A Conceptual View of the Israel–Hamas Conflict: Is There a Lesson to be Learned From a Systems Approach?

ABSTRACT The Hamas–Israel conflict is a chronic, intractable, and extremely violent dispute that has persisted for several decades. It is expressed as thousands of random attacks by Hamas and its partner organizations on Israel. Israel tends to respond to an accumulation of attacks, deploying focal responses or major military incursions. A cyclical quality can be detected within the pattern of accumulating Hamas provocations, Israeli responses, periods of quiet, and then a resurgence of provocations. This is often referred to as a vicious cycle. In this article, the vicious cycle is analyzed nontechnically as an instance of systems thinking. The objective is to determine whether factors can be identified from this perspective that, if changed or removed, could result in a reduction of lethality of the cycle. If successful, a political space may thus open to the benefit of both sides.