March 29, 2004, 9:03 a.m.
The Losers of Hamas
How not to run a terrorist operation.

For those among us not wholly unsympathetic to Palestinian aspirations, the death of Sheikh Yassin was a terrible thing. This is not because his execution was an allegedly "criminal act" by the Israelis, but because the Palestinian reaction to it demonstrates the poverty, folly, and futility of Hamas's grand strategy. The wild-eyed bellowing in the streets, the leadership's ferocious threats, its ungovernable rage, the panting adulation of a death-drunk cripple: Hamas is proving itself to be no Hezbollah, no IRA, no LTTE (the "Tamil Tigers" of Sri Lanka) — all three fairly successful terrorist outfits.

The most striking difference between them and Hamas is that the latter has displayed no obvious ability to think things through, to proceed to formulate a set of limited goals, and to then methodically achieve them by using a combination of violence, opportunism, and rational calculation. Clausewitz shrewdly dubbed this dynamic, shifting triangle a wunderliche dreifaltigheit, or wonderful trinity.

There has to be some sort of balance between these elements for maximum effect: The untrammelled urge to kill must be tempered with a dose of cold reason even as the play of chance allows commanders to exploit unanticipated opportunities that can suddenly transform the strategic picture (such as Yassin's fatal habit of returning home from prayers along overly predictable routes). The essential principle here is that fighting must be a tool of policy, whereas for Hamas, the mere act of fighting is policy. Hamas can neither control its passions nor seize chance openings; all it can do is annihilate.

On the other hand, while Hezbollah, the IRA, and the LTTE have no qualms about killing, they recognized long ago that the most effective way to weaken the enemy is by splitting the public from the government. For the most part, then, they have tended to concentrate on killing and maiming soldiers, politicians, and officials rather than on civilians, who are classified as "unfortunate" collateral damage rather than as primary targets. With the "drip-drip" strategy, public support for the "occupation" falters, thereby obliging the government to seek terms with the terrorists. By such means, Hezbollah prompted Israel to withdraw unilaterally from Lebanon in 2000.

Despite our moral misgivings and whatever its faults, this strategy has, at least, a rational aspect. When terrorist leaders also have a sense of timing and know how to seize opportunities when they arise, it can be devastatingly successful. The IRA was always expert in this respect. Its leaders have learned when to place British politicians under the greatest pressure so that they have to negotiate, and how to threaten to run out the clock so that its democratic foes (e.g., the Ulster Unionists) are traduced into making solid concessions in exchange for phantom promises.

Crucially, however, terrorist objectives have to be realistic and attainable. The separatist LTTE helped pioneer suicide bombings, which are, by their very nature, indiscriminate, but first, tended to target specific Sri Lankan leaders (civilians were a perverse "bonus" score), and secondly, was adamant that it wanted an independent state on the northern tip of the island. The bombings would stop once Colombo opened talks.

Elected governments can turn the tables on their enemies by acknowledging that all terrorism can never be extinguished, but that it can be minimized if limited goals are set, and then achieved by means of extreme and sudden violence, cool reason, and with an eye kept open for the main chance. Take Israel's whackings of terrorist figures. A recent article on Jerusalem's potential hit-list in the Israeli daily, Haaretz, noted that, "The order of priorities on Israel's shadowy list of most-wanted militants can be altered in an instant, shifting in response to major terror attacks, anxiety or ire from Washington, the emotional winds of the Israeli public, and chance opportunities to strike at certain figures." It then catalogued some ten senior terrorists, most of whom, judging by recent experience, won't be collecting their pensions. The list, in short, is highly specific, adaptable, and fulfillable. Compiled with one precise aim in mind — violently liquidating members of the terrorist General Staff when the chance arises — the list assumes that in the absence of this senior officer class, the ranks will be unable to organize and execute large-scale operations.

Now, compare this approach with that of Hamas, which is circulating packs of playing cards — each of 52, presumably, making the list an unselective one — with the names and faces of intended targets. There are some very strange people making the cut: for instance, Israeli ultra-dove Yossi Sarid, one of Ariel Sharon's bitterest opponents. Eliminating him would strengthen Sharon's position, and weaken the pro-Palestinian Left within Israel and without, but Hamas isn't yet mature enough to think politically. It simply wants to strike out and kill indiscriminately on a mass scale.

One reason why Hamas has nurtured such a cult of blood, masochism, and sadism, is because it lacks a realizable agenda. Its objectives, being mostly concerned with exterminating every Jew in Israel and destroying their state, are self-evidently insatiable.

