Tahani Mustafa is the senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group, where she works on issues including security and sociopolitical and legal governance in the West Bank. She holds a Ph.D. in politics and international studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is based between the United Kingdom, Jordan, and Palestine. Diwan interviewed Mustafa in late October to get her perspective on the conflict in Gaza and its repercussions for the Palestinians in general.
Michael Young: Will Israel send its troops into Gaza, and if so with what objectives?
Tahani Mustafa: Israel has already sent its troops into Gaza on several small-scale incursions, confining itself to open areas near its border with Gaza. It will likely only send its forces into more heavily built-up areas when it can minimize the risks, possibly after it is sure that it has destroyed buildings and tunnels through aerial bombardments, as these could be used to ambush and attack its soldiers.
It seems likely that these incursions will continue and grow in scale. Israel has not committed to reoccupying Gaza, which would very probably expose its soldiers to too great a risk. Its incursions are likely to be short, sharp, and accompanied by overwhelming force to minimize risks. These operations may well be concentrated in the north of the strip, as that is the part from which it has ordered civilians to evacuate and where it has given notification that it will focus its operations against Hamas, including operations to recover hostages.
However, it is unclear that bombardment and incursions in the north will destroy Hamas or its operational capacity, even if Israel does succeed in destroying all of Hamas’ tunnel network there. It seems likely that the tunnel network in the south is also considerable, and given that the majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is now crowded into the south of the strip, operations there will be much more difficult. The risk of massive civilian casualties, which will provoke a significant international response, are also much higher there.
MY: While Israeli leaders were quick to declare that they would enter Gaza and seek to end Hamas’ presence, they have not yet done so. Why is that, and does it tell us something about Israel’s military effectiveness?
TM: Israel is afraid of excessive casualties among its own troops. Its strategy has always been to achieve maximal impact through overwhelming firepower in order to minimize Israeli casualties. But also, Israel’s army has had little experience of actual combat for decades. Many of its current conscripts and reservists do not have any battlefield experience beyond manning checkpoints and harassing ordinary Palestinians. Even search and arrest operations, carried out by elite troops not conscripts, have proven to be difficult. And Hamas fighters are well trained, determined, and experienced in asymmetrical warfare. They also know the terrain in Gaza and are well dug in.
MY: You have mentioned the trouble the Israeli military had earlier this year in attacking Jenin. Can you describe what happened and explain why we should assume that they might have similar problems in Gaza?
TM: Urban warfare is difficult and Israeli soldiers have not demonstrated high levels of capability and professionalism in recent urban operations. Palestinians in the West Bank have developed tactics and strategies to impede and counter Israel’s urban incursions, including using improvised explosive and incendiary devices to disable vehicles and tanks. Given that Hamas’ level of professionalism and training exceeds that of West Bank groups, it’s possible their tactics could be more effective.
Israeli forces have not found it easy to enter refugee camps and urban neighborhoods a fraction of the size of Gaza, where they have fought groups that are far less experienced and not as well organized and equipped as Hamas. Last July, in Jenin camp, a territory measuring one square kilometer, they had to deploy 2,000 ground troops, before calling in an aerial bombardment and helicopters to rescue them. Several Israeli armored vehicles and a tank were destroyed by homemade incendiary devices. The same thing happened in Tulkarem just this week, where a search and arrest operation engaged Israeli forces for 26 hours due to clashes with militants. It also happened in the old city of Nablus in March in an operation against the Lion’s Den group, which tied down Israel’s most elite unit for five hours in a shootout to target five boys under the age of 30. Israeli forces had to resort to using fragmentation explosives in a densely populated residential neighborhood.
MY: The Iranians and their allies have made it clear that if Israel deploys in Gaza to crush Hamas, they will not stand idly by. This implies that they may try to open new fronts against Israel and, even, the United States. How likely, do you think, it is that the West Bank will enter the battle? What would the consequences be?
TM: Israeli provocations in the West Bank are already escalating tensions and resistance against Israeli forces there. Many young Palestinians have been increasingly supportive of, and some have actually joined, armed resistance groups because of the increasingly hard-line attitude of the Israeli government over the past two years. It took Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) two years to dissolve, destroy, or coopt these groups, and they only really managed to finally get a grip on the situation after the raid in Jenin last July 3–5. However, the latest round of preemptive raids, arrests, and rising violence by setters and the Israeli army itself since October 7 have spurred a resurgence of armed resistance in various localities. However, these movements are defensive in nature and are largely leaderless.
The current deterioration in the security situation has weakened the PA and its security forces. Given the political sensitivity of the situation in light of what’s happening in Gaza, for the PA to be seen as arresting fighters resisting the occupation will only serve to delegitimize it further. There is the potential that it will fuel growing resistance in the West Bank, which thus far is still largely localized, amorphous, and leaderless. At the moment, this resistance is driven by the shared desperation of people at the grassroots level. They do not have a clear strategy or objective beyond pushing back against the occupation.
MY: The Palestinian issue had been placed on the backburner for so long that many people seemed to forget about it. The events of the past three weeks have shown the error in this attitude. Why was there such a misreading of the situation, and where will the realization that the Palestinians can no longer be ignored actually lead?
TM: It is not clear that this will change until the growing support for Palestinians in the face of Israeli occupation transforms the largely uncritical support of Israel in the corridors of power in Western capitals. Popular sympathy and support for Palestinians seems to have grown over the years, but it is still only really mobilized as a potential political force when Israel attacks Palestinians in over-the-top, brutal ways. Even on occasions such as the current all-out Israeli assault on Gaza it does not seem to be able to shift the needle much. After Hamas’ attack on October 7, it was clear from Israeli official statements that Israel intended to violate international humanitarian law in its response. However, it was not until much later that Western leaders even hinted that Israel should moderate its military action.
Yes, the events of the last two weeks do show the dangers of ignoring the Palestinian issue, but Israel and the international community have willfully drawn the wrong lessons from this. They have not concluded that they should take the plight of Gaza and the Palestinians seriously; only that they should launch an even harsher military response to crush them. When Palestinians are quiescent, they are ignored; when they fight back they are demonized.
MY: Are we on the cusp of a new Middle East, and if so what might the new region look like?
TM: We may be at a new inflection point in the Middle East—at a time when the status quo is being challenged and a new status quo is in the making. But the last inflection point in the region was the Arab Spring, and that resulted in an escalation of political repression and violence, a strengthening of autocratic rule across the region, and Western support for a turn away from the possibility of even a slightly more democratic order across the region.
Unfortunately, the forces that led this counterrevolutionary movement against the popular and democratic tendencies of the Arab Spring are still very strong in the region, so the fact that the Middle East could be reaching another inflection point does not necessarily mean it will go in a positive direction.
