Israel has announced that it is bent on eliminating Hamas from the Gaza Strip following the deadly Oct. 7 attack by the armed group on southern Israel.

Even if Israel’s scorched land policy in the coastal enclave decimates Hamas it will never be able to weaken the will of the Palestinians for justice, freedom, and liberation of their stolen lands.

In terms of realpolitik, as long as occupation and apartheid continue, resistance will also persist. This is the lesson of history.

Imprisoning 2.3 million in the 365 km² area of the Gaza Strip and establishing 500 checkpoints for 3 million others in the occupied West Bank cannot last forever.

John Mearsheimer, a prominent professor of political science at the University of Chicago, says “suffocating occupation” is the reason behind Hamas’ attack.

“I think the main reason was you had this suffocating occupation,” Mearsheimer notes. He adds, “As long as this occupation persists the Palestinians are going to resist.”

In the Hamas Oct. 7 attack, around 1140 Israelis were killed and about 250 were taken hostage. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who referred to himself as “Mr. security”, “Mr. national security” and “the tough guy”, has now been turned into “Mr. anti-security”.  

The American political scientist also disputes arguments by some who say Hamas would have hesitated to attack if it had been aware that Israel would respond so cruelly, saying, “There is no question in my mind the Hamas forces understood full well that Israel will retaliate with full force.”

Until Monday afternoon Israel had killed around 20,700 Palestinians in Gaza. It means Israel has killed about 20 people for each person killed in Israel on October 7. Add to this, the eviction of 2 million people from their homes, the heartless starvation of the people, the bombardment of residential buildings, hospitals, churches, mosques, UN-run schools used as shelters, etc.

So far, Israel has perpetrated every kind of crime except using chemical or nuclear weapons against Gazans. Unbelievably, it has halted the delivery of food, medicine, and water to the enclave. However, Israel is far from achieving its goal of annihilating Hamas. All these calamities have failed to cause a crack in the will of the Palestinian fighters in Gaza to resist Israeli attacks. And although about 80 days have passed since the start of the war, they are still firing rockets at Israeli cities and rejecting a temporary truce for prisoner exchanges.

The sadistic war criminals in Israel are not even listening to the warnings of figures and officials who are friends and allies of Israel.

For example, former British defense secretary Ben Wallace warned on Dec. 17 that Israel’s behavior will “fuel the conflict for another 50 years”.   Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Wallace said, “If he (Netanyahu) thinks a killing rage will rectify matters, then he is very wrong. His methods will not solve the problem. In fact, I believe his tactics will fuel the conflict for another 50 years. His actions are radicalizing Muslim youth across the globe.”

In an interview aired on Dec. 21, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also said Israel's strongest friends "are becoming increasingly concerned that ... the short-term actions being taken by Israel are actually putting at risk the long-term safety (of) and even support for a Jewish state into the future."

Yet, Israeli rulers, especially Netanyahu and his ultra-Orthodox and right-wing bloc, suffer from the delusion that they can silence the Palestinians by using brutal force. 

If suppression had been effective the first and second intifadas and the Oct. 7 attack, which was the deadliest in Israel’s 78-year-old history, would not have happened. 

Fareed Zakaria, the famous American journalist and political commentator, believes Israel “will not be able to destroy the idea of armed resistance” so long as a just solution is not found for the Palestinians’ legitimate grievances.

Unfortunately, Israel’s hardline rulers have killed every opportunity for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) abandoned the armed struggle against Israel in the 1990s and entered into dialogue with Israel, but Israel disappointed the Palestinians.

Yasser Arafat, who led the PLO to a peace agreement with Israel, was put under house arrest in the West Bank city of Ramallah from 2001 until 2004 by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon until his suspicious death in November 2004.

This happened even though Arafat and then Israel's prime minister and president were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. Likewise, Mahmoud Abbas, the successor to Arafat, is being extremely weakened by Israel to the extent that 80 percent of Palestinians disapprove of his performance.

The Palestinians are seeing that Israel is stealing the remaining lands in the West Bank under the eyes of Abbas. It is for this reason that people favor armed struggle against Israel.

“The idea of armed resistance is being fed by the feeling that Palestinians have that ‘non-violent resistance’ has got them no way,” Fareed Zakaria notes.

Injustice against Palestinians has worsened since the most radical government in the history of Israel came to power in January under the leadership of Netanyahu in November 2022. Even two of his ultra-far-right ministers – Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich -- live in the lands occupied in 1967.

Such behavior toward Palestinians is an invitation to more rebellion by the Palestinian youth. In other words, Israel’s theft of lands and discriminatory moves are producing anger and indirectly recruiting fighters.

Some months before the Oct. 7 attack, an armed group known as the Lions’ Den emerged out of Nablus, in the northern West Bank. It launched attacks against Israeli checkpoints, soldiers, and settlements.

In a commentary on October 22, Al Jazeera wrote, “The members of the (Lions’ Den) group are primarily young men in their early 20s who have individual ties to the four main traditional Palestinian political parties: Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.”

Extremists in Israel must feel assured that the massacre and continuing subjugation of Palestinians will surely harden the will of the young generations for vengeance as they see no light at the end of the tunnel.

The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “Children who experience the violence of war in their formative years become traumatized and pessimistic, and view their victimhood as a license to use violence in the future.”

Netanyahu, his far-right cabinet, and other ideologically driven persons who formulate “greater Israel” in their minds must expect more bloodshed if they don’t come to their senses to respect the legitimate rights of the Palestinians.

If apartheid against Palestinians does not come to an end and a viable solution is not found for a sovereign Palestinian state this cycle of violence will persist and will even get worse. In such a situation both sides will lose. There is no alternative other than finding a lasting solution.