The final service "Hamas" can provide!

It is no secret that a catastrophe has befallen Gaza, and the responsible parties for this disaster are "Hamas" on one hand, and the Israeli response to the "Al-Aqsa Flood" on the other. In a single day—October 7, 2023—Israel received a blow the likes of which it had not seen since the declaration of the state's establishment in 1948. In one day, approximately 1,200 Jews were killed, most of them citizens of the state, in the attack launched by "Hamas" on the Gaza envelope settlements originating from the Strip itself.

From this perspective, the reopening of the Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt—despite the circumstances surrounding the process—appears to be an opportunity for Palestinians who still believe in "Hamas" to face reality instead of fleeing from it. Can the movement reconcile with reality and accept it, considering itself an integral part of the International Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood, which possesses a boundless lust for power?

Reality dictates that Hamas—if it considers itself concerned with the fate of the Palestinian people and the people of Gaza—must shoulder its responsibilities and acknowledge the catastrophe it has caused on the Palestinian level as a whole. To put it more clearly, a movement like "Hamas" is expected to recognize its political and military failure on one hand, and that its weapons, which it still clings to, have become an Israeli pretext to continue the war on the Strip on the other. Hamas took Gaza and its people to destruction. The movement, which came with obsolete ideas and theories like "liberating Palestine from the river to the sea," must take note of what has happened, especially in the presence of a state that holds no value for human life, humanitarian values, or international law. Hamas found itself watching, along with the world, a systematic process of destroying Gaza with the aim of erasing it and its people from existence by making it uninhabitable land.

Without returning to the period when "Hamas" emerged in 1987—a period that preceded the first Palestinian Intifada, which led to Israel's recognition that a political settlement with the representative of the Palestinian people (the PLO and Yasser Arafat specifically) was inevitable—it is useful to recall the year 2005. The crossing between Rafah and Egyptian territory was operating normally under the supervision of European Union observers. The National Authority, which oversaw the Strip, managed to secure a working formula for the Rafah crossing despite everything that happened in 2000 during the "militarization of the Intifada." That "militarization" subsequently led—while "Abu Ammar" (Arafat) was still alive—to the destruction of the Gaza airport, which had opened in the presence of President Bill Clinton in November 1998.

Since day one in 1987, "Hamas" has played all the roles required of it by Israel to make a peaceful settlement impossible, exactly as the Israeli Right wants. The Israeli Right, which originally opposed the Oslo Accords in 1993, bet on "Hamas"... and indeed won its bet.

One can point to several stages to prove the collusion between "Hamas" and the Israeli Right, symbolized by the presence of Benjamin Netanyahu at the head of the most extremist government in the state's history since its founding in 1948. One could start with the series of suicide operations carried out by the movement—which is an inseparable part of the Muslim Brotherhood—to foil Oslo, regardless of its merits or flaws. However, three pivotal moments deserve attention.

In the first stage, in August 2005, "Hamas" foiled every attempt to benefit Palestinians from the full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. "Hamas" is not the only one responsible for this failure; it was aided by the National Authority and the refusal of its president, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), to personally go to Gaza to supervise the post-withdrawal phase. The withdrawal from Gaza was an opportunity for Palestinians to prove they could establish the nucleus of a peaceful state ready to live in peace with its surroundings. Even worse, "Hamas" saw the Israeli withdrawal as an occasion to begin launching rockets toward Israeli territory. All this served Ariel Sharon, who believed that "there is no Palestinian partner with whom to negotiate."

In the second stage, "Hamas" eliminated "Fatah" in Gaza. That was in mid-2007. It established an "Islamic Emirate" in the Strip. The goal was not only to eliminate Fatah; the separation of the Strip from the West Bank also entrenched the Palestinian-Palestinian rift at a time when the primary concern of the Israeli Right was, and still is, to destroy any hope for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

With the "Al-Aqsa Flood," the third stage arrived, marking a turning point on both Palestinian and regional levels. "Al-Aqsa Flood"—whether we like it or not—closed the doors to the two-state solution, at least for the foreseeable future. Hamas in its entirety, and not Yahya Sinwar alone, bears responsibility for the decision to launch an attack on the settlements in the Gaza envelope, which turned Israel into a more monstrous state than ever before...

Hamas changed the region. The Gaza war exposed Iran and destroyed its main arms: "Hezbollah" in Lebanon and the Alawite regime in Syria. What has not changed is "Hamas" itself, which refuses to admit failure and that it must give up its weapons. The movement considers the survival of its weapons and the remaining pockets it still controls in Gaza to be a political achievement. But what about the Rafah crossing and the farce that accompanied its reopening under Israeli conditions, after Gaza had a real airport in the recent past... and its people had hope for a better life away from the blockade and away from placing themselves at the service of the Israeli Right and its mad, dead-end projects?