MOSCOW, August 7 (RIA Novosti) — The devastation of Gaza, the Hamas-dominated enclave, has caused a storm of fierce anti-Israeli comments in media, however, both sides of the conflict bear the responsibility for the incessant bloodshed, experts claim.
"Israel does not deserve all the blame. Arab political and religious leaders, despite historic grievances, have a duty to recognize that Israel is their neighbor," states Ed Husain, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in his article "Bring Hamas to the Table" for the CNN.
Israel removed its military forces from the Gaza Strip amid the Egypt-mediated 72-hours ceasefire with Hamas. However, no one can predict if the ceasefire will turn into a long-term truce.
According to Gaza officials, the Palestinian death toll has reached 1,867, most of those killed were civilians. Due to a disproportionate attack launched by the Israeli military Gaza urban infrastructure has been massively destructed. Referring to these facts human rights activists accused Jerusalem of committing war crimes, and called upon the international community to hold a "Nuremberg trial" against Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a public speech following the start of the 72-hour cease-fire, voiced deep regret over civilian casualties, but placed the blame entirely on Hamas. He pointed out that his main goal was to protect his people, saying that Israeli forces were shooting back at rockets fired from civilian areas.
“Let’s imagine your country attacked by 3,500 rockets. Your territories infiltrated by death squads. What would you do?” he said. “What if the rockets are fired from civilian areas … should you then not take action?”
Meanwhile, the majority of Israelis do not consider this war a "victory" over Hamas, the latest poll indicated. The Haaretz reports that more than half of those surveyed claim that neither side had won and point out that the main goal of destroying Hamas' tunnels and defeating the insurgents was only partially achieved.
"For Israel the most important issue is the issue of demilitarisation. We must prevent Hamas from rearming, we must demilitarise the Gaza Strip," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, cited by Reuters.
The Israeli-Hamas standoff has begun in the late 1980s. A Palestinian branch of Muslim Brotherhood movement, Hamas does not recognize Israel as an autonomous country and demands a formation of the Palestine based on its 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital.
Since the 1990-ies, Hamas’ paramilitary brigades have been conducting terrorist attacks against Israel and its people. In 2006, Hamas won over the ruling Fatah secular party in legislative elections. Since then it has significantly increased its influence over Palestine, becoming a powerful political force in the region with its headquarters in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
"To my Hamas hosts, Israel's operation in Lebanon in 2006, or its attack on Gaza in 2009, were huge victories," writes Ed Husein in his Op-Ed in the CNN. The researcher cites an unnamed Hamas leader: "When the Israelis were fighting Yasser Arafat and the PLO, the Arabs were losing <…> But now, with Hezbollah and Hamas, we fight to die, to kill. We believe in martyrdom. We don't flee from the battlefield. We are now winning. We fight Israel and want to fight again and again."
Hamas is not a "monolith," notes Ed Husein: while its radical part is conducting terror attacks against Israel, the moderate movement's groups are establishing school networks, mosques, makeshift hospitals, banking services. Hamas has turned into a social and political force that Israel has to deal with, notes the expert. However, the question remains open, to what extent the moderate wing of Hamas can maintain control over numerous Islamist insurgents, funded and supported by Qatar and Salafi Muslim groups.
In April 2014, IHS Jane's Defense Weekly reported, citing the Israeli security sources, that Hamas has established operational links with al-Qaeda related Salafist-Jihadist groups in Egypt's Sinai in order to launch joint terror attacks against Israel. Amid the Egyptian crackdown on the Jihadist movement, Palestinian territory has become a source of arms and a training ground for Islamist fighters.
Earlier this year the Jerusalem Post pointed out that since the Muslim Brotherhood was ousted from Egypt the number of terrorists from the Northern Sinai has increased dramatically. "For Israel, the emergent insurgency raises the prospect of two de facto al-Qaida-controlled areas adjoining its border – one in southern Syria, and the other in the Salafi playground that is now northern Sinai," wrote the Israeli media source.
While some of Islamist militants are linked to international Jihadi networks, namely the notorious al-Qaeda, others have connections with Gaza Hamas insurgents. It should be noted that Salafi terrorist groups are well-known not only for their anti-Israeli stance, but also for ruthless attacks on Syrian and Iraqi Christian enclaves.
Experts claim that the wave of civil wars that has shaken the Middle East in the last four years resulted in the creation of numerous well-armed terrorist groups, which pose a substantial threat to the whole region.
Apparently, Israel is facing a moral dilemma: whether to suspend its military offensive on Hamas and save the lives of innocent civilians or continue the exhaustive struggle that "makes Israel weaker and more hated around the world," Ed Husain concludes. The choice is unclear, as it's difficult to reveal the true face of modern Hamas.
Benjamin Netanyahu emphasizes this position by reminding the world that “Israel deeply regrets every civilian casualty, every single one. The people of Gaza are not our enemy, our enemy is Hamas,” he states, as cited by the Los Angeles Times.
