The thing that worries me most about Palestinians is their similarity to early Zionists. Palestinian terrorists are patriotic, yet not a part of their traditional communities. Like left-wing Zionists, they consciously develop a “new Palestinian” outlook and mentality: no longer a suffering peasant whose greatest virtue is endurance in the face of oppression, the terrorist relies on “the rifle alone.” Like Jewish guerrillas, they are unwilling to stop violence in return for vague promises of statehood, but hunt down those whom they see as occupiers even while they are withdrawing. Like the Jewish underground, Palestinians manufacture their own weapons, smuggle some more, and relentlessly employ them. Like Jews, they understand that fighting is the only way for statehood: Israel won’t cede land to peaceful Palestinians.

Gaza’s Palestinian identity is defined by refugee camps. Most European Jews who entered Israel for years after the Holocaust were not Zionists, but had spent years in camps for displaced persons, which considerably shaped their identity: it made them communal with Jews and violent with Arabs.

Gaza’s groups fight among themselves just as the Jewish ones did in the pre-state period. Fatah collaborates with Israel the way the Jewish Agency collaborated with British occupiers: betraying their co-religionists, faking resistance, and submitting to the decisions on partitioning the land.

Gaza’s military structure is troublingly similar to the winning Jewish one. It spans the entire spectrum of interconnected but formally disparate organizations: apolitical recipients of welfare funds, professedly moderate political parties, their armed wings, and totally wild militias. Jews had a similar structure during the pre-state years. One of the most successful operations, briha, was conducted by dozens of independent armed groups and hundreds of daring Jewish individuals. Often they got no money from Zionists but relied on robbery, racket, and in one major case, counterfeiting. After the war, briha snatched possibly 150,000 Jews from the communist bloc and Western Europe into the displaced persons’ camps, to be transported into Palestine.

The Israeli political establishment and army evolved into mammoths, unable to execute quick and smart moves. The military maxim speaks of the army advancing like water, filling the pockets of least resistance, exploiting opportunities. Though spared Amir Peretz, the Israeli army is not the daredevil entity it had been earlier, but a bureaucratized, lazy entity modeled on the US Army, but lacking the mind-boggling funding which compensates for its inefficiency. Israel could have long done away with Gaza by setting her military brigades loose, hiring mercenaries, or allowing common Israelis to organize into terrorist groups to counter the Kassam, PIJ, PFLP and the like on equal terms. The Israeli army needs to be decentralized in low-intensity encounters.

Palestinians are smart compared to other Arabs. Hamas developed a serious, popular organization which survived repressions, assassinations, ostracism, and blockade. Steadily, Hamas expands its international relations. The militant Islamic organization found unlikely friends in Russians and peacenik leftists. Palestinians manipulate the sophisticated world media by Al Dura-type shows, and shame Islamic regimes by breaching the border with Egypt, thus implicating Egypt in the Israeli-led blockade.

Hamas is far more honest and dedicated to its people than left-wing Zionists. It embraces basic traditional values and stands by its POWs, fearlessly upping the stakes in the prisoner exchange debacle. Unlike Zionists in 1947, Hamas refuses to partition the land it considers Arab. Unlike Egypt and Jordan, Hamas rejects politically correct lies about peace, and only offers Israel what it can offer without compromising its Islamic conscience: a truce.

The Cyprus-Gaza boat affair recalls the Exodus project. Rationally speaking, Jewish illegal immigration was unimportant: the British intercepted most boats and allowed some into Palestine on the account of the legal immigration quota. Illegal immigration was never a big thing for left-wingers, but after the Holocaust they stepped up their efforts in order to push Britain to relinquish its mandate and the UN to accede to a Jewish state. Even after the Holocaust, the notion of a Jewish state was too much for the world. Unlike the normally clandestine immigration projects, the 1947 Exodus was heavily advertised from day one to make the British react. Their Navy subsequently clashed with the passenger ship; British bullets killed thirteen Jews. Escorted to France, the passengers refused to disembark, and the British transported them back to Germany, to the professed horror of the world media. International leftists structured the boat trip from Cyprus to Gaza and back also as a media event. Unusually for the illegal immigration, the Exodus took on board old people, pregnant women, and hundreds of babies—for the maximum media effect. Gazans similarly sent media-friendly personalities on the boats to Cyprus.