Six Truths About Gaza
Having achieved lightning military successes over Iran and its Hezbollah mercenaries, Israel is no closer, after two years of on-again, off-again combat of varying intensity, to reaching its stated objectives in Gaza. The IDF seizes territory, destroys Hamas infrastructure and moves on, then Hamas returns to fill the vacuum. Much of the world and many in Israel have come to view the conflict as an unwinnable quagmire – Israel’s Viet Nam.
Is there a path to victory? The answer is obviously yes. Hamas has no air force, no artillery, no armored vehicles, and dwindling ammunition stores. It has lost tens of thousands of fighters, all of its key combat leaders and most their subordinates. Yet its demands have not changed. In fact, thanks to French President Emmanuel Macron and his eager followers, Hamas’s desiderata now include a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
The war continues because Hamas holds 20 live hostages and Israel’s government believes it can somehow both obtain their freedom and vanquish Hamas as a military and political force. Or, in more cynical eyes, it can keep fighting enough to placate the government’s right wing but not so much as to endanger the hostages and hope an acceptable end game will somehow materialize.
That anyone imagines this is possible – that “military pressure” or civilian suffering will soften Hamas’s demands – rests on refusal to accept some fundamental truths.
Bluffing Doesn’t Work: Following Donald Trump’s second inauguration as U.S. president and the end of the January ceasefire, Israel has largely had a free hand in Gaza. When asked in a recent interview what Israel’s next move in Gaza should be, Trump said he knew what he would do, but that it wasn’t appropriate to say. It’s safe to assume he didn’t mean he’d surrender on Hamas’s terms.
Defense Minister Israel Katz regularly threatens to “open the gates of hell” on Hamas if it does not agree to release more hostages. Upon assuming overall command of the IDF last March, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir reportedly rejected then-current military plans as insufficiently aggressive. He personally helped shape and approved Operation Gideon’s Chariots, which sought control over 75% of Gaza’s territory.
It proved to be more bluffing. Gideon’s Chariots achieved all of its stated objectives and accomplished nothing strategically – at the cost of 48 soldiers’ lives. As long as it can recruit, fight from its remaining redoubts and release hostage propaganda videos that reliably drive Israeli society into a frenzy, Hamas believes it holds the strategic upper hand. It regards Israel’s carefully calibrated increases in military “pressure” as entreaties for better deal terms.
To Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s directive to take over Gaza City followed by the rest of the territory smells like another threat-bluff. It took two weeks for the IDF to evacuate the civilian population in Rafah, yet Netanyahu has given Gaza City residents a full two months to leave. If the operation does actually materialize, Hamas will savor the world’s inevitable condemnations, release more dehumanizing hostage videos, retreat to its remaining strongholds, and watch Israeli protesters shut down highways.
Hamas Welcomes Palestinian Suffering: Since the beginning of the war, there have been loud demands to cut off all humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza to goad Hamas into surrender – or at least more reasonable deal terms. Following the huge surge in aid during the January ceasefire, Israel’s government decided to give a complete aid cutoff a try. And after 11 weeks, Israel achieved nothing except worldwide condemnation, widespread propaganda “famine” videos, and deepening of its own pariah status. As ToI’s editor David Horovitz aptly put it:
Perhaps the key misconception behind the decision to withhold aid was the incomprehensibly abiding refusal by the government to fully internalize that Hamas has no interest in the well-being of Gazans — indeed it has every interest in greater woe for Gazans, since its strategic goal is the elimination of Israel. Thus the more that Gaza and Gazans suffer, and the more that responsibility for the suffering can be pinned on Israel, the happier are Hamas, its supporters and its sponsors.
Plainly dissatisfied with the level of civilian suffering in Gaza, Hamas commandeers aid shipments and sells the food to Gazans as a form of taxation, using the funds to pay its operatives – but retaining enough meals to keep those operatives well-fed. Placing command posts in shelters, school, and hospitals is win-win for Hamas: Israel will either hesitate to attack or provide civilian casualties for propaganda. Hamas assumes that visuals of civilian agony disseminated to a credulous, supportive worldwide media will ultimately restrain Israel. It’s always worked in the past.
Gazans Nonetheless Support Hamas: When Netanyahu proclaims his intention to “liberate” Gaza from Hamas, he implies that Gazans want to be liberated. Of course, he knows better. Despite Hamas’s relentless immiseration of Gaza as a war strategy, Gazans still support Hamas. A May 2025 poll pegged that support at 43%. While it’s tempting to wonder which 43% of Gazans like their current situation, more context is provided by the solid majority (57%) who support the October 7, 2023 attack. (The figure is 73% in the West Bank.)
