'Hamas is claiming to have won a very great victory.' (Credit: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty)
War is a terrible thing — but historically it did have the merit of conclusively ending conflict and bringing peace by exhausting the will or capacity to fight of one side or the other. That is how wars have always ended. As late as 1945, the Second World War ended with the complete occupation of Germany, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, inaugurating a peace that still endures with those once very determined warrior nations.
Back then, war was obscured from public view. But now the entire world can watch the fighting, the killing and the destruction in colour, up close and in real time — though we are mainly shown dead women and children, rarely the fighters. And as a result, wars are interrupted, by ceasefires, demanded by distant Presidents and Popes and applauded by the world’s watchers as they wait for the antagonists to renounce their fight. But rather than renounce their fight, they pause to recover their strength for the next found of fighting.
We’ve seen this over and again, since the obliteration of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan: especially in the Middle East. Hamas is only the latest enemy of Israel to be constrained by a ceasefire, only to rearm and proclaim its intention of fighting again. And thus is the cycle of violence perpetuated for another generation.
Since the arrival of the UN Security Council on 24 October 1945, ceasefires, truces and armistices have interrupted wars across Africa and Asia before they could bring peace. Consider Korea, 72 years ago, when the war between North and the South was interrupted by an armistice signed by now long-dead generals. Since then, there have been deadly incidents now and then, but not one day of peace negotiations.
For Israel, the first of many UN-imposed ceasefires arrived on 11 June, 1948. Both the Foreign Office and the State Department had totally opposed Israel’s May 15 declaration of independence, but were sure that the Arab armies, with their artillery, armoured vehicles and warplanes would soon solve their problem: by defeating the Jews who at first only had rifles. When, to their great surprise, the Jews began advancing, the UK and US quickly agreed to impose a UN truce. It did not last, and nor did a second truce, and the fighting only ended on March 10 a year later.
War would return with the start of the Sinai campaign on 29 October, 1956 that ended on 7 November, 1956, when Israel’s advance was suddenly halted by a US-Soviet agreement at teh UN Security Council to impose one more ceasefire. Then came the Six-Day War, in 1967, which did not last for seven because of another ceasefire imposed by the UN Security Council.
Once again, that would not end the fighting. In October 1973, Egypt and Syria launched what became known as the Yom Kippur War, against an Israeli enemy totally unprepared for their assault. No Security Council ceasefire arrived to stop them, even if things soon changed once Israel counterattacked. On each occasion — in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 — Israel had much more combat strength than diplomatic leverage: the only thing that really matters on the world stage.
What of Israel’s most recent conflict? Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7 was followed by Israel’s counteroffensive. The ceasefire calls duly arrived — from the UN General Assembly, assorted EU voices, and (of course) the Pope.
A ceasefire so early in the fighting would have left Hamas victorious. But unlike previous occasions in Israeli history, the US President remained silent, allowing Israel to keep fighting, month after month, for a full year and beyond.
Yayha Al-Sinwar’s October massacre was made without any provisions to protect Gazan civilians from Israel’s counterattack, and came complete with planned and filmed atrocities to provoke a massive IDF response. From Sinwar’s perspective, the more Israel bombed Gaza the better. Because global public opinion would be aroused to support the Palestinians, he assumed politicians around the world would once again impose a ceasefire: long before Israel could seriously degrade Hamas’s infrastructure.
This time, though, the ceasefire did not come. Despite constant attacks from his domestic critics, Netanyahu mustered his very slim parliamentary majority to persevere in a war that continued to widen. First Hezbollah, with its 150,000 rockets and missiles, entered the fray. They were soon joined by the Houthis in Yemen, and by Iranian agents in the West Bank, and finally by Iran itself, which in two air attacks, bombarded Israel with some 320 ballistic missiles, each the size of a tanker truck, along with cruise missiles and drones.
