In 2005 Israel withdrew from Gaza, yet Israel has since been forced to go to war twice to stop a rain of rockets and mortars fired from the territory by the terrorist group Hamas and its allies. Now Israel might have to fight a third time to protect its citizens from random aerial assault.
As we went to press Tuesday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looked set to launch a major military campaign as Hamas unleashed another indiscriminate volley of rockets that reached well into central Israel. A video posted on Facebook on Tuesday showed a rocket flying over a wedding, complete with shouts and a fleeing bride.
Maybe this time Mr. Netanyahu should address the cause of the problem rather than treat the symptoms. By "cause" we mean Hamas. When Israel left Gaza, it dismantled 21 Israeli settlements (along with four others in the West Bank) and forcibly evicted nearly 9,000 Israeli settlers. Western governments appointed high-level emissaries like former World Bank President James Wolfensohn to turn Gaza into a showcase of a future Palestinian state.
Gaza did become a showcase of a rather different kind. Within a year—and thanks in part to the absence of Israel—the strip descended into a civil war between Hamas and Fatah, the political party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The war was settled in 2007 when Hamas seized power by force. That was followed by a steady increase of rocket fire on Israel that only ended with Israel's temporary re-invasion in 2009.
For its efforts to defend itself, Israel was vilified as never before, including with the U.N.'s Goldstone Report (later recanted by its principal author, South African judge Richard Goldstone ). The war reduced rocket fire into Israel for a while, but by November 2012 it had to fight again. Israelis were only spared from major casualties thanks to their Iron Dome missile defenses.
Now Hamas seems to have decided that starting another war will be politically opportune—never mind the consequences to ordinary Gazans. Regionally, Hamas has been on the back foot since it lost Syria's Bashar Assad as a patron, and especially after the Egyptian army overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi last summer. This is a chance to go back on the terrorist offense.
Hamas may figure it can use last week's murder of a Palestinian boy by a gang of Jewish vigilantes, which sparked widespread rioting, to ignite a third intifada uprising against Israel across all Palestinian territory. The West Bank has been an area of relative calm and prosperity for nearly a decade. A new spate of violence could sideline Mr. Abbas and shake Fatah's grip on power, create political openings for Hamas, and ostracize Israel internationally.
Hamas may also believe it can repeatedly go to war against a militarily superior foe because Israel has never exacted a fatal price. Hamas's aggression serves its political purposes, while Palestinian casualties serve its propaganda purposes.
Those goals are furthered when Western governments call for mutual restraint, as if both sides are equally responsible for the violence. "We're continuing to convey the need to de-escalate on both sides," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Tuesday, a plea that has no effect on Hamas but pressures Israel to pull its punches.
Our advice to the Israelis is that if they want to avoid having to go to war over Gaza every three years or so, they will need to destroy Hamas as a political entity and military power. This does not need a permanent re-occupation of all of Gaza. But it will require a land campaign that destroys Hamas's ability to wage war. That probably includes retaking the old Philadelphi corridor running along the Egyptian border to prevent the underground smuggling of increasingly sophisticated munitions, many coming from Iran.
All of this will be condemned by the usual suspects. But Israelis will be denounced for whatever they do, so they might as well act effectively. In the long run Gazans will benefit from not having to live under rulers who are constantly driving them into pointless and destructive wars. Moderate Palestinian leaders in the West Bank will also be quietly pleased to see their domestic opponents humiliated.
Peace between Israel and its neighbors remains a long shot, but it has no chance as long as Hamas is seen as a strong and quasi-legitimate political player.
