Former Israeli intelligence officer Michael Milshtein on how the country’s fundamental misunderstanding of Hamas led to last weekend’s massacre.
Almost a week after Hamas killed at least 1,300 people — mostly civilians — Israel is wrestling with two central questions: How the country could have let such an elaborately planned assault happen, and how to respond. Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence officer and head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at Tel Aviv University, believes that the Israeli government’s fundamental misunderstanding of Hamas led to this moment. As Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition focused on a divisive judicial overhaul, it believed that economic incentives like work permits for Gazans had sufficiently pacified Hamas, a group that had made its violent intentions clear. I spoke with Milshtein about how and why Israel took its eye off the ball, and why the government may not actually want to eradicate its sworn enemy.
We have our own eestern logic, and we’re enforcing our logic on the other side. Here in Israel, we believed that after 2007, when Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, the organization would become less militant and more moderate — because they had to deal with not only jihad, but also with hospitals, and energy, and education.
Pragmatic.
Yeah, exactly. The basic concept was that if you improved the economic and civil situation in Gaza, you would create achievements that Hamas could lose, and you would also deter Hamas from promoting escalation — and even create a situation where the public would protest against Hamas if they escalated. It was a very, I would call it, western style way of thinking, that you could control this tiger and you could actually take him and create a poodle.
On the 7th of October, at 6:30 in the morning, Hamas proved to us that this organization, when it needed to choose — it’s absolutely clear that their basic path is the jihad. They don’t really care about people, or that 18,000 Palestinians have now lost their jobs and salaries in Israel. It’s really amazing.
In terms of motives — you said Israel was making conditions better in Gaza, but obviously, they still weren’t great. And beyond that, you could say that with a deal between Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the U.S. looming, Palestinians may have felt they were being forgotten on the world stage.
Although, Ben, you need to remember this offensive was planned a year ago. All talks about negotiations between us and the Saudis began only two, three months ago. It’s absolutely clear that the basic reasons for this brutal attack was not the Al-Aqsa Mosque, or the war in the West Bank, or the economic situation in Gaza, or the Saudi-Israeli negotiations. It was much deeper. It was a part of the long-term vision of Hamas to eradicate Israel.
What I just said would be an example of western-style thinking, you’re saying?
Absolutely. In order to understand Hamas, you have to know Arabic, and you have to read things in Arabic, and listen to Hamas preachers and Hamas leaders when they speak to their own people. It’s absolutely different from the things that are translated to us in Hebrew or English. For two years, I read all those books, and articles, and interviews, and it was absolutely clear for me that Hamas is not ready at all to give up on the jihad for permits, for workers, or for any other economic gesture from Israel.
So you were less surprised by what happened than some other people, perhaps?
Unfortunately, I wasn’t surprised at all. I write a lot of articles, and I give a lot of interviews on the radio and on television, and I am known very much as a critic of the former policy toward Gaza.
