Gaza Special Hot Docs: Israel, Hamas Girding for a Long Fight, Have Conflicting Strategies

Gaza Fight May Be Long : The current conflict in Gaza may mark the beginning of a long fight between Israel and Hamas, a new analysis suggests. Jeffrey White, a defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, outlines the military options available to both sides. Israel, he notes, has launched a "significant challenge to Hamas," the biggest since 2006. He concludes that both Hamas and Israel seem to be preparing for a long fight: "The current conflict does not appear likely to end quickly, with plenty of dangerous potential for widening and escalating in intensity." Meanwhile, an opinion piece suggests that the Gaza violence is not likely to resolve conflict in that region in the short term, but it could provide an opening for diplomatic means that ultimately could remove Hamas from power. Robert Satloff, executive director of the institute, is not surprised by the new round of fighting, calling Hamas "an existential adversary of Israel" and saying that the conflict "was born the day Hamas took control of the Strip." Satloff calls upon the United States to take the lead in international diplomacy by working to enforce conditions and sanctions against Hamas and to strengthen the Palestinian Authority as a legitimate alternative.

Hamas and Israel: "Conflicting Strategies": A paper released just prior to last week's events in Gaza looks at the recent history underlying tensions between the Palestinians and Israelis, which have increased in recent years—particularly since Hamas's success in the 2006 election. In a paper made available by the Federation of American Scientists, analyst Sharifa Zuhur of the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute writes that Israel's attitude towards Hamas has been "a major obstacle to substantive peacemaking" and that Israel's subsequent actions reveal that Hamas is indeed "at the nexus of Israel's domestic, Palestinian, and regional objectives." Despite the facts that Israel and Hamas may each seem "recalcitrant" and that their goals "appear mutually exclusive," Zuhur hopes that each will be "capable of revising its desired endstate and of necessary concessions to establish and preserve a long-term truce, or even a longer-term peace." She warns, though, that continued feelings of insecurity "may lead Israel to reconquer the Gaza Strip or the West Bank and continue engaging in 'pre-emptive deterrence' or attacks on other states in the region in the longer term."

• Read more about why the war in Gaza broke out now.