Hamas' punishment: The plagues of Egypt

Hamas leaders made a grave mistake this week: they rejected Egypt's cease-fire proposal, spitting in the face of the one powerful nation on which they are completely dependent • But Israel must ensure that Hamas, though weakened, remains on the scene.

Reuven Berko

Publicly insulted by Hamas. Egyptian President Abed Fattah el-Sissi | Photo credit: EPA

Hamas' refusal to agree to the cease-fire deal proposed by Egypt and its insistence on continuing to fire rockets toward Israel is reminiscent of the hardheartedness displayed by Egypt's Pharaoh. When examining his decisions from a sober-minded historical perspective, one comes to the conclusion that the Egyptian ruler should have internalized the fact that he was dealing with forces that were much more powerful than him and his magicians.

Without going overboard with this analogy, one can safely conclude that the Hamas leadership is beset by the same failures in understanding the reality of their day just as the evil pharaoh was delinquent in the same regard. Hamas has brought upon itself and its people a series of calamities that apparently won't end in the near future.

Thus far, the Palestinians under Hamas' stewardship have sustained massive casualties, with many dead and wounded as well as enormous damage to property. The three most obvious examples of the group's shortsightedness were highlighted by Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009, Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012, and Operation Protective Edge, currently underway. Hamas is once again being battered. By virtue of its own errant decision-making and poor judgment, the organization is leading its people on a march of folly toward the gates of hell.

The first grievous error committed by Hamas was that it turned Egypt into an enemy, and deservedly so, for the time being at least. The group's alienation of Cairo can be traced back to its close collaboration with Islamist terrorist groups in the Sinai as well as their ideological twins in the Muslim Brotherhood. This partnership has exacted a steep price in blood, as demonstrated by the acts of terrorism witnesses inside Egypt.

As a result, newly installed Egyptian ruler Abed Fattah el-Sissi and his cohorts dealt Hamas a real death blow. The Egyptian security services liquidated the military and financial infrastructures of Hamas' Sinai-based terror collaborators. They also crushed the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Egypt while destroying most of the tunnels that run underneath the Rafah crossing -- tunnels that were used to smuggle arms. And that is just the beginning from Egypt's perspective.

This is how this criminal organization became a desperate group, whose hungry operatives are hiding in tunnels like mice while surrounded by useless rockets. Now, after Israel withdrew from Gaza permanently, Hamas is demanding that its borders be opened and its needs be met.

Loath to being saddled with the burden posed by the Gazan albatross, both Egypt and Israel have flatly denied Hamas' request to lift the siege. Nobody seriously expects Israel to supply Gaza with electricity and basic needs -- which are often converted into explosives for rockets that are subsequently fired at it -- or cement, which isn't used for construction of buildings and homes but for tunnels and bunkers that allow Hamas operatives to shoot, kidnap, and murder civilians.

Few people remember how the PLO and Hamas banded together to force Palestinian laborers to eschew work in Israel. Eventually, Israel adjusted accordingly, and the Gazans remained unemployed.

It is quite clear why Egypt is steering clear of the Hamas albatross. The subversive nature of its collaboration with the Muslim Brotherhood set the tone for the Egyptian government's hostility for the terror organization currently ruling Gaza. It goes without saying that Egypt already has its hands full trying to placate the millions of its poverty-stricken citizens. It doesn't need the additional headache posed by the Palestinian issue.

That is why Egypt has been pushing Gaza, a territory which it ruled until 1967, onto Israel like a hot potato. Since Israel is adamant in its refusal to take responsibility over this terrorist stronghold, the residents of the Strip are dependent entirely on Egypt for their subsistence. Unfortunately, the Gazan population hasn't sufficiently internalized this state of affairs.

By the very act of turning down the Egyptian proposals for a cease-fire with Israel, the Hamas leadership has spit in Cairo's face. This is how Hamas is repaying a country that has supported the Palestinian cause and sacrificed some of its best fighters in the Palestinians' name. Now Egypt is waiting to take its revenge against the organization that publicly humiliated it. In the Arab world, this brazen display of nerve and chutzpah never goes unpunished.

It will be difficult for the heads of the Palestinian organizations in Gaza to repair the damage that was inflicted by losing Egypt just as it sought to offer a helping hand. They insulted Egypt at a time when it was seeking to restore its status as a key power broker in the Arab world and a major regional player in the eyes of the Western world while enjoying the backing of the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia.

Hamas said no to Egypt at a time when it is maneuvering to build a united Arab front against Iran and the radical Islamic enemies who threaten its domestic stability. It said no to Egypt at a time when Sissi was working to build up political and diplomatic credibility. Hamas' leaders arrogantly turned their backs on Sissi, fraudulently claiming that the Egyptians never consulted with them regarding the details of the cease-fire proposal.

