On Tuesday, January 2, a drone strike in a densely populated neighborhood in southern Beirut killed Hamas’ deputy political head Saleh Al-Arouri as well as six other members. A day later, deadly explosions in Iran. And news of Israel bracing for an escalation of war in Lebanon.

How do these chain of events affect the path of the war in Gaza, but more broadly the entire Middle East, and how could they undercut US efforts to head off a broader regional war if it does not act fast.

Cairo Review Senior Editor Nadeen Shaker interviews Abdalhadi Alijla, Palestinian political scientist and rebel governance expert, and author of the book Trust in Divided Societies.  This interview was recorded on January 3, 2024.

Nadeen Shaker: Today is day 89 since the start of the war, and it continues into the new year unfortunately. I wanted to ask you, what is the current situation like for the Palestinians, especially your family, which I know has been tremendously affected and displaced by the war? How are they doing now? 

Abdalhadi Alijla: Well, my family is like all other families in the Gaza Strip. They are dehumanized. They are displaced. They are fighting for their lives in terms of finding food, the scarcity of food, but also the lack of medical care, considering my mother is 76 years old. And also other members of the family, they needed some, for example, my sister is pregnant,

eight months and her pregnancy is a bit difficult. And so my family is like the rest of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, suffering and their lives can be changed in any moment. 

NS: Are they now in the South?

AA: Well, yes, they left in the first week when Israel started to bomb indiscriminately in the Gaza City. We are from the Gaza City, my family from the Shuja’iyya area, which has been destroyed. So they’re displaced in different areas in the South. Some sisters in Rafah, others Khan Yunis, some in Deir el-Balah, and some in Nuseirat and some in Zuwaida. 

And for me, that was a relief, actually, that they are scattered all over the place. So in the beginning, I was a bit worried when they were in Gaza in one house, because Israel was targeting houses, in this case it didn’t happen, but like other families, the Doghmush family lost 120 persons in one strike. So it was a relief that they are in the south scattered about the Strip.

NS: And is the cadence of bombing the same? Has it increased, stabilized or what are they telling you? 

AA: The airstrikes have been diminished, but the other strikes from the artillery, from the tanks continues, and driving people to the south continues. Asking people to flee, bombing houses, bombing shelters continues. Last night, also the air has some air strikes in Khan Yunis and in al-Wusta.  

So the situation there is, on one hand, Israel is decreasing the number of airstrikes but increasing the ground offensive. But also that could be because Israel now is paying attention to the northern borders with Hezbollah and Lebanon. But then anyway, the people continues to die. Last night only in Khan Yunis 50 people were killed. Of course we cannot compare it to a few weeks ago when 300 or 400 people were killed. But still one life matters here, and the majority of them, mostly children.

NS: I hope your family remains safe. You did mention the intensification of the ground offensive. And yesterday we saw on this, Reuters specifically reported that the Israeli army is reconfiguring its troops. So they’re pulling some from south of Gaza. And like you mentioned, placing some reservists in the north on the border with Lebanon or returning to Israel. And this is actually a point that you rightly predicted in one of your tweets, you said that Israel might tire easily, because it was never used to this prolonged type of warfare. But also, there might be another plan in mind, like you said, with the ground offensive. So what do these moves tell us about where the war is heading right now?

AA: This is the first real long war that Israel and the Israeli armies engaged in, and Israel cannot manage long wars. And that’s why pulling out is because the fighters are tired, mentally and psychologically. You cannot push a soldier or officer in insurgency war for two months to fight with all these atrocities, with all these cartes blanche to kill, to shed blood, to destroy, to do this without backlash of mental health issues. And that tells us about the reports that the last the two days, that Israeli psychologists have fled, many of them have fled Israel, because they couldn’t handle this, and moved to the UK. And that’s according to Haaretz. But also last week when one of the soldiers woke up from his sleep, and took his gun and shot all his comrades, that soldiers and while they were sleeping, and he was like having a hallucination.

NS: Like PTSD. 

AA: Exactly. So from one side, they still ask that they want to pull them because the more they are inside the Gaza Strip, the more they are going to have backlash and negative consequences on the whole society. But another factor is the Israeli economy. I mean, the Israeli economy is weak. Two days ago, the Israeli central bank, they said that the cost of war until now was around more than 200 billion Shekels. And that’s a huge amount, because the Israeli society is a militarized society. So everyone above the age of 18 or 20, is a person that must serve in the army. So if the economy stops, what is left? So they need to pull out some of them to work. 

But the third here, which is the important reason hear, which is because Netanyahu now is under pressure from the society. Pressure from his peers and the government, and also has the opposition as well, because the elections are coming. So Netanyahu, the only option for him now is to run forward. And the longer the war is, the longer is his survival. And that’s why he from one side, he wants to keep the status quo in Gaza, like it is now. Because if he keeps pushing on Gaza, then Jordan, Egypt and the international, I mean, some of the countries in the West will say okay, we need to find a solution for this. And the Americans told him, we gave you carte blanche, now you need to give a political price for this, peaceful settlement with the Palestinian Authority.  So now he will continue his operation in Gaza to minimal. He will minimize the daily casualties of Gazans. But he will keep the troops there. 