Hatred of Jews and Israel, in other words, is far more animating to Palestinians than their own privation and suffering. Hamas calls it the price of “resistance” and the population largely agrees, whether or not there are actual Jews in Gaza to resist.
There Is No Third Way in Gaza: The conventional wisdom has settled on three possible outcomes of the war: an unthinkable return by Hamas to absolute power and re-armament, full Israeli military occupation, or some form of international administration. That last option really means control, in name or otherwise, by the Palestinian Authority (PA) – lest Gazans perceive the administration as illegitimate.
The problem is that third option is doomed. The PA well remembers its ejection from Gaza in June 2007, when Hamas summarily executed or wounded hundreds of its operatives. In Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, well-armed conventional militaries quickly dropped their gear, shed their uniforms and fled at the approach of raging jihadis. UNIFIL quails before Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The PA, alone or with peacekeepers from other Arab countries, is no match even for a diminished Hamas. Because no Arab peacekeeping force will openly cooperate with the IDF, it will take a pass on risking the fate of the PA in 2007 and instead will become handmaidens to Hamas. Lest anyone feel humiliated, Qatar will gladly smooth ruffled feathers with cash and assurances of shared objectives. After all, some factions within Fatah, the dominant party in the PA, celebrated the October 7 massacre and claimed involvement.
Hamas Cannot Be Conventionally Defeated: As I argued back in March, Hamas is less of an army than an infection: it cannot be conventionally defeated and, unless eradicated, will resurge as a mortal threat. Hamas plays a genocidal long game – no leader is essential and military expertise and capacity can be replaced, even if it takes decades. October 7 “is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth,” said Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad two weeks after the massacre. A couple of weeks ago, Hamad amplified his boast: “We will repeat October 7 not just again and again – but for the millionth time.” This after nearly two years of war, decimation of Hamas’s military ranks, and vast destruction.
Believe him. Hamas draws from a near-infinite reservoir of Jew-hating jihadis in waiting. In Gaza, 72% of individuals aged 13-55 are male; that’s about half a million recruitable men and boys.
Complete annihilation of fanatical guerilla movements has precedents, none of them pretty. In 2009, the Sri Lankan government destroyed the last remnants of the Tamil Tigers after a brutal military campaign that ended a 26-year civil war. Estimates suggest tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were killed in the final months. The same year, Russia completed its eradication of Chechen jihadis following 10 years of aerial bombardments of civilian areas, mass detentions, and extrajudicial killings.
Israel’s actions in Gaza pale in comparison. There have been many more live births in Gaza than civilian deaths since October 7. Hamas remains in charge of the streets and will not surrender. Eliminating the threat from Hamas means eliminating Hamas, with all that entails.
The Consequences of a Hamas Victory Would Be Dire: If Hamas merely survives this war, as it survived its previous four wars with Israel, it will have won; and the repercussions of Israel’s defeat will be substantial. Most obvious is the effect on deterrence. Israel’s enemies will have learned that taking even one or a small number of hostages will guarantee not only lopsided prisoner swaps but eventual victory on the battlefield. Hamas will only accept terms that ensure its revival and check Israel’s ability to interfere. The arrogant notion that Israel can simply “mow the grass” now and again even as Hamas rebuilds its arsenal and subterranean fortresses has been roundly discredited.
Equally ludicrous is the belief that Israel can collect its hostages now on unfavorable terms but rout Hamas later. Until the promised repeat of October 7 occurs, Israel will be constrained by the U.N. resolutions Hamas will insist on, its own domestic weariness of the conflict, and eventually a far less accommodating White House.
The broader repercussions will be more seismic. Hamas’s glamor and prestige will soar worldwide, ensuring not only its eventual takeover of the PA territories but maybe, as the de facto military wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, Jordan as well. Its leaders will become T-shirt celebrities. As the first self-styled liberation movement to visit defeat on a major western military power, Hamas will be feted by revolutionaries of all stripes and the permanent avatar of global jihad. Marginalizing it will become increasingly untenable and plugging its proliferating channels of financial support may eventually become impossible.
It’s certainly true that you can’t kill an idea – Nazism lives on, after all, but there is no Nazi state because it was defeated militarily and its objectives anathematized politically. Every day that Hamas survives as Israel gropes for new ideas, its outright defeat becomes less likely and its future brightens incrementally. Israel has an unquestioned moral obligation to the hostages it so abjectly failed on October 7. It also has an existential responsibility to eliminate the threat posed by Hamas. Absent more successful rescue operations, it can’t have both.