Pity on the vanquished. Now would have been the most appropriate time for Hamas, whose lifeline is dependent upon the goodwill of Egypt, to show appropriate respect for the man in charge in Cairo. By instead preferring Qatar and Turkey, two entities that are geographically distant from the Gazan terrorist enclave, it is committing a horrible misdeed.

Without Egypt's approval, Hamas won't be able to import a feather. If anyone needed proof, just recently millions of dollars that Qatar earmarked for the terrorist entity in Gaza were held up, with Hamas powerless to complete the transfer. It was Israel, of all countries, that agreed to Egypt's cease-fire proposal, further cementing the Arab giant's old-new status as the leader of the Arab world, a major player in the eyes of the United States and the West, and a key factor in the formation of a united moderate front against Iran.

War criminals par excellence

When it comes to the Jews, serious mishaps and errors usually end in forced resignations and commissions of inquiry. For the Palestinians, however, disastrous results and misjudgments like Operation Protective Edge usually lead to promotion through the ranks and the elimination of enemies.

From a Palestinian perspective, a committee of inquiry that would probe the circumstances that gave rise to this operation would prompt the Hamas leadership -- which sent many young Palestinians to their deaths in suicide operations -- to reach the conclusion that they must all commit suicide in light of the holocaust that they brought upon their people. But they are incapable of forming such a committee.

The chain of events brought into stark focus the painful reality that Egypt's policies toward the Gaza border meant that Hamas was at a dead end. The organization tried to extricate itself from the economic, military, and psychological blockade that was imposed upon its operatives. It decided to violate the terms of the cease-fire it had reached with Israel in 2012. Now Hamas is trying to restore those understandings and turn back the clock as if it hadn't attacked, murdered, and subsequently suffered defeat.

Despite the pathetic results that it produced from its failed campaign of rocket attacks, Hamas operatives have been late in grasping the significance of the strategic blow they had absorbed. One of the missions of an army that operates according to a vision is to deceive the enemy by maneuvering it to the point where it equips itself with useless weaponry. The aim, therefore, is to goad the enemy into wasting precious resources on armaments that offer no operational benefit and which can be easily countered by the defending army. This is exactly what Israel has done to Hamas (and perhaps also to countries and terrorist organizations that surround Israel).

After building up their arsenal of rockets, it became immediately apparent to them that they were no match for the Iron Dome. With the exception of one dead Israeli, the fear sowed by the sirens, and the injuries and damage caused by the rockets, the considerable effort which the murderers poured into their arsenal went right down the drain.

Having committed a major strategic blunder, the organization's leadership will be forced to once again resort to the miserable, tedious tactics of terrorist tunnels, attempted suicide bombings, and abduction of soldiers. Hamas is currently at an all-time low point. In the words of an Arab proverb: "The mud has become thinner and more demanding." There won't be any good news waiting for the Hamas leadership.

Bitterness and hysteria in Gaza

In the eyes of the world, Hamas has not become "an underdog" as it had anticipated. On the contrary, its position has only grown more precarious in light of its refusal to agree to a cease-fire and its insistence on continuing to launch rockets on Israeli population centers. Even if the organization does accept a future Egyptian proposal, the manner in which it forced the Palestinian population to act as human shields makes its leadership legally liable to be tried for multiple war crimes.

The population of Gaza is a monolithic group that is ruled at the point of a weapon. Nobody in the Gaza Strip is permitted to openly criticize Hamas and its armed men. There isn't anybody in the Gaza Strip who is unaware that while the IDF is retaliating with bombardments, the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad are taking cover in bunkers and tunnels and civilian sites like hospitals and schools, all this while the rest of the population is exposed to the grisly results of the war.

The fabric of Gazan society is constantly on the verge of imploding. The abject poverty has rendered the enclave a pressure cooker whose lid is tightly held down by the force of Hamas' cocked Kalashnikov rifles. Most Gazans are indeed anxious to celebrate the deaths of Israeli civilians, but none of them are willing to pay the price of foolishness that Hamas often pays in its repeated clashes with Israel.

The threshold of pain and suffering as evinced by Palestinian society doesn't stem from a choice or fortitude, but rather from oppression and the exigencies of the prevailing circumstances that prevent them from exercising their right to complain. As such, one can only hear the grumbling and the discontent with Hamas in private conversations, or genuine reports from the ground.

