After 5 months of fierce fighting, how close is Israel to its goals?
To win the war, Netanyahu needs to embrace a new narrative
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the funeral of First Sergeant Major Gal Meir Eisenkot, killed in combat in Gaza, on Dec. 8. Photo by Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images
Columnist Dan Perry March 12, 2024
Before the smoke even cleared on Oct. 7, Israeli leaders were vowing to destroy Hamas in retaliation for the worst massacre of Jews since World War II. It wasn’t long before experts warned that Hamas, which had invaded Israel and killed almost 1,200, was as much “an idea” as an organization, and therefore to some extent indestructible.
The Hamas “idea,” of course, is that there should not be a Jewish state in the Holy Land, nor peace between Jews and Palestinians, and that there should instead be permanent war until an Islamic Caliphate emerges in the region and the world. It perhaps cannot be destroyed; but it should be made unpopular and denied successes.
For Hamas to emerge from the war that it spawned on Oct. 7 with any plausible victory narrative would strengthen jihadism, weaken moderate Arab states, invite more attacks on Israel and risk terrorism worldwide. It’s therefore critical to be precise: What is the goal and are we almost there?
Israel’s leaders, backed by a rare near-consensus among the country’s normally divided Jewish majority, seem to now be defining “destroy” to mean removing Hamas from power in the Gaza Strip; broader ambitions can wait. Regime change compelled by outsiders is always a dicey proposition, but given the implacable belligerency of Hamas — and given that its rule in Gaza stemmed not from a free and fair election but from a bloody overthrow of its rival — it is defensible in this case.
After five months of fierce fighting, Israel claims to have pacified most of the coastal enclave, except for its southern city of Rafah, which abuts the border with Egypt. These few square miles were home to about 200,000 people before the war but are now crowded with most of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents, who are living in terrible conditions amid fears of starvation.
Israel says it has rendered non-functional 18 of the 24 Hamas battalions, and killed more than 10,000 of an estimated 30,000 trained combatants; many others are surely grievously wounded. Hamas is by any definition severely degraded, with its remaining fighters mostly in Rafah.
The Israel Defense Forces has also wiped out much Hamas infrastructure: operations rooms, underground quarters, weapons depots, rocket launchers and the like.
In the process, much of Gaza itself is gone. Satellite-image analysis suggests more than half its buildings have been damaged or destroyed, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi recently estimated the cost of reconstruction at $90 billion. That’s about two-thirds of the current value of the Marshall Plan.
It’s tempting to declare that if Palestinian politics were rational, Hamas should have been weakened politically as well as militarily. You’d think that given the cataclysm Hamas caused, the Palestinian public would be trying to rip its representatives limb from limb. Instead, Hamas — the idea — seems largely unharmed, perhaps even enjoying growing support in the occupied West Bank. Rationality is in scarce supply these days — in many places, to be fair.
Part of the reason for Hamas’ continued strength is that despite all of the above, no victory for Israel seems in sight.
Most obviously, that is because some 134 of those abducted on Oct. 7 remain in Gaza, dozens of them feared dead. While Israel’s government has never convincingly committed to making the hostages’ freedom as high a priority as Hamas’ destruction, it is deeply important to the public.
As for Hamas, Israeli strategists believe that despite its degradation, the group is still poised to retake control of the Gaza Strip should the IDF withdraw. This is in part due to the military’s apparent failure to find much of the estimated 300-mile network of tunnels Hamas uses for all manner of nefarious activity. Even now, aid distribution in northern Gaza is frequently hijacked by Hamas operatives emerging from undiscovered openings.
Hamas is banking on Israel eventually having to leave Gaza due to both international pressure and domestic distress over an eternal war of attrition and the costs of maintaining a full occupation, as displaced persons in Rafah start to return to areas they evacuated.
The group’s leaders are almost certainly pleasantly surprised by the Israeli government’s refusal to contemplate reinstalling their rivals in the Palestinian Authority to the “liberated” parts of Gaza.
The return of the P.A. to Gaza is a central pillar of the postwar plan supported by the U.S., Europe and moderate Arab states. That plan calls for new discussions of a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict and would move Israel toward peace with Saudi Arabia and additional other countries.
That Israel is walking away from this version of a victory is a staggering strategic failure and a gift to Hamas.
Why would Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu give his enemy such a gift? Four years after embracing a two-state proposal put forth by President Donald Trump, Netanyahu now rejects every mention of “two states” because he fears it will make the far right bolt his coalition — and he has little hope of surviving another round of elections.
Three quarters of Israelis tell pollsters they want to go back to the ballot box, and barely a third would support Netanyahu and his current coalition.
Hamas will not soon agree to Israel’s demand to return all the hostages without an end to the war. So, absent a change of strategy, Israel seems actually not so close to winning the war at all.
Unless its leaders change their perspective.
Netanyahu could put politics aside and accept the international proposals as a basis for a ceasefire agreement. Put off the invasion of Rafah, which risks a bloodbath in which more hostages are killed along with many more Palestinians, and Israel’s international standing is battered further still. Offer the Hamas leadership exile in Qatar, or wherever will have them.
Project to the world that Israel does not want the war to last another minute, and all Hamas has to do is agree to the above terms. The window of legitimacy would reopen, at least a little.
You cannot win a war of narratives without a narrative.
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