If one was a friend to Israel, a criticism that could be made of its war on Hamas in Gaza is that the war is ultimately unwinnable because it was fought on the basis of it being a conflict between ultimately rational actors.
In late 1945, Japan was still deeply in the grip of what could be called an Imperial Death Cult – that is to say, an influential segment of the Japanese Government was so loyal to the Emperor that it genuinely believed that death for millions of Japanese people would be more honourable than surrender. When the surrender came, it was necessary for the Emperor himself to legitimise it, which he did by uttering the memorable form of words that “the war has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage”. The dual threats of the atomic bomb at home, and the imminent collapse of the Japanese forces in Manchuria in the face of a Soviet invasion convinced Hirohito that his duty was to his own people, rather than his own glorious demise.
I mention this because yesterday the very reputable foreign correspondent with Fox News, Trey Yingst, relayed this account of a conversation with a Senior Hamas Official:
Spoke with a senior Hamas official. He provided three sticking points in negotiations beyond a hostage/prisoner deal.
1. Announcement of a total, comprehensive ceasefire.
2. Withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
3. Allow displaced Gazans to return home "without any…
— Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) March 6, 2024
It should be said that Yingst is not the only reporter making clear that the Hamas position on a ceasefire is as he claims: If you prefer CNN to Fox News, then their understanding is identical. If you do not trust US media in general, then Al Jazeera, which is reliably pro-Palestinian, makes the same claim:
Hamas has refused to release all of the estimated 100 hostages it holds, and the remains of about 30 more, unless Israel ends its offensive, withdraws from Gaza and releases a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including fighters serving life sentences.
In almost every conflict in human history, the side that sought an end to the war was the side that was taking more losses, or the side that was militarily doomed. The Soviet Union in World War Two, for example, was losing men at a huge rate but by 1943 was clearly making gains. The Germans in 1918 had never fought a battle on their own territory, but could see the writing on the wall for their own civilians were they to continue. In the history of conflict, rational actors will generally try to preserve the lives of their own civilians first, if not for humanitarian reasons then for the basic reason that those civilians will be necessary for the defeated party to rise from the ashes.
In this instance, Hamas is doing the opposite of what one might expect a rational actor concerned about the future of its own people to do. We are at once told that the war is causing enormous hardship and loss of life for Palestinians, and that Hamas refuses to end that war without achieving concessions that – objectively – would render Israel the defeated party in the war.
It is not disputed by anybody reporting on the conflict that the Israelis have offered a lengthy ceasefire in return for the release of a majority of the Israeli hostages. Once a lengthy ceasefire was in place, it would be politically very difficult for Israel to resume its offensive, especially if those hostages had been released. This is one reason why many in Israel actively oppose a ceasefire on those terms. The idea that a ceasefire would be accepted by the Israeli public on the terms Hamas proposes is a fantasy. And Hamas, you can be sure, knows that to be true.
If you view the war not as a conflict between rational actors, but a conflict between a rational state and a death cult, then it all begins to make more sense: To the extent that Hamas has made gains in the court of public opinion in the west since this war began, those gains have been built on the corpses of the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire between the two sides, or killed in collateral damage caused by Israeli strikes. The perception of a “genocide” in Gaza has caused a great many westerners to forget – or in extreme cases even deny – the ruthless violence of October 7th that instigated this latest round of fighting.
The Hamas calculation, very clearly, is that more dead Palestinians is ultimately good for the cause. They have evidence of that proposition everywhere they look: The pressure that Joe Biden is coming under from his left flank in a close US Presidential Election, for example, or the marches in western cities where unthinking progressives parrot genocidal slogans about rivers and seas.
And of course, in military and strategic terms, a ceasefire would do Hamas little good. It has lost control of much of Gaza, and tens of thousands of its fighters (though these are conveniently included in the civilian casualties. Hamas has not admitted the death of a single footsoldier in this war).
In this context, those pro-Israeli voices who argued for a more moderate response from Israel to October 7th will begin to feel more validated. Israel is now in a war of public opinion that it is unlikely to win, while Hamas’s inflexibility on a ceasefire is roundly ignored by western Governments, especially the one in Dublin.
The problem, from an Israeli point of view, is that many ordinary Israelis will simply feel they have no choice. If the Hamas strategy works, then Israelis are guaranteed many more attempted “spectaculars” like October 7th to provoke similar responses. If Hamas will not agree a ceasefire, then the average Israeli voter is likely to conclude that it must be destroyed entirely. That is no good news for Palestinian civilians. But only one side in this conflict appears to be interested in sparing its own civilians the consequences of war.