IAN:

Starting with Lebanon in 1996 when I got there, I got there in about March of 1996. And in April that year, Hezbollah and Israel got into a war, a 17-day war.

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“During the day, the Israelis hit 30 villages in southern Lebanon in an effort to deal with the Hezbollah rocket cruise and knock out blow. Arab nations have called for an immediate ceasefire.”

IAN:

But essentially Israel's aim was to destroy Hezbollah. What that actually amounted to was the Israelis telling all of the residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate the area because they were going to take on Hezbollah. And a lot of them did, about 400,000 Lebanese citizens, made their way north.

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“Meanwhile, in the port of Tyre, thousands of people fled the city in the hours before an Israeli deadline for attacks. The Israelis have ordered civilians to leave, but Israel launched its assault a full 90 minutes before the deadline.”

IAN:

It was actually not very dissimilar to what we're seeing now in Gaza. Gaza's a lot bigger, of course, and a lot more people.

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“But Hezbollah has continued to defy Israel with more Katyusha rockets, this time aimed at an Israeli school. The bloodshed is set to continue.”

IAN:

So the people in Gaza are in a much worse situation.

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ANGE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am.

Ian Parmeter was Australia’s ambassador to Lebanon in the late 1990s…

And although there’s parallels with what he saw then and what is happening today in Gaza, the situation is very different.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to ‘destroy’ Hamas and prevent it from ever launching an attack like it did on October 7 – but is that even possible?

Today, Ian Parmeter on the history of Hamas, and who would take its place if it were removed from Gaza.

It’s Thursday, November 2nd.

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ANGE:

Ian, Israel's stated aim in this war is to remove Hamas from Gaza. I want to ask if you can explain exactly what Hamas does in Gaza and what they're responsible for?

IAN:

Well, Hamas really got going in late 1987 at about the time of the first intifada or Palestinian uprising.

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“In December 1987, in Gaza, an Israeli driver killed four Palestinian labourers and wounded nine when his car ran off the road. The Israelis termed it an accident. The Palestinians said it was premeditated murder. Whatever the case, the incident sparked an outbreak of Palestinian protests that spread like wildfire throughout the occupied territories.”

IAN:

And initially, it was simply a humanitarian organisation. It wasn't until about 1991, a couple of years later, that Hamas formed a militant wing.

Audio excerpt – Speaker 1:

“Beneath the minarets of the Gaza Strip, a new Palestinian movement has been readying for jihad or holy war with Israel. Uncompromising fundamentalists. The Hamas movement fights only for God.”

Audio excerpt – Speaker 2:

“It is Israel's worst by far the worst and the bloodiest an act of Arab terrorism that has left so many dead and so many injured.”

Audio excerpt – Speaker 3:

“Hamas, the Palestinian extremists opposed to any peace with Israel by anyone, quickly admitted they did it, revenging themselves.”

IAN:

Ironically, Israel initially actually was had a benign attitude towards Hamas because it saw Hamas as being an entity which would take away support from Fatah, which was a secular organisation and which Israel saw as being its main opponent. Fatah was the biggest part of the PLO.

But Hamas has grown significantly. It essentially started initially in Gaza, but it spread quickly to the West Bank. And it did very well because it was far more efficient at distributing social services to Palestinians in both the West Bank and in Gaza.

But Hamas has then become far more militant and has developed a capacity to make essentially homemade rockets, which are are very effective. It's had some Iranian, a lot of Iranian help in doing that and has become a far greater menace to Israel now than Fatah ever was.

Audio excerpt – Benjamin Netanyahu:

“We will exact a prices that will be remembered by them and Israel’s other enemies, for decades to come to the savage attacks that Hamas perpetrated against…”

IAN:

Hamas of course as well as having a social services wing and a militant wing. It does have a political wing. Managing Gaza is a complicated business. Hamas collects taxes. It builds tunnels that have remarkably good tunnels, builders. They have tunnels that actually go under the border with Egypt. And the overall administration involves goods being brought in, being sold within Gaza, or being given away by the social services wing. But they are taxed as well. It's a complicated business.

ANGE:

So Hamas has been in control of Gaza for quite some time now, during that time to now, what has the conflict with Israel been like and how have the two dealt with each other?

IAN:

Well, it's been an extraordinarily hostile relationship. Israel has tried both sticks and carrots. There have been essentially there have been several major wars between Hamas and Israel since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in 2007. And in each of these. Hamas has been firing rockets at Israeli cities, and Israel in retaliation has been hitting Hamas. Now, the destruction of infrastructure has been enormous in all of these wars. And Hamas has simply set about rebuilding it and quite remarkably, has largely done so. But the big problem for Israel is that none of this has worked in terms of making the people get sick of Hamas and and throw it out in some way, nor has it worked in terms of enabling Israel to have any time to get rid of the Hamas as a threat.

Well, I guess getting onto the carrots, this was a very clever tactic by Israel. And for quite a while it seemed to be working. It agreed to, basically, it would security clear up to about 20,000 Gazans and allow them to come into Israel to to work every day.

And Israel, I think before the 7th of October when the Hamas attack on Israel occurred, had been lulled into a false sense of security that this this carrot was so successful that Hamas would now be a relatively benign organisation. I don't think they ever thought that it wouldn't be a menace and it had the capability of being a menace. But they were actually able to almost buy it off with allowing workers to come in and work in Israel.

The big problem was that this false sense of security was false and Israel's intelligence and security didn't pick up signs that Hamas was preparing a major attack.

ANGE:

Seeing as Hamas has such a deep involvement in the administration of Gaza, how much of a challenge would it be to remove Hamas entirely from the territory? Is it even possible?

