Only safe prediction is that civilians will suffer most in Israel-Hamas war

Providing historical context for contemporary war is not about justification or side taking. Interpretations of long-standing hatreds do not stay static, but the Israel-Palestine conflict remains constantly and horribly intractable, underlined by the horrific events in Israel and Gaza this past week. The conflict has preoccupied many scholars, given the complicated impacts and legacies of colonialism, power and prestige, religious forces, occupation, dispossession, refugees, national identities, new political elites, resistance and terror, alongside oil and financial interests. But none of the language is ever regarded as neutral, and history writing on the conflict is itself a battleground.

In November 1917, Lord Balfour, then British foreign secretary, wrote: “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

Ian Black, Middle East editor at the Guardian for over 30 years and author of the highly regarded book Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel 1917-2017, identifies the year of this letter as year zero of the problem and in 2017, he could see no end to it. History kept repeating itself; he quotes, for example, the Israeli diplomat Walter Eytan in 1951: “Israel has shown that she could ride out ten years of unrelenting enmityand she can live with it for decades and generations more if she must.” His words could just as easily have been uttered by current Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Journalists in the Middle East at various stages decried the refusal to learn from history. In 2008, Robert Fisk wrote despairingly that Hamas’s home-made rockets killed less than 30 Israelis in eight years, “but a daylong blitz by Israeli aircraft that kills almost 300 Palestinians is just par for the course. Yes, let’s remember Hamas’s cynicism, the cynicism of all armed Islamist groups. Their need for Muslim martyrs is as crucial to them as Israel’s need to create them. The lesson Israel thinks it is teaching – come to heel or we will crush you – is not the lesson Hamas is learning.”

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Proportionality has never been apparent. Between 2003 and 2005, there were 342 Israeli and 1,664 Palestinian fatalities, victims of part of the second intifada (uprising). Nor are the binary descriptions of those killing each other satisfactory. Books such as Stephen Farrell and Beverly-Milton Edwards’s Hamas: The Islamic Resistance Movement (2010) are important as the product of close contact and dialogue with both sides; they look at shifting political, cultural and religious boundaries. The authors are also clear that there cannot be a solution without the antagonists, unpalatable as it is to highlight such realities during indefensible butchery.

The historical documents, of course, are only part of the story. What is regarded by many Jews as God’s plan as laid down in Scripture is what matters most. On the other side, Hamas was established in late 1987 during an uprising against Israel’s occupation, as the resistance wing of the Islamic revivalist organisation, the Association of the Muslim Brotherhood. It initially suited Israel to encourage Hamas, such was the potential to foment discord between Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

In August 1988, Hamas published its covenant declaring its military operation against Israel a Jihad and a continuity of its holy struggle since the 1930s. Israel, it insisted, has no right to exist and it declared Palestine as a waqf, a religious endowment whose protection or liberation from Israel was a religious obligation. But that declared mission was paralleled with a pragmatism about political influence, social and welfare networks and internal community battles for influence against the PLO and Yasser Arafat’s Fatah’s vision of a secular state. The popularity of Hamas grew as, in tandem with its attacks and Israel’s policies, including assassinations of its leaders, it built its electoral strength and power in Gaza in 2006 and 2007. Hamas’s impact is also dependent on mobilising support outside of Palestine, while Israel has always had the assistance of powerful backers.

In 2002, Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin predicted Israel’s destruction by the year 2025. He was assassinated two years later in an Israeli missile strike. In 2014, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh told a Gaza crowd “we are a people who value death, just like our enemies value life”. Gaza residents have endured cruelty, humiliation, incarceration and siege, so much so that in 2015 a UN report suggested by 2020 Gaza would be uninhabitable if the blockade persisted. The horrific events of the last week throw all predictions into disarray, except that the determination on both sides to fight will continue and civilians will bear the brunt.