During the years I lived in Chicago, I was privileged to have a mature and insightful accountant who would admonish me on a regular basis not to believe my own lies when I would share with him reasons we might not have done so well financially the previous month.
All of us may well be falling into that trap here in Israel vis-à-vis the war against Hamas and our unwillingness to recognize the fact that we can probably never eliminate Hamas.
Short of totally obliterating Gaza from the face of the earth, we should have learned from three and a half months of war and the loss of the lives of 200+ of our troops in battle, we simply cannot eliminate an idea with military force.
The capacity of Hamas to make war can be temporarily curtailed, some of the hostages can be repatriated, and much of their leadership can be neutralized but, in the end, Hamas will remain.
Gaza must be demilitarized
Our government may tell us otherwise – that we are on the offensive, that we are on the road to achieving our goals – but we will need a long time to be fully victorious. Meanwhile, our troops continue to die or be injured, rockets continue to be lobbed at us from both Gaza and Lebanon, and world opinion continues to paint us as the villain, even more so than we have seen in prior conflicts.
We may not like the idea of entering into some ceasefire arrangement with Hamas. Nevertheless, while we keep saying to the world that we are prepared to stand alone, the fact is that, without the support of a number of our allies, we simply would not have the material or financial resources to fight this war.
SO WHERE do we go from here and how do we improve our situation?
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this month that the US is working on a two-stage process to end the war.
The first stage would be a short-term ceasefire in Gaza that would bring about the return of all the hostages held by Hamas, in return for Hamas securing the release of some Palestinian prisoners being held in Israel. As our troops moved out of Gaza, and with the promise of eventual Palestinian control of the enclave, an Arab multinational force would be prepared to move in.
In the second stage, Palestinians, through the PLO, would go through their own process of naming a transitional governing authority before they held elections for a permanent one, while the West and regional Arab states would help this authority build proper institutions, including a security force for Gaza and the West Bank. At the same time, Saudi Arabia would begin a process of normalizing relations with Israel that would culminate when a two-state solution had been achieved.
To support this approach, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, said in Davos last Tuesday that his country would “certainly” be prepared to normalize relations with Israel if Israel and the Palestinians concluded a settlement that ended with “a Palestinian state.”
I would not buy this approach, hook, line, and sinker, as the saying goes. We still need to make sure that Hamas does not have the capability to wage war. That means, first of all, as part of any agreement, the tunnels must be destroyed. The only reason you build tunnels is to be able to wage war undetected or as bomb shelters for your civilians. Clearly, Hamas built the tunnels as offensive weapons of war, certainly not to protect their citizens as there are no bomb shelters in Gaza.
Secondly, Gaza needs to be fully demilitarized. Again, the capacity of Hamas, or whoever is in charge there, to wage war needs to be completely eliminated if we are to sign up for any ceasefire agreement.
On our side, in order for our citizens to feel comfortable returning to the Gaza envelope to live, there needs to be a real fence (in addition to electronic security) that is high enough, strong enough and monitored 24/7 to give our people living in the area a sense of security.
As for a Palestinian state, there is no question that after October 7, none of us are very keen to consider the creation of a Palestinian state sitting on our border. Yet it might be possible to configure some framework for sovereignty that does not have all the trappings of an independent nation but could address many of the needs of the Palestinian public to have something they can call a state. President Biden made mention of this possibility late last week in response to a question from the press when he said, “There are lots of models of states.”
Ultimately, as Gadi Eisenkot said this month, whoever speaks of the “absolute defeat” of Hamas “is not speaking the truth... we should not tell stories.” In a word, we should not believe our own lies. Given that, it may well be time to look for an “off-ramp” to end the war and the killing.
Of course, for all of this to work out, we will need new political leadership here in Israel. The government that let October 7 happen does not deserve to remain in power, and new blood will be necessary for Israel to fully recover from the effects of this war – financial, economic, and social. Israel has many well-qualified and capable executive types who can and should take up the cudgel and assist the country in getting back on its feet.
We are currently a nation at risk. The good Lord guaranteed that we would not be annihilated but we were also given free will to act in our own defense and for our own future. The idea of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people took 2,000 years to come to fruition and we dare not let the nation of Israel be afflicted with PTSD.
The writer has lived in Israel for 40 years, and is CEO of Atid EDI Ltd., an international business development consultancy. He is also the founder and chair of the American State Offices Association, former national president of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel, and a past chairperson of the board of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies.