that it is walking into a forever war. Further Reading: -Hamas Shift to Guerrilla Tactics Raises Specter of Forever War for Israel  -ICC Prosecutor Seeks Arrest Warrants for Netanyahu, Hamas Leader Sinwar  -Israel War Cabinet Member Sets Ultimatum and Threatens to Quit Government  Further Listening: -A Deadly Strike on Aid Workers in Gaza  -The UN Agency Accused of Links to Hamas  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since the war began between Israel and Hamas, there have been attempts to negotiate a ceasefire. At the end of last year, a temporary deal was struck. And in the months since, the sides have had on and off negotiations. Six months into Israel's war against Hamas, the two sides may be inching closer to a ceasefire deal. Meanwhile, in Cairo, Hamas representatives are meeting with Egyptian and Qatari mediators on a ceasefire proposal. Ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas are once again breaking down. Our colleague Jared Malson has been covering these talks. There have been different points in the last several months where you've had glimmers of hope where either Hamas or the Israelis will compromise on this thing or that thing, where the U.S. will exert pressure on one side or both.

At the heart of the issue is that, you know, Hamas is insisting on a deal that includes a permanent ceasefire and an end to the war with some kind of guarantee that that will take place. And Netanyahu has publicly said that he will not accept any deal that ends the war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel's war in Gaza will continue until Hamas is destroyed. But Hamas is fighting back hard. Do the Israelis have a way of achieving their stated aims,

meaning Benjamin Netanyahu's stated aim of completely stamping out Hamas? He says he is unwilling to end the war without doing that. Hamas is showing signs that they can outlast this attack by Israel, meaning that this risks dragging on for months, if not years. And could that make this become a forever war? That's the concern right now. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

I'm Kate Leinbaugh. It's Tuesday, May 21st. Coming up on the show, why the war in Gaza is so hard to end. Ready to kick off? Discover exciting games and events. Plus, find amazing hidden gems in cities full of adventures, delicious food, and diverse cultures. You'll love it so much you'll want to extend your stay beyond the matches. Get the ball rolling on your soccer getaway. Head to visittheusa.com. After Hamas attacked Israel last October, Israel retaliated with a military campaign in Gaza, unleashing thousands of airstrikes and moving in ground troops. The assault began in the north, and Israeli forces have steadily moved south.

Earlier this month, they reached the city of Rafah, which straddles the border with Egypt. On the Palestinian side of the border, it is the poorest city in the Gaza Strip that is now, or has been, a refuge for the last several months for more than a million Palestinian civilians who fled their homes, mostly in the north of Gaza. When the Israeli military went into northern Gaza, all the way back in October and November, they issued these evacuation notices urging the entire population of the north to go south. When was it clear that Israel planned to go into Rafah? Netanyahu has been threatening to launch this operation for months now. In his narration of this, this has been the plan the whole time. And to some extent, we reported on this in January that it's a core part of the Israeli military's vision for what they wanted to do in the war is capture

the Gazan side of the border with Egypt because their complaint is that they view the Egyptian government, they say that they haven't done a good enough job of cutting off Hamas's smuggling of weapons. Egypt disputes this, of course, But they say it's very important for their security to have taken the border. Rafah was theoretically the last major stop in Israel's campaign. But then something unexpected happened. Hamas started fighting back in the north, an area that Israel had secured months ago. And this forced Israel to go back into these areas and fight. From the military's point of view, they have cleared out Hamas, at least initially from the northern and central parts of Gaza.

They've pulled out of those areas, and what Hamas is doing is they're coming back. They are coming back not only as a militant group and carrying out attacks on Israeli forces. The Israelis have then gone back into those areas that they invaded back in October, November, December with tanks, heavy weaponry, and you're seeing the kind of fighting there that you saw in the initial phase of the war again. And what has Israel said about this?

Israeli security officials, military leaders, intelligence officials, this is what they will say, is that Hamas themselves, they have shown a remarkable flexibility to adapt to the situation where they've kind of gone back to being a guerrilla fighting force where, again, all they have to do in this situation

is survive enough to continue launching attacks. And they've shown that they can do that. What do those guerrilla tactics look like? It basically involves using smaller groups of fighters where they pop up, they carry out these one-off attacks where they'll, you know, fire a missile at Israeli forces. The Israelis will come back in and fire back and then they disappear again. Where you don't really need the entire structure of the military force in place to do that. You just need a few guys and they don't even have to be

very heavily armed to pull that off. And how is Hamas doing that? Like, is Hamas recruiting new people? Hamas is a group that started as a social movement in the Gaza Strip in the 1980s, organizing in opposition to the Israeli occupation of Gaza at that time. And so it can kind of draw on that history of doing that in this situation. And this is not to say that everyone in Gaza supports Hamas. It's just to say that all they have to do is recruit a few new members or a few new recruits for their military wing to continue sustaining themselves. One key to Hamas's staying power is using a vast underground tunnel system.

This is potentially the number one reason that Hamas has been able to outlast this, which is that they have miles of underground tunnels they've built up over the course of decades where they're able to hide their leadership. It's where they've taken the Israeli hostages that they took during the October 7th attack. They use them to move around the strip and obviously hide from Israeli surveillance. and obviously hide from Israeli surveillance. The other issue is that there is no competitor in terms of Palestinian political leadership in these areas. And when the IDF has gone in and then withdrawn, you have a power vacuum that, as far as we can tell from talking to Israeli military officials,

Israeli and U.S. intelligence assessments, is that Hamas is filling that vacuum. So the Israeli offensive has destroyed so much of Gaza, killed tens of thousands of people, but hasn't been able to destroy Hamas. but hasn't been able to destroy Hamas. Exactly. That is the unsavory reality that Israeli leadership, Israeli military officials, and Israeli society to some degree is reckoning with.