In the melancholy state of Palestinian society, its leadership exploits the rage of the mobs while injecting religious opium and lies about Israel's imminent demise into their veins. Hamas leaders claimed that Israel had committed a grievous intelligence oversight in failing to locate the organization's rockets that it had accumulated in its arsenal over the years and failing to foresee the appearance of amateur drones. But the fact that during the war innocent civilians are executed on the pretense that they are Israeli collaborators is a testament to the fact that the organization has been infiltrated by Israeli intelligence and that it is gripped with hysteria in light of the success attained by Israeli espionage.

What about Al-Aqsa?

As part of its efforts to maximize the number of dead civilians, Hamas' terrorist arms aimed their rockets at Jerusalem. Not only did they fire at the holy city, but they bragged about it openly. By virtue of this criminal act, Hamas lost what little legitimacy it claimed for itself as it relates to the religious demands it presses in the city. It is worth recalling that Muslims initially prayed in the direction of Jerusalem before this was changed by the Prophet Mohammed. There are even those who claim that Jerusalem is the third holiest city in Islam.

Either way, the very fact that Jerusalem is a target for destruction constitutes an acknowledgment that the city is not holy to Islam. Instead, it is merely a highly symbolic, quality target for Hamas leaders. Indeed, it is de facto recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Hamas' intention to harm the city deemed by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike to be a holy city is evidence of its basic willingness to inflict damage on the holy sites of these three faiths, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Some Arabs in Jerusalem have claimed recently that Hamas is trying to cause damage to Christian and Islamic holy sites in order to later accuse the Jews of committing the deed. They said that Hamas' wish is to see a rocket slam into these sites so that the subsequent outrage would unite the fractured, war-torn Arab world which would then set its sights on confronting Israel.

Hamas' targeting of the holy city offers the West a glimpse into the thought process undertaken by a Islamist radicals who are planning to impose a religious dominion on the rest of the world. During the days of Fascist Italy, not even the most diabolical mind ever conceived of bombarding the Vatican. The terrorists who are now bombing each other's mosques will not hesitate to attack churches in the Western world.

Taking the blows, quietly

In light of the Palestinians' rejection of the cease-fire proposal, Israel received the green light from the West as well as from Arab government to continue to strike the obstinate side. For the Palestinians, all that is left to do is to wait for more attacks against their infrastructure, and to keep quiet.

The final chord of this campaign must leave the battered Hamas on the scene, rather than have it replaced by somebody else. That is the beauty of deterrence. If and when new players come on the scene, they will certainly have the same destructive motivation toward us, but they will have to get reacquainted with the rules of the game as dictated to their predecessors by Israel. That would not be prudent or wise.

One should keep in mind that this isn't an issue over whether Israel is capable of entering Gaza and liquidating Hamas and its gunmen, but the cost-benefit ratio of this unwise move. Since Hamas operatives are native to the Gaza Strip, they are eventually compelled to undertake situational assessments and draw appropriate conclusions out of a sense of responsibility for their battered, exhausted people.

The chaos that would ensue if Israel did liquidate Hamas would leave the land bereft of a responsible party that would be forced to pay the price for misbehavior. The alternative scenario whereby jihadist adventurers from various corners of the globe would enter the vacuum is a bad one. These organizations would be happy to spill the blood of their Palestinian hosts as a means to feed the jihadist beast in the service of their deity. There is no doubt that Ismail Haniyeh, two of whose nephews paid the ultimate price for their involvement in terrorism against Israel, would see to take revenge as a bereaved uncle yet whose pain would also be transmuted to fear and deterrence. The price that comes with exacting this kind of pain is rooted in the deterrence that Israel must preserve as it relates to Hamas.

Israel must take advantage of the slew of green lights that shine upon it and hit Hamas without mercy. As part of the blows it needs to inflict, Israel much choose an operational plan that is free of populist considerations.

Any cease-fire agreement must include the opening of Gaza crossings solely on the Egyptian side, with the option of enabling trade with Israel. But this should only be considered on condition that the arsenal of rockets is dismantled under international and Egyptian supervision (Cairo has plenty of motivation to see that this is arranged). An agreement should also include a Hamas pledge to halt the digging of tunnels as well as to destroy the tunnels it has built while committing to a cessation of terrorist activities.

The chances of these demands being met are slim, which is why Israel must take advantage of the time it is allotted and to destroy Hamas' capabilities to the greatest extent possible. It must develop technological capabilities that would enable automatic interception fire at the source of Palestinian rocket fire without a guiding Israeli hand.

This is the fate of a population who is subject to the whims of every Palestinian terrorist who only needs to squeeze the trigger and send a rocket in our direction. The world will understand. If they have time, well, so do we.