Hamas and Netanyahu both have to lose in Gaza

More than 270 Palestinians who the Gaza health authority says were killed in the firefight.

It should shock nobody that Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas commander thought to be holed up in tunnels under the Gaza town of Rafah, thinks he’s winning his war with Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may say the terrorist organization is close to destruction, but according to the Wall Street Journal, messages to colleagues outside Gaza from Sinwar show
that as far as he’s concerned, “we have the Israelis exactly where we want them.”

Is he mad? Well, clearly yes — in the sense that all fanatics are. But not when it comes to his calculations on furthering Hamas’ agenda, which at this point begins and ends with Israel’s destruction. For this cause, according to the WSJ’s review of Sinwar’s communications, large-scale civilian Palestinian casualties have been “necessary sacrifices” rather than some unexpected bug in the group’s plans.

This has been clear from the start of the war. It underpinned advice from Israel’s staunchest supporters not to fall into the trap that Sinwar laid for the Jewish state. By reacting the way it did to the atrocities of Oct 7, with instant bombing followed by a ground invasion that made token efforts to first clear civilians from the battlefield, Israel’s war cabinet gave Sinwar the bloodbath he craved.

Thus the Palestinian cause is back in the global spotlight. Momentum for Israel’s political and economic integration by the Arab states has come to a shuddering halt; countries have chosen to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state on borders set by the 1967 war between Israel and its neighbors; Israel and its top leaders stand accused of war crimes; fewer Palestinians and Israelis favor the cohabitation that a two-state solution implies; and a wider regional war that could relieve pressure on Hamas continues to beckon.

Even in the US, popular opinion is turning against Israel as the daily horrors of Palestinian loss bury memory of the brutality Hamas inflicted on innocent Israelis eight months ago. Otherwise intelligent people now think of Hamas as freedom fighters, attempting to liberate Gaza’s civilians from occupation rather than as terrorists, who deliberately invited this catastrophe on their fellow Palestinians.

That damaging bifurcation of perceptions is only deepening. To most Israelis, for example, the recent, daring rescue of four Israeli hostages from their Hamas captors in a Palestinian refugee camp was a triumph. Elsewhere, attention has focused on the human cost of that operation, as counted in the more than 270 Palestinians who the Gaza health authority says were killed in the firefight.

Of course, the clock can’t be turned back, and the dilemma Netanyahu now faces, as the United Nations Security Council backs a US cease-fire proposal, is genuine. Like so many conflict-mediation efforts, the deal is artfully vague on the most sensitive issues for both sides: namely, Hamas’ demand that any settlement require a permanent end to the war and Israel’s
desire that no settlement should leave Hamas intact.

Closing that circle may demand a more ambitious offer that exposes the fundamental self-interest and disdain for innocent suffering both Sinwar
and Netanyahu have shown. Highlights would include the acceptance of exile by Hamas’ military and political leaders in Gaza, and of their replacement by a new Palestinian authority that acknowledges Israel’s right to exist. That would be accompanied by the release of all hostages and, in exchange, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, backed by detailed pledges of reconstruction and future Palestinian statehood.

If that sounds like a tall order, it is. The hard truth is that for this war to end in a durable peace that doesn’t include the ethnic cleansing of one side by the other, both current leaderships must be made to lose.

Credit: Bloomberg