IL is correct, I think, in that the October War was a very Clauswitzian ploy by Sadat–the only way to get the treaty that ended hostilities with Israel was to force Israel to acknowledge Egypt as more or less an equal, and that meant battlefield success. Keep in mind Egypt didn’t have to “win” by any stretch of the imagination; simply rocking the IDF back on its heels and scaring the dickens out of them in the first few days of the war, and clinging on to a shred of Sinai at the end, was enough to convince the Israelis that if Cairo wanted to talk, maybe it was worth their while. Note that Assad’s relative lack of success, even though the offensive in the Golan was initially scarier, and Damascus’ unwillingness to talk, did not gain similar results for Syria (which actually went into the war thinking that they were seriously going for Israel’s throat, something Sadat never intended; he played Assad like a drum).
So it was war, as an extension of politics, that leveraged the peace deal between Sadat and Begin. Whether one wants to say that violence solved something, or whether warfare created the conditions for diplomacy, thee was certainly a connection.
But the analogy with HAMAS I think is weak. Even Hezbollah had the advantage of being in a place that the Israelis were traditionally not, and which they had no direct interest in occupying. They wanted to control PLO access to northern Israel, and they wanted to destroy as much of the Palestinian organization and military power as they could, but even though they occupied parts of Lebanon for nearly 20 years, it wasn’t a place they ever wanted to hold in perpetuity. What is HAMAS actually expecting to get out of all of this violence? Israel isn’t going anywhere. Israel cannot open up Gaza without ironclad guarantees and monitoring to prevent arms inflows, and the chances of them getting an inspection and monitoring regime they can trust, and which the Palestinians will cooperate with, seems slim. HAMAS has used social programs and non-military interventions in Gaza to solidify its power, but at its core its reputation, status, and power rests on violence. If it actually got the Israelis to lift the blockade–they already have withdrawn from Gaza proper, years ago–does anyone really think HAMAS would settle down to being a purely political party interested in the welfare of its citizens, and trying to build a prosperous, peaceful Gaza? Very little in their past points to this outcome. So I really don’t see exactly what their violence is supposed to achieve, other than a sense of resistance and a continuing justification for their own existence.
That is not to say IL doesn’t have a point–from the Palestinian POV, resistance itself seems to have become a viable goal. Whether that is something we should accept, any more than we should accept perpetual Israeli occupation of territories it captured in war and its often heavy-handed, to say the least, administration of same, is another matter entirely. Both sides have developed cultures where violence can be easily justified, and sometimes, may even BE justified, but where such violence has all too often become the goal, not the means.