Under continued criticism, not least from retired Israeli generals accusing him for waging a slow war of attrition while Israel was under worldwide attack (both literal and rhetorical) for killing “innocent civilians” — a term never used for Germans and Japanese burned in or out of their homes — the Israeli prime minister could offer no answer nor excuse. All Netanyahu could do was echo Churchill and keep buggering on.
This perseverance, this refusal to accept a ceasefire until Donald Trump imposed one just before his inauguration, finally paid off. Over 18 months of fighting, Israel wrecked Hezbollah and incapacitated Iran, ultimately causing the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. That, in turn, cut Iran’s supply lines to both Hezbollah and Hamas, making it impossible to rearm them for another round.
No longer able to charge Netanyahu with pursuing a pointless war — he had undeniably won a major victory against Israel’s enemies in Lebanon and Syria — his critics have instead criticised his refusal to stop the war to recover the hostages.
Hamas, for its part, is claiming to have won a very great victory. And while Israel will no longer need to worry about renewed Iranian funding for Hamas, pointless now that Nasrallah is dead and Assad in exile, the arrival of a ceasefire has prevented the final destruction of the group as a threat to the Jewish State. Wars, after all, are tragic indeed, but only their interruption by well-meaning outsiders also makes them futile.
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SubscribeIf the Soviets had not cleared out the native German speaking population in East Prussia and the Sudetenland in 1945 – destroying in the process a culture of hundreds of years standing and causing terrible death and suffering – those areas would be flashpoints to this day. The only moral way to fight a war is to keep going until you win if you can, and surrender if you clearly can’t. Preserving conflict in suspended animation to be resumed later is not “peace”.
Another, more recent example: the decision (to comply with the UN mandate) not to push the retreating ‘Republican Guards’ of Saddam Hussein all the way back to Baghdad and out of power during the first Gulf War.
There could’ve been a much cleaner break at that point, before the insidious ranks of Middle Eastern terrorist groups had started to wreak their havoc.
I read that tale a bit differently. That ISIS was nothing until the US incarcerated hundreds of military personnel in extremely degrading conditions and from that evil prison, ISIS evolved like a viper
“The only moral way to fight a war” is ethnic genocide. How rich is that
I was nauseated at the sight of well armed green headbanded jihadists escorting the surviving hostages to the exchange points in a a celebratory mood. Hamas snatched the optics of victory out of defeat.
Me too. Those headbands! Yuk.
Why level nausea was it? More than limbless children and bombed hospitals.
What will ur nausea levels be when the people there – Christians too – are “re settled” in a “ beautiful place with much sunlight.” *
D trump – an hour ago
There are ‘bloody’ hands all over Gaza, foremost those who proclaim to have the Palestinians best interests at heart.
Why no pressure was brought to bare, immense pressure, on Egypt, to set up Refugee camps in the Sinai (a largely empty area), with the world providing care and facilities, shelter, medical, food, education, the whole shebang, but they did not. The world allowed Hamas to use their own people as a shield, they have allowed Hamas to perpetuate the war far beyond their military capability, with massive destruction and loss of life, only to sow the seeds of the next ‘round’.
I despair, not so much at what has happened in Gaza over the last year, but what has not happened, and the people, of all stripes, who perpetuate war.
Thank you Mr Trump!!
Once again, he shows he has the balls – or at least mental Illness – to speak the truth. Gaze will be cleansed of its native people because, “it is too dangerous” for them there. What a mensch!! A bad neighbourhood! Bibi sitting there next to him, smirking and nodding along, like a insane cat.
This is what is was always about. Ethnically cleansing the native people.
Can’t wait to hear the brilliant reasoning of the Unherd herd now.
The Arab world has never cared about its own people.
The massacres in Syria and Sudan never brought the demos onto European Streets.
Good article .. Israel is fighting a never ending war against terrorists that have zero care for their own people. Qatar and Iran are both supporters of terror, with Qatar playing a totally duplicitous role in funding Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, all the while, cosying up to America and the West .. whilst allowing billionaire terrorists to reside in Qatar. Pure EVIL.
Are leftist Jews weak and cowardly, or do they just seem that way?
You don’t want to judge your own kind too harshly, especially when the bullets and missiles are still flying. But is there a pattern, here?
I suspect that various jihadist groups have been working in the background to affect changes in American attitudes. (It’s strange that he pro-Hamas protests started immediately after the horror of Oct. 7th; before Israel did anything to protest against.) Universities, would have been an obvious place to start. Since Jewish kids all seem to wind up in college or university, they’re among the most affected by this agit-prop.
But still, that doesn’t excuse so many of my Jewish friends and neighbors here in Brooklyn who are way past their college years. The level of hostility toward Israel is inexcusable.
I think a lot of the hostility against Israel comes from its insistence on driving the Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. Israeli settlement has been inexorable and its occupation oppressive. The October 7 attack grew out of that pressure that has been building for decades.
Two peoples want the same land and are unwilling to share. That makes for a difficult problem, and I know of no solution. But I do think Israel needs to stop its settlements and stop bombing the civilian population.
There is no “insistence on driving the Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank”. This is historically incorrect. Israel has proposed time and again to share the land – in 1948, 1967, 1995, 2001, 2008. Israel LEFT Gaza in 2005!
For the longest time, a majority of Israelis favored the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, with only a minority insisting that it should all be Jewish. The Gaza withdrawal in 2005 was supposed to be the first step in that direction. It is the consistent refusal of the Arabs in general, and the Palestinians Arabs in particular, to accept the existence of a Jewish state, and the transformation of each territory from which Israel withdraws as a base from which to attack it – with Gaza the latest iteration – that decimated the Israel majority’s willingness to compromise. And so Palestinian intransigence empowers the Israeli extremists and makes it very hard for the moderates to oppose them.
Not clear who you have in mind, or even the point in the context of this article. Many of those who were slaughtered on October 7 would have considered themselves left leaning and supportive of peaceful coexistence. Hamas and its motley crew knew that was the case when it deliberately attacked them.
Missing from all this is an explanation of how the IDF would have gone about completely destroying Hamas. Bombing will not do it by itself – there is little left to bomb, but Hamas is still there, and making the rubble bounce does not really achieve anything. You would need to put in someone else to run Gaza, keep order, and keep Hamas down, but Israel has yet to propose a way of doing just that.
It would have entailed the continued destruction of the tunnel complex, at least, the bedrock of Hamas’ war machine. Whatever the outcome though, peace can never come until so-called Palestinians put aside their desire to destroy the Jewish state.
WIBNFI the Arabs decided to enjoy social and economic prosperity over sending forth their children to become martyrs. Peaceful coexistence. Pie in the sky?
Alternatively, imagine the pro-Pal dream: Israel destroyed, rape and pillage ensuing, its desperate survivors seeking refuge in other countries in which they had previously been persecuted. Afterwards, Arabs can continue with the business of oppressing their own people, in the interests of religious dogma.
Ceasefires serve only to continue the cycle of revolt and repression, as the author implies, while supplying further billions of dollars in aid that becomes invested in terrorism instead.
You lost me at ‘so-called Palestinians’.
Anyway, what is your solution? Genocide? Mass expulsion? Do you think Hamas and co. will stop firing rockets because they have been moved from Gaza to the Sinai?
The author overlooks the factor that prevented most than anything the IDF from going (even) more forcefully after Hamas, namely the hostages. They are the reason that some areas of Gaza were never invaded, that Israel agreed to the first and now the second ceasefire, and that Hamas will likely stay in power in Gaza. Solidarity is the greatest strength of the Israeli society, but by taking the hostages, Hamas turned it, Jiu-Jitsu-like, into a weakness, into a tool to ensure its survival.