IAN:

Well, I don't think it is. The problem for Israel is that Hamas is not just a militant or a social services organisation. It's also an ideology. And and the irony is that although there's a lot of corruption within Hamas, and there's a lot of dislike of Hamas in Gaza, this stage isn't any real alternative.

Even if Israel manages to decapitate the leadership of Hamas, almost certainly more junior members of the organisation will put their hands up and say, “well, we're the leaders now, we are Hamas” and Israel will have the same problem that it had before the attacks of 7 October. So I don't think it's going to be successful. And in the meantime, of course, there is some horrible, absolutely dreadful human rights violations that that are occurring. The the blockade of the strip, the bombing of civilian areas is awful to see. And we see that on our television screens all the time. So this is doing Israel a lot of harm in terms of its international image.

The various leaks that have occurred in the American press have indicated that America has two worries about what Israel is doing now. One is that it's not very clear on what its strategy is for its ground assault and just when it actually will be seen to be achieving outcomes. The second thing is that Israel doesn't appear to have a strategy for what happens on the day after the guns fall silent.

And the United States is very anxious that Israel come up with both of those.

ANGE:

Coming up after the break - What does the future look like for Gaza?

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ANGE:

Ian, we're talking about the goal of removing Hamas and whether it's even possible. But the big question is what would come next and who else could be able to run Gaza or other ideas for the future of this territory?

IAN:

Yeah, I wrote an article last week which really set out the six options, which I thought were the only ones that had any potential viability, but none of them were really in any sense good for Israel.

The first one is for Israel to totally reoccupy the Gaza Strip, which really means to have their own troops managing 2.3 million people. And they'll soon be about 3 million people within about a decade. President Biden has said that that's not an option.

The second one is for the Israelis to just simply having decapitated part of the Hamas leadership to declare victory and leave. But that will not solve the problem. Hamas will will still be there.

The third one, that's what we discussed, for the P.A. to take over the Palestinian Authority. And for many reasons, I can't see that happening. The Palestinian Authority doesn't have a good reputation at this stage. Its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, was elected for a four year term in 2005. He's still there. So there's no confidence whatsoever in him as a leader. He has very little authority.

The fourth is for perhaps a non aligned Palestinian one who is not identified with Fatah or Hamas to take over. There are a few of these people around. One of them is a man called Mohammed Dahlan, who actually was born in the Gaza Strip but has lived in the West Bank as well, and now lives in the UAE. He would almost certainly have targets on his back, he’s been seen to be doing Israel's job for it, and that would be the same with any other local leaders who might take over in Hamas's place.

The fifth idea has been an Arab force getting a force that might come from, say, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, perhaps UAE, that, that sort of thing. But again, all of these people of such a force would be seen to be doing Israel's work for it and they would have targets on their backs. And how large a force are you going to need in order to control 2.4 million people? It's certainly not something that any of the Arab states would be prepared to sign up for, in my view.

The final one is for an international force, but perhaps a UN force. But the reality is that Israel has no confidence in the United Nations.

Now, they’re the six and I don't see any of them working. Now maybe the Americans and the Israelis can come up with a seventh that I'm not aware of, but I'm highly doubtful.

ANGE:

Yeah. And hearing you lay out all of those options, it does seem like there isn't a neat solution or vision of what Gaza could look like after this conflict. What does that reality say about how much or how little long term thinking has gone into the war we're seeing today?

IAN:

Well the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced that almost immediately after the attacks of the 7th of October that Israel would completely destroy Hamas.

Now at the time appeared to be a lot of support for that. But interestingly, most recent polling has shown that 49% of Israelis think that that would be a bad idea. And it's partly because they're not sure what the Israeli government would and what the Israeli forces would achieve by going in. They can see that they're inevitably going to be a lot of military casualties. But the bigger concern, of course, is with the over 200 hostages. They are almost certainly scattered in many parts of Gaza and they will be in harm's way of the Israeli bombing of Gaza and also of Israeli ground assault on Gaza. And almost certainly some of these will be killed as a result.

But the big problem is that almost certainly Hamas is not going to let all of the hostages go. It may let some of them go simply to stop the Israeli attack, but I very much doubt that to let all of them go because hostages are extremely valuable to Hamas.

So it's a very strong bargaining chip. And this is, you know, a horrible thing to talk about. And obviously one cannot in any sense condone what what Hamas is doing, but it's the reality of what Israel faces.

And the other thing, the final thing is that international pressure is going to grow. The attack which occurred on the Jabalia refugee camp, which killed, as far as I know at this stage, about 50 people was carried out by Israel to kill one member of Hamas. And at this stage, the whole question of proportionality related to international humanitarian law comes into play. Is it actually within the realms of international humanitarian law for Israel to kill 50 people in order to kill one Hamas member? That's something that international lawyers are going to have to argue about.

ANGE:

Ian, thanks so much for speaking with me today.

IAN:

You're very welcome.

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ANGE:

Also in the news today,

Foreign Minister Penny Wong is calling for Egypt to open a humanitarian corridor for the 88 Australians who are currently stuck in Gaza.

Penny Wong also reiterated her calls for humanitarian pauses in the conflict, so aid can be brought into Gaza and civilians can be allowed out.

And

Sexual consent activist Chanel Contos has used an address at the National Press Club to call for equal, non-transferrable parental leave to address gender stereotypes.

Contos said the policy would help to unpick sexist attitudes that contribute to rape culture in Australian society.

I’m Ange McCormack, this is 7am. We’ll be back again tomorrow.

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