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Are Hamas’ tactics in weekly confrontations with Israel effective?

Oct 20,2018 - Last updated at Oct 20,2018

Every war or military encounter when waged has a goal in mind either military or political that could be realised through the barrel of the gun. Hamas must have an agenda in mind when it wages a weekly confrontation with Israel, presumably to extract from Israel some major concessions or advance the stalled Palestinian cause.

The ultimate question is whether the tactics deployed by Hamas has been until now cost effective. The ultimate goal of all Palestinian liberation factions is to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital. This is the noble and legitimate objective of any liberation movement that enjoys consensus among all shades of opinion among the Palestinians. If that is the goal of Hamas, and I presume it is, it would seem that the right thing to do is to attain this huge political objective by unifying forces with the Palestinian Authority (PA), not fighting it.

Hamas on its own cannot realistically achieve the national aspirations of the Palestinians on all fronts all on its own. Yet, Hamas is doing exactly that by waging a limited warfare on its flank with Israel without any semblance of coordination with the PA knowing all the time, or should know, that it cannot on its own attain the ultimate Palestinian quest for freedom and liberation from the Israeli occupation. Yet, Hamas is doing what it is doing all by itself week in and week out in the absence of any cooperation or coordination with the PA or even the semblance thereof.

If this proposition holds true, what is it in fact that Hamas wants to accomplish by its weekly skirmishes with Israel along its border with Israel and sustain weekly precious human losses without any noticeable change in Israel's posture on Gaza.

Gaza siege if anything is increasing rather than decreasing, the hardships on the people are mounting not receding, and the Gazan economy is in tatters, not improving. All this military effort does not appear to bring the Palestinians any closer to their national aspiration for statehood, albeit it is extracting from Israel a modest price by denying it tranquility and peace along its southern border.

If the answer to all these legitimate questions is in the negative, this makes the weekly military pressures on Israel not really cost effective from a military or political points of view unless Hamas knows something that is not known or appreciated by all Palestinians. If that is indeed the case, Hamas must come out in the open and explain its tactics better if not its strategy.

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