Ten reasons why renewing the war with Hamas is a terrible idea

Depart from evil, and do good; Seek peace, and pursue it.
(Psalms 34:14)

There has been a lot of talk in Israel in recent weeks about renewing the war with Hamas, mostly by the Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, and some of his extremist ministers, and by lots of commentators in the media. There is a very bad idea, for many reasons.

1. The hostages who remain in Gaza who are still alive would be abandoned to suffer much more and die. In addition, it is not sure whether Israel would ever get back the dead ones. The first priority of the government of Israel at this time should be to redeem all the hostages remaining in Gaza. Most of the citizens of Israel want this, as has been revealed in poll after poll, including a poll last Sunday which revealed that only 9% of the population are in favor of restarting the violence. Renewing the war would clearly  pit this government against its citizenry, and likely lead to huge demonstrations against this government of irresponsibility
2. Thousands more of innocent Palestinian civilians, among them many women and children, would be killed in Gaza. This would be another war crime, which would only serve the cause of continuing to make Israel a pariah state in the world. The photos around the world would be terrible once again, and Israel would be clearly labeled as the aggressor. Instead of aggression, the IDF needs to study all the mistakes of the past and prepare better defenses along all of Israel’s borders.
3. The citizens of Israel have had enough of war for the past 17 months and are very exhausted. We want to return to some sense of normality, as has already begun to happen in the north, as many residents have returned to their homes this week. This very long war has taken an extremely heavy psychological toll on us. Most people are suffering from trauma, post-trauma and various states of anxiety, and more war would only make all of this much worse.
4. Our soldiers are exhausted, both the regular ones and the ones in the reserves. Some of them have already given over 200 days to this overextended war, which has caused severe distress in their families. Also, we don’t have enough soldiers to keep this war going for months and years to come. The IDF’s ranks have been depleted by thousands of injuries, hundreds of deaths, and hundreds or more of soldiers with PTSD.
5. Despite the Prime Minister’s statements to the contrary, the President of the USA wants this war to end (remember that he doesn’t like wars!) and he wants to get all the hostages back to Israel, which appears to be of less interest to Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben Gvir and their ilk. Indeed, it is quite an irony that the families of the hostages are appealing to Trump, Witkoff and Miriam Adelson to save their loved ones, since they have come to realize that appealing to Netanyahu doesn’t achieve very much.
6. Who wants the renewal of this war against Hamas? Not the people of Israel. Only the far-right messianic extremist political parties, led by Smotrich and Ben Gvir. Would Netanyahu really renew this war just to keep Smotrich’s “Religious Zionism” political party in his coalition? Would he really be so cynical and self-serving to do this, as many commentators in the Israel media say? It is hard to believe this but not impossible by any means.
7. Renewing the war is very risky since it could bring back rockets from the Houthis and from Hezbollah, which would be very unpleasant, to say the least. It would also infuriate the Arab world, whose leaders just met two days ago to offer a serious plan to rebuild Gaza. In addition, it would anger most of the rest of the Western world as well, whose leaders would like to see calm restored to the region.
8. The war has taken a terrible toll on the economy in Israel. Many businesses have collapsed. Investment in Israel is down. Tourism—one of Israel’s major industries—is non-existent. An endless war is not sustainable for the economy of our small state.
9. There is really no point to renewing the war unless one believes in the efficacy of revenge. But this is not enough of a reason, because it is basically a bad strategy. It is an emotional reaction, not a rational or a strategic plan.
10. Another reason to not renew this war is so the children of Israel and Gaza can stop suffering from anxiety, fear, dread, loss and injury of parents and siblings and much more. The children have suffered enough.

For all these reasons and many more, it is incumbent on the mediators—the USA, Egypt and Qatar—to convince the government of Israel and the leadership of Hamas of the folly of more war. Rather, intensive and serious diplomacy is needed both to get all the hostages home, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, and sufficient guarantees and plans to not only end the state of war but to move to phase three of rebuilding and recalibrating the systems towards peace and coexistence, rather than  endless war.