Israel-Hamas war inevitable, says Rubin
In an op-ed piece for the Jerusalem Post, commentator Barry Rubin sees no alternative to all-out war between Israel and Hamas in the near future.
He cites the recent revolution in Egypt and ousting of Hosni Mubarak as the main reason for an emboldened Hamas to step up its rocket attacks against Israel.
Read the excerpt below, and then read Stephen Flurry’s column from last week to see where this inevitable war will lead. Rubin continues:
[T]he Egyptian revolution removed a regime that defined the national interest as having an anti-Hamas policy. The Mubarak government did not maintain sanctions and an (albeit imperfect) blockade of weapons for Israel’s benefit.
It did so because it saw revolutionary Islamism as the main threat to the nation. This was not, as current U.S. officials would have it, some cynically manipulated mirage to justify dictatorship. In addition to the direct threat of Hamas subversion in cooperation with other Islamist groups, the Mubarak government saw Hamas as part of a broader, Iran-led strategic threat. A new government, whether radical nationalist, Islamist or “liberal democratic,” will have the opposite view. The Muslim Brotherhood views Hamas as its closest ally and wants it to overthrow the Palestinian Authority as well as destroy Israel. The nationalists support Hamas as part of the larger Arab struggle against Israel. The “liberal democrats” do so because they know this is a very popular position with Egyptians, and therefore to oppose it would reduce their already tiny base of support. And so Hamas knows it now has an ally rather than an enemy at its back. Moreover, there is no incentive in Egypt—or among its nationalist and Islamist-sympathetic officers—to block arms smuggling into the Gaza Strip. Hamas is thus greatly strengthened and made more confident, and hence arrogant. It is more able to fire mortars and launch rockets and cross-border attacks, and far more eager to do so.
