GAZA CONUNDRUM: HOW HAMAS GAINED DESPITE DEFEAT

In asymmetric conflicts, military superiority doesn't ensure strategic success. Israel's use of overwhelming force has bred resentment around the world. The Palestinian cause has been resurrected

- - LT GEN SYED ATA HASNAIN RETD)

THE Gaza war, now tapered into an awkward ceasefire, has left behind devastation beyond imagination. Israel fought with overwhelming force, Hamas remains battered but not erased, and the world once again confronts the familiar question that has shadowed the region for decades: who really gains when the dust settles? It may sound counterintuitive, but in the political and psychological sense, Hamas appears to have secured what strategists call 'perceptual victory', even as Gaza lies in ruins.

The October 2023 attack by Hamas was a meticulously planned but morally indefensible act of terror that shocked even those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. The deliberate targeting of civilians is beyond justification. Hamas likely believed that only such a drastic act could revive global focus on a fading cause. With the Abraham Accords expanding and Saudi-Israel normalisation on the horizon, the Palestinian issue risked permanent marginalisation.

Strategically, the perception was correct; the method, however, remains unacceptable to the civilised world.

For Israel, the response was shaped by two impulses. The first was the national need for retribution-a visceral reaction to the scale of the assault, necessary to preserve deterrence and restore confidence among its citizens. The second was political. Benjamin Netanyahu's survival depended on projecting absolute resolve.

A restrained response would have been interpreted domestically as weakness and internationally as loss of moral ascendancy. Yet, the ferocity of the Israeli retaliation, which blurred the line between combatant and civilian, ended up achieving the reverse-moral erosion in the eyes of much of the world.