How should we understand Israel’s progress after 6 months of war?
Sigal Manzuri and Amit Cohen visit the marker of their daughters Norelle and Roya who were killed on the Oct. 7 Hamas deadly attack at the Nova music festival on April 7, 2024 in Re’eim, Israel. Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images
Dan Perry April 8, 2024
Six months to the day of the Oct. 7 massacre, the Israeli military pulled out of the entire southern half of the Gaza Strip, in the stunning first move that seemed to indicate a reversal of the relentless offensive that followed the unprovoked Hamas attack.
The result of Israel’s war in Gaza is a strategic victory for Iran and Hamas, who do not care about the loss of Palestinian life.
Israel has been isolated and weakened. It is closer than ever to arms embargoes and economic sanctions due a fraying relationship with its greatest ally, the United States; its population is rattled; its economy is damaged; and the hopes for peace with Saudi Arabia have been sidelined. All of this was predictable when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to take the bait and rumble into Gaza, instead of building a global and regional coalition against Hamas, creating pressure for a release of the hostages and using the moral high ground to pocket peace with Saudi Arabia and much of the rest of the Gulf.
Here are six important points to weigh as Israel renews hostage negotiations.
Rafah was a no-go
Israel had backed itself into an impossible corner. Most of the Gaza Strip’s population was crammed into an enclave around the town of Rafah on the Egyptian border, which had become the last redoubt of Hamas. With so many people in such a small, besieged area, credible reports of famine and disease had sapped Israel of international legitimacy and support for a move into Rafah that would probably be a bloodbath.
There was also an impasse over how to get the civilian population out of Rafah, which all sides wanted. Hamas insisted on no security checks for the departing population; Israel rightly objected, fearing Hamas terrorists would sneak out with civilians. In this context, there is a benefit to Israel ceding the southern half of Gaza back to Hamas: The population can now be more widely dispersed, making it more plausible to strike at Hamas without hitting civilians. A bit of the pressure on the humanitarian situation will also be eased.
Waning international support
In a war, it is not necessarily so that the side that lost more civilians is in the right. The world — including almost every government in the West — has enormous sympathy for Israel’s goal of removing Hamas from control of Gaza, and of course for recovering its hostages. After the massacre’s extraordinary barbarism, and with Hamas leaders promising more of the same, that’s hardly surprising.
While there is a shared desire to remove Hamas from power, it doesn’t mean that Israel’s supporters would back all methods. The credit line was never infinite. After 30,000 casualties in Gaza (13,000 of which the Israeli military claims are Hamas militants), Israel’s international goodwill has essentially run out.
Restricting humanitarian aid
Israel played games with humanitarian aid, which did it no reputational favors. It’s not crazy to claim that countries at war do not provide aid to the enemy population; I do not recall airdrops of aid to the population of Dresden. But in today’s environment, collective punishment against a captive population will not fly.
Israel officials have admitted that they can triple the speed of inspection of aid trucks going in. Did they really need to wait for Biden to read Netanyahu the riot act last week, after seven World Central Kitchen aid workers were killed in Israeli strikes?
Israelis claim that they wanted humanitarian gestures in exchange, like access to the hostages. But you cannot make your own human decency hostage to reciprocity from terrorists.
A turning Israeli public
Israel presented early on two goals that seemed contradictory, and insisted that they are not: fighting Hamas to the finish and engineering the return of the 200-plus hostages taken on the day of the attack. What was undeniably contradictory was timelines: Israel might finish off Hamas in three years, or 10, but the hostages are running out of time (sources estimate that at least 30 of the remaining 134 hostages in Gaza are already dead). Israeli public opinion is now demanding that the hostages’ fate be made the priority.
In Israel’s parliamentary system, Netanyahu can ignore public opinion for as long as the 63 lawmakers in his coalition back him. So far they have done so, but if any of them desire to continue a career in politics, they’ll be reading the polls: three-quarters of the Israeli public want the current government gone. If one is to assume that most of Israel’s Haredim are automatically on Netanyahu’s side, then that means 90% or so of non-Haredi citizens are fed up. Breaking points are approaching.
The US and its role in hostage negotiations
The U.S. is investing an enormous effort in what comes next. The head of the CIA, William Burns, is back in Cairo for a new round of talks on a hostage deal. Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, said today that Israel is “at a suitable point” to make the difficult deal necessary to bring the hostages home. “We’ll be able to bear heavy prices.”
Crazily, the viability of a deal remains with Hamas’ leader in Gaza and Oct. 7 mastermind, Yahya Sinwar. He has been insisting on no deal unless Israel pulls back fully from Gaza. That would enable a Hamas victory narrative despite the group’s thrashing and the obliteration of much of the strip, and this Israel cannot allow. What’s realistic is a partial hostage release for a temporary ceasefire. The question, incredibly, comes down to whether this one terrorist will now change his tune.
There is still time to flip the narrative. Israel can choose to accept the Biden Doctrine, which involves restoring the Palestinian Authority to Gaza and agreeing in theory on talks for a two-state solution. In exchange, Israel would get peace with Saudi Arabia, a Western-Sunni-Israeli alliance against Iran and a new credit line from the U.S. for further fighting against Hamas, even if the group does not lay down its arms.
Netanyahu is refusing Biden’s overtures for fear of the extreme right members of his coalition bringing down his government. That fear is well-founded. He must choose between being a patriot or a politician.
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