The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

It has been said that Israel has always “lived in a tough neighborhood.”  That was true in the Ancient world when Israel was surrounded by the Philistia, Edom, Moab, Ammon, Phoenicia; to the south ancient Egypt; and to the east Assyria, and later Babylonia.  Today, Israel enjoys a peace treaty with Egypt and Jordan but faces Hezbollah to the north (in Lebanon), Hamas to the west (in Gaza) and, of course, Iran to the east.  Both Hezbollah and Hamas are supported by and funded by Iran.  Together, these three entities pose an existential threat to modern Israel.  In this Perspective, I want to focus on Hezbollah and Hamas.

First Hezbollah:  Israel and Hezbollah have repeatedly traded strikes since the Gaza war began in October, killing civilians and combatants in Lebanon and Israel, with most of the civilian casualties in Lebanon. The hostilities have also forced more than 150,000 people on both sides of the border to leave their homes for temporary shelters. That has put pressure on the Israeli government to make the north of the country safe for residents again by pushing Hezbollah back from the border region.

Vivian Yee of the New York Times provides a helpful summary of Hezbollah.

• “What is Hezbollah?”  Israel had occupied southern Lebanon since 1982, initially to protect northern Israel from continued shelling from Lebanon. Tragically, it turned into a guerilla war led by Hezbollah (“Party of God”), a Shiite-Muslim terrorist militia then heavily financed and armed by Syria and Iran.  Since Israeli casualties remained frustratingly high, on 24 May 2000 Israel completely withdrew from Lebanon.  Hezbollah championed this as a decisive defeat for Israel and set up bases and rocket launching sites all over southern Lebanon—in private homes, bunkers and schools.  Hezbollah was therefore founded in the 1980s, after Israel, responding to attacks, invaded and occupied southern Lebanon, intending to root out the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was then based in the country.  But Israel soon ran into a new foe, one whose guerrilla fighters quickly grew effective at bedeviling the far-better-equipped Israeli forces: Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim popular movement that made driving Israel out of Lebanon their major goal.  As Israel withdrew from Lebanon, Hezbollah became a hero to many Lebanese. It fought Israel again in 2006, launching a military operation into its southern neighbor that led to a fierce counterattack. In that war, Israel rained bombs on southern Lebanon and Beirut, the capital; the fighting killed more than 1,000 Lebanese.  “Yet, the Israeli military never managed to overwhelm Hezbollah in 34 days of war, allowing the group and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, to emerge as stars in an Arab world wearily accustomed to being defeated by Israel.  Hezbollah soon allied with Iran, and they became close partners.”  Hezbollah considered a terrorist group by the United States and other countries, has evolved from a fighting force into a dominant political one, accruing significant influence in Lebanon’s government.
• “What would a wider war mean for Lebanon?”  The country is reeling from years of an economic crisis that has left countless Lebanese in poverty and a political one that has stripped citizens of many basic services. The strikes at the border have displaced about 100,000 Lebanese civilians, depriving many of their income and their homes, and have cost the country billions of dollars in lost tourism and agricultural revenue, Lebanese officials say.  “Lebanon can also count on less international support, with its former colonial power, France, distracted by internal politics, said Emile Hokayem, who specializes in Middle East security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Other Arab states and Iran, which pumped money into rebuilding Lebanon after 2006, are less willing or able to help. ‘It was already difficult in 2006, when the economic situation and Lebanon’s international position were considerably better,’ Mr. Hokayem said. ‘The country is not in a position to deal with this conflict.’”  A Hezbollah-Israel war could also metastasize into a larger regional war that would dwarf the ongoing fighting. Such a conflict could draw in Iran, as well as the United States, which has been working to avert further escalation.
• “How strong is Hezbollah?”  “Through propaganda videos and calibrated strikes, Hezbollah has repeatedly displayed signs of a bulked-up arsenal that analysts say is capable of inflicting heavy damage on Israeli cities. Its forces are also battle-tested after years of fighting against rebels in Syria, where Hezbollah sent thousands of fighters during that country’s civil war to help prop up the government of President Bashar al-Assad, a close ally of Iran and Hezbollah . . . Estimates vary about just how many missiles Hezbollah has and just how sophisticated its systems are. The Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook says the group may have more than 150,000 missiles and rockets of various types and ranges. It also estimates that the group has up to 45,000 fighters, though Mr. Nasrallah has claimed to have 100,000.  But analysts and Israeli officials say Hezbollah’s arsenal is considerably more dangerous than Hamas’s because of its precision-guided missiles, which could target critical Israeli infrastructure and military assets.  Hezbollah has also displayed exploding drones that can elude Israel’s Iron Dome, the detect-and-shoot-down system designed to protect the country from incoming rockets and missiles. The group also appears to have anti-tank missiles that fly too fast and too low for the Iron Dome to intercept.” Some in Israel are wary of exposing their country to such an arsenal. But others argue that Israel must do something before Hezbollah grows stronger.

