In the wake of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, Hamas continues to control Gaza and openly considers any truce with Israel as a time to re-arm for the next conflict.
Across Israel’s northern border, Hizbullah has been fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad but still poses a danger to Israel.
Meanwhile, the Islamic State has exploded across Iraq and Syria in a spectacle of unprecedented brutality that could one day knock on Israel’s door.
What Israel’s strategy should be in confronting this three-pronged terror threat is very much on the mind these days of military planners and defense- and security-oriented intellectuals.
Hizbullah and Hamas “pose a very particular threat to Israel but also a very special dilemma,” said Natan Sachs, a fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
“Both groups are not just terrorist organizations, but also very large political parties, which control territory adjacent to Israel,” he told JNS. “They have long traditions and complex political and military situations.”
Dr. Boaz Ganor, co-founder and executive director of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel, calls Hamas and Hizbullah “hybrid” terrorist organizations.
“On the one hand [these organizations reflect] the real grievances of a large public” by providing welfare services and winning elections, but “on the other hand [they continue] executing terrorist attacks against civilians,” Ganor said.
For instance, Hamas has won Palestinian hearts by providing social services to the population, and it was elected as the governing group of the Gaza Strip in 2006. Hizbullah’s current leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was also a member of the al-Dawa al-Islamiya movement in Lebanon, which subsequently evolved into a political party under Hizbullah that has 12 seats in the Lebanese parliament. Islamic State is on the path to adopting a similar strategy, Ganor believes.
Until just over a year ago, only four countries classified Hizbullah as a terrorist organization. This changed only after Hizbullah’s presumed involvement in the 2012 terrorist bombing of a tour bus carrying Israelis in Burgas. But even the European Union’s change of Hizbullah’s status to a terrorist organization pertained only to the “military wing” of the group, not the entire entity.
Given their reluctance to classify terror groups as such, many countries will find themselves “quickly dealing with the same dilemma with regard to the Islamic State, the [Syrian] al-Nusra Front, and other groups,” Ganor said.
According to Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC), “the Israeli government is selling Operation Protective Edge as a strategic tie,” but the reality is “that Hamas has gotten a lot of benefit out of the conflict, too.”
Hamas initiated this summer’s conflict as a cry for help, because the group was bankrupt and felt abandoned by its traditional patrons, Iran and Egypt. Hamas’s unity government with Fatah was supposed to be an equal partnership, but Hamas ended up becoming a junior partner, not receiving legitimate consideration for cabinet posts. Therefore, the conflict was meant to show that Hamas is a “force to be reckoned with,” said Berman.
When it comes to dealing with a hybrid terrorist organization like Hamas, “military action, as important as it is, does not eliminate the organization,” said IDC’s Ganor.
“It might hurt or temporarily disable military capability, but these organizations are already based and rooted inside the society where they live and whom they pretend to represent,” he said.
For several years the Israeli government has avoided calls to overthrow Hamas, preferring a policy of containment through a series of blockades, with the hope that Gazans would overthrow the terror organization.
Additionally, Israel fears Hamas could be replaced by a more radical terror group or that the IDF would be forced to reoccupy Gaza, which it unilaterally evacuated in 2005.