Israel is fighting the longest war in its 76-year history. This is in direct contradiction to the Israeli war doctrine set by the country’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion—that all of Israel’s wars must be short, decisive and fought in enemy territory.
And based on a self-defined ethos that enables Israeli society to, as happened in 2011, support the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Schalit, from captivity in Gaza, the primary goal of this war should have been to return all of the Israeli hostages from the Strip. That objective could have been achieved many months ago, but the cost of making a deal with Hamas would have necessitated ending the war and Israel withdrawing from Gaza.
The primary reason stated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not ending the war is that Hamas’s ability to govern Gaza has not been fully decimated. But in truth, Hamas has been decimated and decapitated enough that, if there had been a day-after scenario that Israel supported, a new civilian technocratic Palestinian government could already have been installed in Gaza. By last summer, Hamas had come to understand that it cannot continue to govern, not only because the overwhelming majority of Palestinians living in Gaza blame Hamas for the disaster that Israel has wrought on the Strip, but also because the group knows that, if it continues to control the territory, it will not see one dollar of international support for the reconstruction that is so urgently needed after this war.
Nearly two million Gazans are now homeless; they have no physical home to return to. Israel has demolished all of the infrastructure in Gaza, including roads, water installations, energy plants and sewage systems. There remain almost no schools standing, and hospitals have been destroyed, along with public buildings, all of the universities and many of the mosques. It is estimated that Israel has bombed 80 percent of the physical structures in Gaza, turning them into rubble or buildings that cannot be used and must be completed demolished.
The extent of the human suffering and physical destruction in Gaza has led even Hamas, an evil political movement that seemed willing to fight Israel until the very last Palestinian in Gaza was killed, to put ending the war as its primary goal in indirect negotiations with Israel. This is a change from Hamas’s initial war strategy, which was to empty Israeli prisons of Palestinian prisoners. Now the issue of ending the war and bringing about a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza is taking precedence over the goal of freeing Palestinian detainees.
Netanyahu, on the other hand, knows that any deal with Hamas that does not include the group's full surrender could break apart his coalition and lead to new elections. The prime minister is well aware that, since his failure to protect Israel on 7th October 2023, his current coalition, according to almost all legitimate polls, cannot win. For Netanyahu, ending the war means the creation of an independent national inquiry into the Israeli government and military’s failures on that dark day, what led to 7th October and the dysfunctional nature of his government since then.
As the longest-serving Israeli prime minister, as the person who encouraged Qatar to fund Hamas, as the leader serving on 7th October, Netanyahu cannot escape direct responsibility. He also cannot escape the Israeli demand for new elections once the war ends. So, Netanyahu has, until now, sacrificed the Israeli hostages (and indeed Palestinian civilians) on the altar of his own political survival. This cannot last for long.
Donald Trump’s inauguration on 20th January has become a target date for reaching a deal with Hamas. Netanyahu, and for some unexplainable reason, the outgoing Biden administration have favoured reaching a partial deal that would release 34 of the 98 hostages remaining and ensure a ceasefire for a limited period of time, perhaps for six weeks. Netanyahu and members of his government, including his defence minister, have stated that they would restart the war after the initial ceasefire. Out of what must be desperation, Hamas has apparently agreed to enter into an initial agreement without assurances that the war would end in the second stage of the truce. Perhaps the United States has communicated to the mediators, Qatar and Egypt, that it would push Israel to continue the ceasefire into what would become a sustained truce—as President Joe Biden said last May when he first presented the US-Israel plan for a negotiated deal.
Trump, in typically contradictory statements, said on election night that he would end wars, not start them, while later threatening Hamas that “all hell would break out” if a deal was not made to release the hostages by the time he took office. Hamas does not fear the Trump statement, however. The group knows well that the president-elect cannot harm it any more than Israel has already. The fact that Trump has apparently told Netanyahu that he wants the hostages to be home and the war to be over before he reenters the White House explains why there have been so many upbeat indications about an imminent deal. But the gaps between the sides remain wide—on the number of living hostages that can be released, the redeployment of Israeli troops in Gaza, the free movement of Gazans from the south to the north of the Strip and the number and names of Palestinian prisoners to be released.
If Hamas had a better understanding of the Israeli public and global politics, the group would make public what it has told the Egyptian and Qatari mediators: that Hamas is ready to release all of the hostages and even end its rule in Gaza on the condition that the war stops, Israel withdraws from Gaza and Palestinian prisoners are released. If Hamas were to make that public, it might be exactly what is required to reach an overwhelming majority of Israelis, pushing them to take to the streets in order to force Netanyahu to take the deal.
Such public pressure could also encourage Trump to make Netanyahu agree. The ultimate defeat of Hamas will never be military, it will be political. In order to enable it, the war must end and a viable plan advanced to install a civilian technocratic government in Gaza that is not led by Hamas. After an initial period of stabilisation under such a government, some two to three years perhaps, and after the beginnings of reconstruction efforts, Palestinians could hold national elections for new leadership for Palestine—in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. These elections should then be for the government of the State of Palestine, including all of the Palestinian territories. Such an outcome is clearly a prerequisite for long-term peace and security.
When this war does eventually end—as all wars must—we have to ensure that it will be the last Israeli-Palestinian war, because we cannot continue doing this to each other.
