Dyer: Without Biden, no end in sight to Israel’s assault on Gaza

Article content

The Palestinian death toll in the Gaza Strip since last October’s Hamas attacks on Israeli settlements will reach 40,000 people in the next week or so. (It’s back up around 50 to 100 civilian dead a day.)

Around 1,200 Israelis were killed in the October attacks, so nobody can say Israel’s response was unprovoked. However, it has been hugely disproportionate, and in many Western cities there are weekly protest marches against the carnage in the Gaza Strip. However, there have been virtually none in Israel or in the Gaza Strip itself.

Article content

To be fair, most Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are too busy running for their lives to protest much. Besides, Hamas still has enough control over the population to punish anybody who openly demands a cease-fire.

There are many demonstrations in Israel calling on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to sign a cease-fire and bring the Jewish hostages home, but none about the fate of the Palestinians. Many even share Netanyahu’s fantasy that they can have a short cease-fire, get the hostages back, and then resume killing Palestinians.

But surely at least Hamas must want the slaughter of Palestinian civilians to stop. No, it does not. It’s just as much in favour of the slaughter of the innocents as the Israelis are. Maybe even more so, because Israel only has anger whereas Hamas has a genuine strategy.

From the first day of the planning for Hamas’s attacks on Israel, its real objective was to get Israel to kill as many Palestinians as possible. Why? Because that was the only way to derail Netanhayu’s strategy of sidelining the Palestinians and making peace with all the other Arabs.

Article content

Hamas and the other rejectionist Palestinian groups have been losing ground for many years. The rest of the Arab world was sick and tired of the confrontation and ready to move on.

Hamas needed not only to show some life by attacking Israel. but it had to fight the Israelis to a standstill. Since it has no regular army and air force to wage an open battle, it can only do that on home ground, where it can use guerilla tactics.

That’s what last October’s attacks were for: to enrage the Israelis so much they would invade Gaza in force. In Gaza, there are endless tightly packed buildings in which to hide, and endless tunnels beneath them, and every martyred Palestinian civilian will create more allies and supporters for the Palestinian cause in the Arab world and even further abroad.

Netanyahu needs a big, long war himself, for two reasons.  One is to postpone a public inquiry into his negligence in failing to forestall the October attacks; the other is to hold his ramshackle coalition together. (If he loses office his trial on corruption charges resumes, with jail a possible outcome.)

Article content

So none of the local players cares a fig about dead Palestinians. Indeed, in the case of Hamas, the more dead Palestinian civilians the better. The only player with the power to force an early cease-fire on the combatants is the United States, but that means Joe Biden, and he probably won’t.

In mid-June, I predicted a permanent cease-fire (in Gaza) and a hostage release within a month, six weeks tops, on the grounds that U.S. strategic interests and Biden’s own political future both require this war stops and Netanyahu relinquishes power.

Well, Biden has now stepped down as a presidential candidate, so his political future is decided. However, he still will be in office for six months. That may be how long the war in Gaza goes on, too, unless an Israeli war with Hezbollah in the north triggers a larger, regional crisis.

Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist based in London, England.

Article content