An Operation that crosses all ideologies

By Dr. Amro El Shobaki

The Palestinian issue was not just the issue of a people struggling to regain their land and build their independent state. Rather, from the first day of Israel’s establishment, it opened the door to an intellectual debate about the nature of this conflict and ways to solve it. The Arabs knew a division between moderates and extremists, supporters of a peaceful solution and armed conflict, and an ideological disagreement about Tools for managing this conflict and the position on the existence of Israel.

The Hamas operation on October 7 succeeded in restoring a large part of the Arab divisions over the Palestinian issue, and expressed some of the ideological differences about the path of settlement and peaceful solutions. It was not just a military operation that caused this unprecedented number of victims. The Israelis were also characterized by mastery, professionalism, and strategic deception, in which “Hamas” succeeded in deceiving everyone when it refrained from participating in the recent confrontations between “Jihad” and Israel, as many Western reports and research papers came out that talked about “Hamas’ neutrality,” including one of the papers “ Carnegie Center for Peace” under the title “Hamas from Resistance to Neutralization,” following its non-participation in the armed confrontations that took place last May, and that the matter had nothing to do with neutrality or only preoccupation with managing the affairs of the Gaza Strip, but rather was a process of deception. A complete strategy that made observers in the West and Israel believe that Hamas was on its way to becoming an “administration” and not a resistance movement.

Hence, the Hamas operation, despite the violence of the Israeli reaction and its harsh repercussions on the Palestinian people, nevertheless entered the path of elaborate and professional operations that were absent from many of the practices of the forces of resistance and extremism, which were often characterized by randomness, flashy slogans, and a preoccupation with outbidding the forces of moderation. Without offering a real alternative.

The truth is that any look at previous confrontations between armed resistance factions and Israel will discover a huge difference between the Palestinian victims and their Israeli counterparts. The 2008 clashes killed 13 Israelis compared to 1,400 Palestinians, and the 2014 summer confrontations lasted 50 days and were led by the Hamas movement, in which 73 Israelis were killed compared to more than 2,000 Palestinians. And the armed confrontations between the “Jihad” movement and Israel in 2019 and 2022, and then last May also witnessed a big difference between the Palestinian and Israeli victims.

It is certain that the position on all of these operations represented one of the main aspects of disagreement between the movement of moderation and peace settlement, and the forces of opposition and armed resistance, especially since Israel seemed not to be concerned about the option of armed resistance due to its limited impact, because if one Israeli was killed, it would be met with the death of 100 Palestinians.

It is certain that the October 7th operation was different from all previous armed confrontations that dealt a sudden and unprecedented blow to the Israeli side, and its professionalism and accuracy neutralized the main criticism directed at the armed resistance factions and the Arab resistance movement since the defeat of 1967, that they are movements concerned with ideological slogans and banners. It is far from being professional and capable of effective deterrence and resistance.

It is true that the killing of 1,300 Israelis was met with an earth-shattering Hebrew response, the price of which was paid by civilians in the Gaza Strip, and that Israel’s strategy is now based on dismantling Hamas’ military power and targeting its military and political leaders alike through a ground invasion.

However, this extremely violent and oppressive response only vaguely raised the usual “ideological” question in the Arab world, especially Egypt, about the feasibility of armed resistance operations and the returns from them, which had been raised forcefully in previous times.

This transformation is due to two things: The first, as we previously pointed out, is the strength and professionalism of the Palestinian process, and everyone discovered after 20 years of Israeli settlement policies that it emptied the Arab moderation project of its content after it destroyed the Oslo Accords and the two-state solution and completely weakened the Palestinian Authority. As for the reason? 

The second is due to the blatant American and Western bias towards Israel politically and in the media (the media performance of a number of major Western newspapers has improved in recent days after witnessing the Gaza massacres), which made the Arab division between moderates and opponents decline significantly, because the principled position of the Arab Moderation Movement is to refuse to harm any civilian and its disagreement with the forces of resistance and armed resistance do not call for the killing of civilians, but consider targeting them as a response to the crimes of the occupation. 

Both trends discovered that the leaders of major democratic countries distinguish between Palestinian and Israeli civilians on national, religious, and cultural grounds, a position that was shocking to Arab public opinion with its various political orientations and ideological differences. .

The blatant Western and American bias towards Israel and considering that there are victims to be mourned for and others who are worthless, everyone questioned the greater values related to justice, international legitimacy and equality between peoples, and led to a decline in ideological differences in the Arab world regarding the position on the path of settlement and the disagreement between supporters of normalization and its opponents and between options for extremism. And moderation.

What is happening in Gaza, despite its tragedies, has put the Arab world, perhaps since the 1973 war, before major questions related to identity and how the world views them, their issues and their priorities, not only with regard to the Palestinian issue but also to the rest of the issues, and these are questions closer to the “existential” questions that have been covered in a way. It greatly affects the ideological divisions between moderates and extremists, and between supporters of peace and supporters of war, which is a remarkable shift whose repercussions will be significant.

Source: Al Sharq Al Awsat