Noura Erakat, Josh Paul, Charles O. Blaha, and Luigi Daniele; John Spencer
The current war in Gaza is not an isolated conflict that began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants launched an attack inside Israel. Framing the war this way, as John Spencer does in a recent article in Foreign Affairs (“Israel Is Winning,” August 21, 2024), invites many dubious assertions about Israel’s purported progress toward its war aims and its supposed efforts to protect civilians. And it accepts without question the Israeli government’s official position that “Israel is fighting Hamas terrorists, not the Palestinian population,” as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared in a speech in January. To simplify the conflict to a fight between Israel and Hamas is to ignore the on-the-ground realities that indicate Israel is waging an indiscriminate war on all Palestinians.
A more accurate understanding of the war must take its broader context into account. What is happening now in Gaza is one battle within the larger conflict that has shaped the Israeli-Palestinian relationship since the founding of Israel and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the new state’s territory in 1948. Today’s fight cannot be removed from that history and geography; gaining the upper hand in the current battle is not the same as winning the wider war. Spencer falls into this trap, miscasting Israel’s temporary tactical achievements as strategic victory and underestimating how Israel’s unwillingness to pursue a political resolution that recognizes the Palestinians’ right to self-determination will in the end diminish its chances of success.
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