NS: And that’s you say a way for him to stay in power just to prolong the war. 

AA: And that’s his idea, in my opinion, but also another war he can create, which is in Lebanon, because they have been for a long time, threatening Lebanon, threatening Hezbollah and saying that we have limits. We restrained ourselves for a long time. So now with the killing of Saleh Al-Aroury in Lebanon, it’s crossing the red line for Hezbollah. Because Hezbollah have mentioned any killing on the Lebanese citizens will To find a response. So what Hezbollah is going to do is it will respond, but it will not escalate to the limit of full blown war.

Because not Hezbollah, not Lebanon, and not Israel can handle this. And the Americans now are really worried. And they are not interested in a war in the Middle East. So now, Netanyahu is trapping the Americans in the Middle East. So that’s based on this. I think Hezbollah would restrain itself a bit. They will respond, but it can take some days, some weeks. But the Americans will try now to find a solution as soon as possible, because any response now will cause full blown war. But my predictions here is very pessimistic. I have written this a few, like six weeks ago, on one of my [tweets], that if the Americans didn’t stop, Netanyahu now, that was six weeks ago, we are going through the regionalization of the conflict. And after regionalization of the conflict, this conflict will take like 20, 30 years to end, and that could include later on the collapse of some regimes in the area, in the region, including Egyptian and Jordanian regimes. And that will have really huge consequences on the whole region, American interests, and even everyone in the world, which seems like now it’s happening now. But it’s not happening so fast, but it’s going gradually to this direction. 

NS: So the apocalyptic worst case scenario for you is that this blows into a regional war. And somehow, the Americans are absorbed into it, as you mentioned that the Israelis have trapped Americans right now in bringing them into this war and also escalating, like you said, on the border with Lebanon, which is something that no one wants really. Can you elaborate more on that statement? What do you think the American role is right now or should be?

AA: So the idea here, in the second day, on the eighth of October, Americans sent their warships to the region. It was signaling that we will stand with Israel, we will not allow Hezbollah to be engaged directly. Hezbollah was engaged to three kilometers, and then to five kilometers.

And there were some informal rules and regulations between Hezbollah and Israel. But later on, like few days ago, the Americans, after the call between Biden and Natanyahu, about pushing Gazans outside of Gaza to Sinai, and about destruction of Gaza City, and because Netanyahu felt the euphoria, and Smotrich and others, the excitement destruction, that they can do whatever they want. So the Americans wanted to tell them now, that the military support for you has diminished. And that’s why two days ago, they withdrew these warships from the Mediterranean.

So Netanyahu, what he did, was okay, I’m going to trap you again. So now he attacked Lebanon, Beirut. It’s a legitimate country. It’s not Hamas. It’s not the Gaza Strip. It’s a member of the United Nations. And now Hezbollah will respond. So the Americans now will be forced to come back, but coming back for the Americans here is not a normal comeback. Because they come back to attack for example, Lebanon, which is not like attacking Afghanistan. It’s not attacking Yemen. Because Hezbollah has a regional power, they have regional alliances. The Houthis, they have power. The Iraqis, and the Iranians. Gaza is already on fire, but also you have Syria. This could escalate very much. 

If the Americans directly engaged, and as a [Hezbollah is] a regional power, it will take some time to inflame, but if the Americans engaged directly in this war, then the international war, or global conflict, will erupt because who is going to support the Iranian alliances? Who’s going to support those to humiliate the Americans more in response to the Ukrainian War? The Russians.  So we are back to square zero of the 60s, 70s where the proxy wars happened, but as global regional wars. 

NS: I did not think about that at all, that’s an interesting scenario that you propose. Does it look at all that the the Americans are trying to stop the war or will try to, especially with global pressure that we’re seeing, you know, from demonstrations that might push them eventually to force Israel to stop the war? Do you think that that is possible? 

AA: Okay, we have here two things. We need to discuss how the American society is affected by this, how the American economy is affected by this, how the United States is affected by this. It’s nothing. I mean, who is more affected by this and will be affected by this is Europe. That’s why Macron the French president, the Spanish, even the Luxembourgian and the Belgian, and even the British Foreign Minister were like, skeptical, like we need to stop this because the escalation here is going to affect Europe more.

NS: In terms of a refugee crisis?

AA: No, not only refugee crisis, because this is related also to how terrorist organizations will exploit this crisis, exploit the radicalization, the bad and good radicalization among young people in the worldd. Like ISIS is coming back, because we see now escalation in Iraq and Syria. al-Qaeda have already issued statements. So they are coming back, but this time, they will, the terrorism, because these groups are opportunistic, and, and such terrorist groups can really, at this point, recruit people easily. So we could expect some terror attacks. And these attacks will not happen in the United States. This will happen in Europe, mostly. Where we European Muslims,  European Arabs, and European Palestinians also will suffer as well. And that’s why the Americans don’t care that much, how much it can escalate. So to answer your question, because what controls the American policy now is full support to Israel, whatever it takes. 