And this is one reason why Israel is pushing into Rafah. That's next. Loblaws lowers prices every four weeks on a selection of items so you can save more. Whether it's pantry staples or seasonal favorites, you can look forward to new discounts throughout the aisles at Loblaws to get your essentials at great prices. It's your cue to stock up and save. Look for new value programs when you shop at Loblaws in-store and online. At Air Miles, we help you collect more moments. So instead of scrolling through photos of friends on social media, you can spend more time dinnering with them. How's that spicy enchilada?

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Earlier this month, Israel dropped flyers over Rafah, telling Palestinians to evacuate parts of the city. Soon after, Israel fired airstrikes on the city, took over the border crossing, and moved tanks in. Netanyahu has made the Rafah campaign a priority for him and for his government, where he is saying the military has to go in to destroy the remaining Hamas military forces that are in that area in order to win the war. He is saying this is necessary for his vision of victory. What does it look like right now in Rafah for the Palestinians who live there? It's a desperate situation. This is already a place where there's been no reliable electricity for months, little reliable drinking water. There's about a million people in Gaza who are

experiencing famine-like conditions. That's according to the UN-backed body that assesses hunger crises around the world. People have been chopping down trees and burning scrap wood and garbage to cook. People are sleeping in the street, in tents, in abandoned buildings. You know, these are people who were living their lives as normal prior to October 7th when Hamas launched its attack on Israel and who have had to drop everything and have been essentially on the run since then. But Israel's move into Rafah appeared to go against the U.S., its biggest ally. Inter-RAFA appear to go against the U.S., its biggest ally. President Biden has described an Israeli invasion of RAFA as a red line not to be crossed.

Biden has said that RAFA was the red line. Where does that stand now? That's a great question because, you know, so Biden, in one of the biggest reversals of his policy during the war, decided earlier in May, as you know, to withhold certain types of bombs for the Israeli military in order to push back on Israel's plan to attack Rafah. Rafa. And what Biden said in his interview with CNN earlier this month is, we're doing this in order to stop Israel from using these bombs to attack the population centers there. And that's the distinction they've drawn is between Rafa in general and the population centers. How they judge when that line has been crossed, that's, I assume, the question that is being addressed inside the White House and inside the administration right now. But last week, the Biden administration notified Congress that it was going ahead with a different arms package for Israel

worth more than $1 billion. The administration is moving forward with these separate weapons deals in which they are approving the future transfer of artillery shells, mortars, and armored vehicles for the Israeli military. And what they're saying, essentially, is the US is still broadly supportive of Israel and its long-term defense

and of the Israeli military in general. The question is, is this an effective policy? And, you know, what message are the Israelis going to take from this broader policy where this larger pipeline of weapons remains open? this broader policy where this larger pipeline of weapons remains open. Okay, so turning back to Rafah, with Israeli forces on the ground there, are we getting to the final stages of Israel's military campaign? This is the crux of the issue, is that Netanyahu, in his public rhetoric,

what he is saying to the Israeli public is, we must invade Rafah in order to achieve victory, by which he in both the U.S. and in Israel, is that all indications show that Hamas will survive this, whether they do the operation or not. And that means that if Netanyahu is determined to try to stamp out Hamas completely, this conflict will drag on for months, if not years, if not longer. this conflict will drag on for months, if not years, if not longer. And if it drags on and sort of looks more like a forever war, what does that mean for Gaza and for Israel? For Gaza, it means that the misery on the ground for people in Gaza will continue. For Israel, it means that this pressure

on the Israeli military will continue where you have the IDF, which is a kind of people's army. It is largely made up of reservists who are part-time soldiers who have been called up to active duty to fight this war, who will tell you they're exhausted.

That means they'll have to continue fighting. What does it mean for Netanyahu? For him, let me put it this way. So within Israel, there's a lot of criticism of Netanyahu among people who blame him for dragging out the war. And a lot of Netanyahu's critics are saying right now that he's dragging this out, essentially, because it's in his political interest. The polls show that a majority of Israelis would take a deal with Hamas that would release the hostages.

But in Netanyahu's narration of this, he is saying we are fighting a war against Hamas. The only solution is total victory. We cannot allow this group that carried out this heinous attack to continue to exist. And what does it mean kind of more broadly for the Middle East, for the U.S., for the globe? Gaza is the linchpin to this larger crisis in the Middle East. The war in Gaza has led to this larger escalation where you've had the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. You have attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen that have disrupted shipping in the Red Sea,

forcing ships to go around the Horn of Africa instead of through the Suez Canal. And the evidence that we have now is that when the ceasefire happened in November, the conflict with Hezbollah stopped. The Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria that were attacking American forces, they also stopped. In other words, there's a lot of evidence that the only way to stop this larger regional conflict that's happening is to get to a ceasefire in Gaza.

So those are the stakes. That's all for today, Tuesday, May 21st. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Summer Saeed. Before you go, we have a quick question for you for an upcoming episode. If you had all the money in the world, what problem would you solve? Send your answers, either by voice memo or email to thejournalatwsj.com. That's thejournalatwsj.com. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.