The Ceasefire

I’ve long advocated against a ceasefire in Gaza and have been firm in the belief that Israel had to ‘finish the job,’ meaning destroy Hamas. But now there’s a ceasefire, and Hamas is free to re-emerge and reassert its authority in Gaza. This is a horrible outcome. The worst possible outcome. Israel has lost the war that Hamas started on 7 October, bringing everyone back to the status quo ante of 6 October. Only everyone is angrier and more miserable. Politics are more polarized; there is less space for moderation, let alone compromise.

In a sense, it means that all the lives lost (on both sides) and all the destruction has been for naught. I find that unacceptable. Israelis might. I gather they are buoyed by the joy of seeing some of the surviving hostages freed. But I don’t understand. In fact, there’s a lot I don’t understand about this war that began on 7 October 2023. I’m left with more questions than answers. Here are some of the things I don’t understand.

1. Why has the Israeli government not worked harder to destroy Hamas?

There are several plausible answers to this, answers that are not mutually exclusive. One is that destroying Hamas requires a full occupation, at least for a period of time, one that would have involved locking down Gaza, rooting out Hamas fighters, and going room to room. Quadrillage is the French colonial term for this, like in the Battle of Algiers. It works. But Israel shied from the idea of occupation (because of the criticism it surely would receive for occupying Gaza?), and the task of so complete an occupation requires manpower that Israel may have been unwilling to allocate for the job. From what I understand, there were/are two IDF divisions in Gaza, which is far from sufficient, and the IDF many months ago demobilized the reservists it had mobilized at the beginning of the war. Keeping large numbers of reservists on duty places a profound strain on Israeli society, not to mention the Israeli economy. BUT: Did Israeli military planners not take this into consideration when it all began?

It’s likely that for much of the war, the IDF wanted to husband its resources because of the strong likelihood that sooner or later it would face a second war in Lebanon against a scarier foe, Hezbollah. I get that. But again, IDF planners should have thought about that, and about what that might mean for attaining whatever goals they had set for themselves in Gaza. Which were what, precisely? Strategy requires aligning appropriate means to achieve desired ends, whatever they might be. And if one lacks the means, one has to scale down one’s desired ends. But again, what were they, exactly?

I think it likely that Israel never really had a strategy. I’ve long believed that Israelis, because they are extraordinarily good at tactics, mistake tactics for strategy. In this case, they relied on their tactics and their urban warfare doctrine, a doctrine that involves full use of high technology in which Israelis place far too much faith. But doctrine is not a strategy. Doctrine should serve strategy. Without a strategy, victory is all but guaranteed to remain elusive.

Given the reality that a long-term occupation would not be in Israel’s interests, the only real option is to establish some sort of Palestinian government, with or without the full cooperation of the Palestinian Authority (I would prefer with, but I’ve always favored a two-state solution and regard the Palestinian Authority as the least bad option, warts and all). Israel needed to stand up some sort of Gazan Manchukuo, the puppet government the Japanese established in Manchuria. This, I gather, was never seriously considered, for that would require having to make difficult policy decisions that quite plausibly would be a major step forward toward Palestinian statehood.

Any such move runs into two challenges. One is Netanyahu’s firm opposition to Palestinian statehood. Another is the extraordinary difficulty of making difficult policy choices while also preserving an always fragile ruling coalition. So even if Netanyahu might for pragmatic reasons accept the necessity of establishing a Palestinian government in Gaza other than Hamas, he could not. The situation reminds me of the French 4^th Republic’s political paralysis with regard to Algeria. It just could not do anything. Thus, the government collapsed, and only after Charles de Gaulle installed himself in power as an autocratic President could France move decisively. Perhaps a better analogy is the Israeli government’s indecision vis-à-vis the birth and initial growth of the settler movement in the 1970s. From what I understand, the settler movement was a grass-roots movement. The Israeli government did not like it but, for political reasons, did nothing. And, so, it grew and grew until later, in the 1980s, I believe, when some Israeli governments found it expedient to back it. Even the ones that did not balked at the political challenge of acting against the settle movement. The point is that the settle movement flourished not because of Israeli policy but because of the lack of policy, and the paralysis that prevented decisive policy making one way or the other.

2. Why did the international community not lift a finger to destroy Hamas?

From the start, the world focused its efforts to pressure Israel to hold back and agree to a ceasefire. It did not apply pressure on Hamas to return the hostages and, well, surrender. Qatar and Turkey protected Hamas. The United States applied no pressure on either to change their policies. Let’s be clear: The United States has the wherewithal to wipe out Hamas’s leadership in Qatar at the blink of an eye. It also has the wherewithal to threaten Qatar to cease coddling Hamas and protecting it. It could put a gun to Qatar’s head and make it an offer it could not refuse. Instead, American diplomacy was limited to asking Qatar nicely to use its good office to encourage Hamas to negotiate. Why?

And then there is the fact that the United Nation’s many organizations, not to mention a huge constellation of ostensibly humanitarian NGOs, the International Committee of the Red Cross among them, were content to subsidize Hamas through aid they provided (which went straight to Hamas’s pockets) and repeat Hamas’s lies about famine and genocide. What we saw was a global conspiracy to pull off history’s greatest instance of gaslighting. “We, the perpetrators of 7 October, are not guilty of genocidal intentions, it’s the victims who are.”

I suppose this, for me, an American Jew, is the most disappointing thing of all: How quickly the world turned on the victims of 7 October and indeed the entire Jewish community worldwide. But that, at least, I understand, even if I’m appalled. It has always been thus, long before 7 October, long before 1967, long before 1947, and long before the Holocaust.

On a side note, one of the stranger things about the “Palestinian” issue is that to a great extent it has been sustained by Western countries, the United States foremost among them. It was they, for example, who founded and funded UNRWA, an institution that exists to keep open the wounds of 1947-1948. It is they who have remained its primary backers. I cannot help but wonder what might have happened if the Western powers simply had not cared? The Arab world never seemed to care, at least not enough to do anything beyond refusing to work with Israel. Arab countries’ opposition to Israel more often than not has been purely rhetorical, with little real action to back up the vitriolic talk.

Ultimately, what we are left with is a disastrous situation. At best, I can console myself with the knowledge that at least Israel has succeeded in calling Iran’s bluff and defanging Hezbollah (for now). That’s good. But what happens in ten years? Or twenty? Or when Iran finally tests a nuclear device, which it is sure to do sooner now that its other forms of deterrence have failed. I know many Jews and a lot of Israelis look to Trump to act decisively in Israel’s favor in ways that previous administrations have not. That’s a terrible strategy, i.e. placing one’s hopes for salvation in a foreign actor. Theologically speaking, it even smacks of idolatry. In any case, I strongly suspect that, like many people who idealize Trump as the man who will realize their dreams, those who imagine Trump to be Israel’s savior will be disappointed.

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Still the best book on the West and Palestine, and UNRWA: https://amzn.to/40FhY0e

And the book that expresses better than I can my take on the global reaction: https://amzn.to/4hppjqa