NS: There needs to be some serious rethinking of, you know, policies and what the future holds.

I did want to go back to Hamas, I know we’ve went into interesting areas, but I did want to talk about, the strategic goals of Hamas since October 7. And with this blown up war, and the intensification of the humanitarian crisis, Hamas said that they will take political responsibility for whatever happens. I’m wondering how that translates to Gazans, first of all, how do they perceive Hamas and how they’re fighting this war? You know, you mentioned the resistance and how it’s persistent. But also Hamas;s legitimacy regionally and globally.

AA: Before seven of October, actually, on the sixth of October, I finished research on the protests against Hamas in the Gaza Strip since 2007. And there were 12 huge protests against Hamas governance and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. 

NS: What are the reasons for the protests?

AA: They are against Hamas governance, about corruption, about lack of policy, about lack of opportunities, about the economy, about poor services and so on. And people in Gaza were not satisfied with Hamas, and Hamas popularity in the Gaza Strip was really low. After the war it’s different. And if we ask about the Gaza Strip, it’s different from the West Bank. Hamas popularity in the West Bank was high before, and in Gaza it wasn’t that high. To be honest, it was minimal, like maybe 20, 25 percent max. But after the war, I think it increased by only a margin, like one, two, three percent max in the Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, it increased by 10 percent. So we are talking about a Hamas popularity increase [in the West Bank], and that’s because their agenda, they have an agenda, they have a political program that adopted military resistance. However, and that’s we were talking about end of November. 

If we talk about the popularity of military resistance, I think that the majority of Palestinians are now believing that the only way to free the Palestinians, and to free the Palestinian land, and to free the Palestinian dignity, and to get their own rights and self determination, is through military resistance. Because when we are talking about the Gaza Strip, now, and that’s a month ago, 70 percent of the Palestinians have either lost somebody, or somebody of their family is wounded, or they lost their home. Personally, myself, I have lost, that’s what I know, I lost my niece, one niece, I lost two cousins with their whole families, around 25 persons. And based on some figures now, which are rumors, because many are under the rubble and we have no communication, there are some, as many as 30 members of my family also were killed in Gaza City. So only myself is around 50 people I know were killed. And that’s just me. So you can imagine how other Palestinians…. So here, Hamas popular or popularity for military resistance, will not be questioned by any Palestinian because their level of aggravations here is so high that Israel created monsters of military resistance and freedom fighters. 

NS: You brought up an interesting point about military resistance being the only path to resist at this point. I had one question that I really wanted to ask you. And it’s about war objectives and whether they could change track. And Israel had stated and vowed very firmly that it will destroy Hamas all costs. You spoke about how that’s an impossibility because of how Hamas functions or combat style, you know, the labyrinth of tunnels that they built, the landscape of destruction that’s helping them take cover their structure, all that. I wanted to ask you, if you feel the same way? And also, what are Hamas’ trends and pressure points, you think? 

AA: Well, I’m still actually, I’m more convinced than before that this is [an impossible] goal. And it is actually not just my, that’s what I wrote some time ago, but now there’s Israel commentators, and Israeli generals, and Israeli head of security agencies, former ones, they are talking about the same thing, that it’s impossible to destroy Hamas. You can weaken Hamas but you cannot destroy it. 

The war objectives were actually changed. Only two days ago, the Israeli spokesperson said that now we are pulling the troops because one of the main objectives of our military campaign, to stop rockets from Gaza Strip, has been achieved. And it has never been the objective of the Israeli army to have this, but exactly three hours after, Hamas launched a barrage of rockets on Tel Aviv. So Israel’s army said we we took control of Jabalia and north of Gaza. That was three weeks ago. But every day an Israeli soldier officer is being killed in the north of Gaza. So the objectives of the Israeli campaign cannot be achieved. 

That’s one thing. So their objective after three months, if we talk about, if we take their objectives from day one, freeing the hostages. They haven’t freed any hostages so far, except those by negotiation, and they tried to free three hostages or four, and they killed them. And then the second one is to end Hamas. They haven’t ended Hamas. To stop the rockets if we want to consider it. They haven’t stopped the rockets. To destroy Hamas tunnels. They have discovered only 10 tunnels, maybe. 

So what we see here is that Israel’s objective is to destroy Gaza and Gazans and civilians and their lives in there, nothing more, nothing less. And here, look yesterday when they killed a Hamas leader in Beirut, they killed only four people. They didn’t use bombs, they didn’t destroy the whole area. They didn’t kill 100 or 500 people. They just killed four people that they targeted. They could do that in Gaza. They could have done that in Gaza. They could have used these techniques in Gaza, targeted killing. But they didn’t do that because the objective was clear, that is the destruction of Gaza and killing as much as possible from the civilians.

NS: Thank you for listening to Podcast Palestine; the War on Gaza and to my guest Abdelhadi Alijla. This episode was produced by myself and by the Cairo Review’s deputy senior editor Omar Auf.

Let us know what you thought of this episode and share your feedback with us on social media. You can also read a transcript of this interview on the Cairo Review website. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Salam