When Louis Alexandre Berthier, then at the beginning of his career as Napoleon’s chief of staff, entered Gaza with a French army on 24-5 February 1799, he noted that it was a nice—well, everything is relative—city. One with a good climate, sufficient water, plenty of good agricultural land, and many flourishing gardens. Coming as the French troops did from the Sinai Desert where they had almost died of thirst, what a relief! No source I have consulted could tell me how many people lived in what, since 1948, has been known as the Strip. It cannot, however, have been more than 10-20,000.

Fast forward to 2024. Today the Strip’s population is said to stand at 2,300,000. Not bad for a territory that, at the time Israel occupied it in 1967, only numbered about 400,000. And not bad for a territory that, if the Palestinian Authority may be believed, is even now subjected to “genocide” at the wicked Israelis’ hands.

Now let’s turn to Hamas. The idea of helping the inhabitants of the West Bank set up a party to counter the Palestinian Liberation Organization was first proposed to Israel’s then minister of defense General Ariel Sharon, around 1980.  The way he and his advisers saw it, Hamas, with its heavy emphasis on Islam (“submission to the will of God”), would be the ideal instrument to divert Palestinian energies away from fighting Israel towards practicing Islam. How wrong can some people be?  Rather than content themselves with prayer, fasting, charity, and the obligatory journey to Mecca, from early on Hamas’ leaders adopted a radical line, vowing never to recognize the “Zionist Entity” and never to establish peaceful relations peace with it. This remains the organization’s official stance right down to the present day.

By 2006-7 Hamas, in spite of more or less coordinated efforts by Israel and the Palestinian authority, had become the leading political entity in Gaza. The outcome was a coup meant to establish its rule over the Strip, killing many—no one knows how many—Palestinian Authority personnel and sending the rest running in every direction. Since then hardly a week has passed without terrorists—Hamas itself calls them shahids, martyrs—from Gaza mounting some kind of operation, large or small, against Israel. Particularly vulnerable were the Israeli towns and kibbutzim close to the border which soon became the targets of intermittent salvoes of rockets. The rationale, Hamas claimed, was to make Israel pay a price for continuing its occupation; never mind that, by 2023, that occupation had ended a decade and a half ago. Its only remnant was strict border controls maintained by the Israelis to ensure that no weapons or other military equipment would enter the Strip for use against their own country.

As if to confirm Berthier’s estimate, Gaza is not necessarily a bad place to live and prosper even now. The Strip has a population similar to that of Singapore. What figures we have show that its population density, high as it is, is considerably lower. Labor is as cheap as it was, say, in China before it started opening to capitalism back in 1979-80. Located on the sea and forming the link between Asia and Africa on one hand and the EU as one of the largest consumer markets on earth on the other, with some assistance it could develop into a pearl of the Middle East. Fresh desalinated water, though no longer as plentiful (relative to the population) as it used to be, could be provided by Israel which, in this respect, is a world leader. But no: as Hamas’ leaders have repeatedly said, having set themselves the objective of doing away with Israel, recognizing the latter, let alone signing a peace deal with it, is something they are simply do not going to do.

All wars, even including the so-called Hundred Years War, have to end. To some extent, this has already happened. Whether because Hamas is running out of rockets or for some other reason, the number of those it launches on Israel has been falling. Judging by the published casualty figures—not, admittedly, the most reliable in the world—the fighting inside Gaza has also grown less intense.

Prime Minister Netanyahu on his part has announced that operation “Iron Swords” has two objectives. One is to obtain the return of every one of the Israeli captives Hamas is holing. The other, to “finish off” Hamas to the point where it can no longer launch attacks on Israel. Straight from the horse’s mouth! Provided Israel makes the necessary concessions—meaning a ceasefire and a prisoner exchange at the rate of perhaps 100 to 1—the second objective is probably attainable; the first almost certainly is not. Of the two belligerents, Israel and Hamas, the former is indisputably the stronger by far. Which paradoxically is why, almost regardless of the terms of an eventual deal, it will signify a victory for Hamas.

Time to prepare for the next round.