But this highlights a moral dimension that is generally ignored. How does one judge the morality of a society? Not by how it treats its enemies, but how it treats its own citizens. This is, more than anything, where Israel and Hamas’ Gaza are diametrically opposed. While Israel will do more than any country to recover its citizens that are taken hostages, the Gazan leadership treats its own citizen’s death and misery as pawns in their power game. The key thing to realize is that not a single one of Israel’s progressive detractors in the West would have preferred, if given that choice 2 years ago, to live as a Gazan rather than an Israeli. This has nothing to do with occupation (Gaza wasn’t occupied since 2005), but with the society’s values.
So while I agree with the author that international pressure hasn’t helped Israel and has emboldened Hamas, the hostage issue is an equally important factor in Hamas’s survival.
This is correct. The various Palestinian terrorist groups do not really want a Palestinian state. They have no interest in the Palestinians. Their only aim is to destroy the Jewish state and kill as many Jews as possible.
Surely that is not quite correct. They want a state, just that they want all the land and will not settle for less. I’d agree that that attitude is the major obstacle to peace – but arguably the (minority) Jewish groups who killed Rabin have a similar outlook
Wow. Yes, from 48 onwards they and their families have delighted at the newly arrived colonialist Jews. Fantastic, now we can kill then!!! Thank you Europe!!
Just like Israel, and it’s useful idiots Addie, frame it as Jew hatred if you criticise this apartheid state, they also like to equate all Palestinians as Hamas psychos. All the Christians there too. What about the West Bank? Should the people there just give up their land too. If they resist, well then they seem to be terrorists, so we must eliminate them. This Zionist project was started by “terrorists” from Europe. If only we had Unherd then.
They hand out sweets to celebrate the killing of Jews, and pay rewards to the perpetrators. Jew hatred is ingrained. Next, you’ll be telling us that there was no Jew hatred across Europe before the 1940s without the Nazis.
No Mike, there was. Uh.. that’s why they are where they are now. Because Europeans were slaughtering them for centuries.
Have a look at sone psycho IDF footage and all manner of Israeli citizens calling for full extermination of the Palestinians.
Then come back to me about sweets.
Trumps idea may not work as conceived, but Gaza cannot be refugee camp of a million tents of people living on the rubble. Other Arab nations finally have to do something positive here. Take the people in to your countries round the middle-east, as we in Europe did with the Ukrainians.
It’s illuminating that the author is unable to spell peace. We are then subjected to tedious drivel. Clearly Moshe Dayan wasn’t the only imbecile with an eye patch. Luttwak,try and swing from a slightly higher branch of the evolutionary tree.
You offer the same peace to Israelis as Caesar imposed upon the Gauls.
Which was rather generous all things considered.
Then remember how Gaul prospered for centuries under Roman control, and also recall what happened after ‘they’ left….CHAOS.
Good article! Of course, the liberal Western democracies appear mostly to have ensured that Hamas survives. It’s presumably the modern progressive way of instigating pogroms.
“ ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant”.*
Agricola: 30.
Was that not Tacitus, concerning Caesar?
No!
It was Tacitus putting a speech in the mouth of CALGACUS, the leader of the Brittunculi* before the Battle of Mount Graupius.
The Roman Commander or Legatus was Gnaeus Agricola, the father-in-law of Tacitus.
*Otherwise known as the Britons.
Well now that the land grab is all but done, and all that’s left to do is push the homeless squatters off to who knows where, Israel can gloriously and piously claim to this small section of Earth using the same justifications Americans did with the indigenous folk who previously inhabited our fair land. Or in other words. F… them We are claiming it. It is very clear that is the goal proposed by Emperor Don.
What are these displaced souls to do, but get bent? Their children, those who survived the hellish war crimes perpetrated by the Israelis, are horrendously malnourished. Their homes and businesses are dust and the only thing the Palestinians have left is a butt load of anger and a few billion dollars of worth of aid from the Emirates, etc. What else is there to do but spend it on rearming. The Palestinians may be totally displaced, but why would they go silently into the night ?????
All the yahoos who fervently support Israel should be ashamed of yourselves for your utter absence of human decency but again those who smashed DEI into the ground screaming “Woke” at the top of their lungs certainly do not have any time for compassion.