Second is Hamas, which means “zeal” and is an Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, which emerged as a political force in the late 1980s from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.  From 2000 to 2003, violence exploded across Israel in what has been called Intifada II.  It has also been called the “Al-Aqsa Intifada” because in September of 2000, Ariel Sharon, the leader of the Likud Party in Israel, visited Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which incited a massive violent response from the Palestinians.  The violence was dreadful, for it included numerous homicide bombings killing dozens of Israeli citizens.  Seeking to kill or capture the terrorist leaders, Israel retaliated, in what was known as Operation Defensive Shield, by invading Palestinian cities, refugee camps and other terrorist hideouts.  Israel even blockaded Arafat’s compound in Ramallah.  In addition, the new Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, implemented a different strategy, the physical separation of the Palestinians and Israelis.  An immense security fence, and in some sections a wall, was built during 2003-2004—and the terrorist violence and homicide bombings ended.  Further, Sharon ordered the Israeli evacuation of the Gaza Strip, turning it over completely to the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the summer of 2005.  In 2006, elections in Gaza were held and Hamas won a resounding victory.  Today, Palestinian control of the disputed territory is divided between the Palestinian Authority (the West Bank) and Hamas (Gaza).  The PA continues to negotiate with Israel; Hamas refuses to do so.

On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched an invasion of Israel with thousands of its troops killing over 1,200 Israelis and taking about 250 Israeli hostages.  Hamas and its allies also fired a barrage of rockets toward civilian areas of Israel, including roughly 3,000, often using launchers hidden in densely populated civilian neighborhoods in Gaza.  Israel then invaded Gaza with the clear intent of destroying Hamas, thereby ending its ability to ever again invade Israel.

Patrick Kingsley, Natan Odenheimer, Aaron Boxerman, Adam Sella and Iyad Abuheweila of the New York Time, have provided an immensely helpful analysis of the status of Hamas nine months after the Hamas invasion of Israel:  “They hide under residential neighborhoods, storing their weapons in miles of tunnels and in houses, mosques, sofas — even a child’s bedroom — blurring the boundary between civilians and combatants.  They emerge from hiding in plainclothes, sometimes wearing sandals or tracksuits before firing on Israeli troops, attaching mines to their vehicles, or firing rockets from launchers in civilian areas.  They rig abandoned homes with explosives and tripwires, sometimes luring Israeli soldiers to enter the booby-trapped buildings by scattering signs of a Hamas presence.  Through eight months of fighting in Gaza, Hamas’s military wing—the Qassam Brigades—has fought as a decentralized and largely hidden force, in contrast to its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which began with a coordinated large-scale maneuver in which thousands of uniformed commandos surged through border towns and killed roughly 1,200 people.  Instead of confronting the Israeli invasion that followed in frontal battles, most Hamas fighters have retreated from their bases and outposts, seeking to blunt Israel’s technological and numerical advantage by launching surprise attacks on small groups of soldiers.  From below ground, Hamas’s ghost army has appeared only fleetingly, emerging suddenly from a warren of tunnels — often armed with rocket-propelled grenades — to pick off soldiers and then returning swiftly to their subterranean fortress. Sometimes, they have hid among the few civilians who decided to remain in their neighborhoods despite Israeli orders to evacuate, or accompanied civilians as they returned to areas that the Israelis had captured and then abandoned.”

• “Hamas’s decision to keep fighting has proved disastrous for the Palestinians of Gaza. With Hamas refusing to surrender, Israel has forged ahead with a military campaign that has killed nearly 2 percent of Gaza’s prewar population, according to Gazan authorities; displaced roughly 80 percent of its residents, according to the United Nations; and damaged a majority of Gaza’s buildings, according to the U.N.  By contrast, fewer than 350 Israeli soldiers have died in Gaza since the start of the invasion, according to military statistics — far fewer than Israeli officials had predicted in October.”
• Yet despite the carnage in Gaza, Hamas’s strategy has helped the group fulfill some of its own goals.  The war has tarnished Israel’s reputation in much of the world, prompting charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice, in The Hague. It has exacerbated long-running rifts in Israeli society, prompting disagreements among Israelis about whether and how Israel should defeat Hamas. And it has restored the question of Palestinian statehood to global discourse, leading several countries to recognize Palestine as a state.
• “Hamas’s strategy relies on:

1. Using hundreds of miles of tunnels, the scale of which surprised Israeli commanders, to move around Gaza without being seen by Israeli soldiers;
2. Using civilian homes and infrastructure — including medical facilities, U.N. offices and mosques — to conceal fighters, tunnel entrances, booby-traps and ammunition stores;3.  Ambushing Israeli soldiers with small groups of fighters dressed as civilians, as well as using civilians, including children, to act as lookouts;
3. Leaving secret signs outside homes, like a red sheet hanging from a window or graffiti, to signal to fellow fighters the nearby presence of mines, tunnel entrances or weapons caches inside;
4. Dragging out the war for as long as possible, even at the expense of more civilian death and destruction, in order to bog Israel down in an attritional battle that has amplified international criticism of Israel.”