Hamas can only appeased if "the Zionist entity" and all those within it disappear, but this will not happen, so Hamas is fighting an unwinnable war, which means its struggle is not, as the authors of 1066 and All That put it, Wrong but Wromantic, but utterly pointless and self-defeating. It does not even want an independent Palestinian state, a goal it regards as worthy only of peacenik (relatively speaking) sell-outs like Arafat. The shedding of blood — that of Palestinians and Israelis alike — has therefore become the nihilistic end in itself, not a means to anything tangible.

Hamas's fundamental lack of restraint stems from the absence of real political control over what is euphemistically known as its "military wing." Conventionally — and especially in the Western democracies — political leaders determine policy and instruct military commanders to devise a range of plans designed to achieve given political aims. It is crucial, first, that these political objectives are reasonable ones conceived to advance the state's interest and the nation's wellbeing; secondly, that politicians (as well as soldiers) understand the limitations and capabilities of the military tool; and thirdly, and most importantly, that owing to the escalatory, mutually destructive nature of warfare, politicians cannot allow their generals carte blanche to win the war come what may. As Clausewitz warned, "He who maintains, as is so often the case, that politics should not interfere with the conduct of a war has not grasped the ABCs of grand strategy."

Hamas remains an abecedarian. Though the political wing is nominally in charge (in 2002, Yassin, Hamas's "spiritual leader," told a Saudi newspaper that "when we make a decision on the political level and inform the military wing, it is bound by the decision"), owing to the narcotic effect of their own fantasies, the politicos are in permanent green-light position, as are the military cadres. There's no "decision" to make, for Hamas's political objectives are, as we've seen, nonsensical, limitless, and unreasonable. They just keep going, and going, and going, but going nowhere.

Moreover, neither Hamas's political nor its military wing comprehends the limitations of the indiscriminate suicide-bombing campaign: It's a repulsive loser's tactic that galvanizes the attacked nation's resolve while not improving one's own strategic position. So, as Hamas is resolutely convinced that suicide bombing is its war-winning weapon for all situations, it hasn't bothered developing a range of plans executed by a variety of methods to achieve maximum success.

Lastly, Hamas's politicos labor under the misapprehension that they must not interfere with the conduct of the war. Thus, in July 2001, Hamas chief Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi — the charmer who has now succeeded Yassin — told Reuters that "the [Hamas] political leadership has freed the hand of the [military] brigades to do whatever they want against the brothers of monkeys and pigs." Then, last Wednesday, Khaled Mashaal, who heads Hamas's political wing, was asked whether Sharon was among Hamas's prospective targets. "Yes," he replied, "but this is up to the military leadership in the field and its capabilities. I hope that they are successful." He didn't know or care how this assassination would be achieved; instead, he was leaving it up to the "military leadership" to do whatever they wanted and damn the political consequences: Perhaps it would take the form of a car bomb on a crowded street, or of a rocket attack during a state visit by a European foreign minister, or maybe even mowing down 2,000 Americans during a Sharon speech in Washington.

Basically, so long as the military wing keeps killing people, the political wing is happy, and if the political wing is happy, then the military wing keeps killing people. In other words, neither the political nor the military wing attempts to steer operations so as to arrive at a specific destination, but instead both are content to drift on cruise control. The Hamas politicos, in their stupor, possess only the illusion of control, but then again, the military types don't have their hand on the brake either. That's because there is no brake, nor even a gearbox. Unlike the political and military wings of Hezbollah or the IRA, which carefully calibrated the tenor and intensity of their attacks, and closely coordinated with each other, it's as if Hamas's twin cogs were placed so far apart that they, despite whirring like mad, cannot mesh. Which means Hamas is getting nowhere fast.

Hamas, in short, is simultaneously fighting two wars, from neither of which can it emerge victorious. On one level, that of the abstract, it is waging "absolute war" — a purely theoretical, but senseless, endless, and remorseless, state of conflict encompassing the total annihilation of the enemy — against a far cleverer opponent focusing on fulfilling limited political aims. Hamas is furiously spinning its wheels but gaining no traction — even as Israeli snipers are peeling off shots at the driver. On another level, the real-world one, Hamas has created for itself the conditions of total war, wherein politics (i.e., rational calculation) and chance have been completely sublimated to the violent, frenzied emotionalism of the military effort. Thankfully, nobody in Hamas seems to be in charge of fine-tuning the wunderliche dreifaltigheit, and the death of the unifying figure of Sheikh Yassin can only contribute to this grotesque organization's self-defeating negligence.

— Alexander Rose is NR’s deputy managing editor.

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