The Hamas Way of War
07/12/14
James Jay Carafano
Security, Peacekeeping, Terrorism, Israel, Palestinian territories
"No matter how this latest round of Palestinian-Israeli retribution ends, it won't be the last."
Hamas
starts wars it knows it can't finish. It also knows full well that wars
in a very small place put innocents at risk. And Hamas is fine with
that.
No
matter how this latest round of Palestinian-Israeli retribution ends,
it won't be the last. Long rooted in the Gaza Strip, Hamas will ever
rise to the sound of the trumpets. It can do no differently.
Waging
wars that can't be won, fighting battles where your own people are
bound to bear the biggest loss, measured in funerals, missing limbs and
smoking ruins, it ought to make no sense. But, to Hamas, that way of war
makes perfect sense—and always will.
Those seeking to understand the Hamas way of war can gain great insights by reading a book on the Pakistan military. In “Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army's Way of War,”
Georgetown University Professor C. Christine Fair unpacks the
"strategic culture" which drives an endless military competition with
India—a contest that logic dictates can never be won.
The
Pakistan-India long war, Fair argues, isn't about the border dispute
over Kashmir. In fact, she labels Pakistan a "greedy" state. If India
just handed the district over and walked away, the Pakistan Army would
still see New Delhi as an existential threat. That's because Pakistan’s
military defines its core purpose as opposing the larger and more
powerful state to the south.
Similarly, Hamas defines its raison d’etre
as fighting Israeli occupation. That is a worldview without end as long
as Israel exists—and even then, one wonders if Hamas would not turn on
its Arab neighbors as the next oppressors.
From
the Hamas perspective, not fighting is not an option. The struggle is
not about winning and losing, it's what justifies the group’s existence.
The casualties, the destruction, the deaths of innocents on both sides,
all are secondary in the group’s strategic calculus. At its core, the
Hamas strategic culture calls for constant conflict.
India
and Pakistan share a subcontinent. Their endless struggle can go on
forever, and both states can still—maybe—go about their business.
Palestine
is a very different place. Hamas can't have its wars without outsized
human tragedy for the size of the ground that lives under its shadow.
Read full articlehttp://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-hamas-way-war-10860
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