“The aim is to vanish, avoid direct confrontation, while launching tactical attacks against the occupation army. The emphasis is on patience,” said Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, a Hamas member and former fighter in its military wing who is now an analyst based in Istanbul. Before Oct. 7, the Qassam Brigades operated as “an army with training bases and stockpiles,” Mr. al-Awawdeh said. “But during this war, they are behaving as guerrillas.”

• How Hamas Reacted to the Invasion:  “Hamas’s response to Israel’s ground invasion on Oct. 27 became a model for its strategy since.  Having retreated into their labyrinth of tunnels, Hamas fighters had ceded thousands of acres of farmland to Israeli forces . . .  Hamas had been preparing for this moment since at least 2021, when the group began scaling up production of explosives and anti-tank missiles, in preparation for a ground war, and stopped making so many long-range rockets, the Hamas officer said.  It also expanded a vast network of tunnels, creating entry points in houses across Gaza that would allow fighters to enter and exit without being seen from the air but made targets of civilian neighborhoods. The network was fitted with a landline telephone network that is difficult for Israel to monitor and that allows fighters to communicate even during outages to Gaza’s mobile phone networks, which are controlled by Israel, according to the Hamas officer, Mr. al-Awawdeh and Israeli officials.  By the start of the war, Hamas had enough explosives in its underground arsenals for an extended campaign — as well as enough canned vegetables, dates and drinking water to last for at least 10 months, the officer said.”
• “How Hamas Uses Homes:  In addition to setting traps in houses, Hamas has also used residential buildings to conceal scores of small arms caches across the territory, according to more than a dozen Israeli soldiers who have found such stockpiles. The soldiers said it became normal to find munitions hidden inside civilian homes and mosques, which is one of the reasons, they said, the army had destroyed so many such buildings . . . Even in areas where Israel claims to have defeated Hamas, Israeli forces have often had to return, weeks or even months later, to continue the battle against fighters who had survived earlier phases of the war.  For Hamas, ‘it was always about avoiding losses for as long as possible so they can fight another day,’ said Andreas Krieg, an expert on military strategy at King’s College London. ‘They’re nowhere near being defeated.’”

Senior columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Ari Shavit, has written that the 20th century was “the most dramatic century in the dramatic history of the Jews.  In its first half, we lost a third of our people.  But the second half of the century was miraculous.  In North America, we created the perfect diaspora, while in the land of Israel we established modern Jewish sovereignty.  The Jews of the 21st century have today what their great-grandparents could only dream of: equality, freedom, prosperity, dignity.  The persecuted people are now emancipated.  The pitiful people are now proud and independent . . . [Israel] is the demography of hope: an almost extinguished people renewing itself.”   Shavit also documents the staggering success of the Zionist movement in Israel:  “In 1897, approximately 50,000 Jews lived here.  Now the Jewish population exceeds six million . . . In 1897, Jews living in Palestine represented only 0.4 percent of world Jewry.  In 1950 we accounted for 10.6 percent.  In 1980, 25.6 percent.  Now we make up almost 45 percent.  The historic project that aimed to congregate most of the world’s Jews in the Promised Land has had mind-boggling success.  Today, the Jewish community in Israel is one of the two largest in the world.  Given current trends, by 2025 the majority of the world’s Jews will be Israelis.”

Is the optimism inherent in Shavit’s comments now in jeopardy?  At one level yes, Israel is truly facing an existential threat from Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran.  But, Ezekiel 36:16-38 is one the most important passages in Scripture envisaging the restoration of the Jewish people to their land.  As this event is accomplished, Ezekiel exclaimed, the nations will be silent in their amazement of what God has done (vv. 33-36).  I believe quite strongly that in the 21st century we are witnessing that restoration.  But the other dimension of Ezekiel’s prophetic claim is the spiritual restoration of the Jews.  That is detailed in Ezekiel 36:22-32 and 37:15-28.   God will put His Spirit in them; they will obey Him; and they will walk with Him forever.  The fulfillment of God’s covenantal promises to Abraham (land, seed and blessing), to David (an eternal throne, kingdom and dynasty) and the New Covenant of spiritual renewal are foretold in 37:24-28.  The Jewish people will be united as one people, secure in the land God promised them, renewed spiritually, with their Davidic King ruling in their midst.  We await that fulfillment.

See Vivian Yee in the New York Times (7 July 2024); Patrick Kingsley, Natan Odenheimer, Aaron Boxerman, Adam Sella and Iyad Abuheweila in the New York Times (14 July 2024); and James P. Eckman, A Covenant People, pp. 327-328.