What can you do if your war goals are unattainable? Redefine them away.
Israel’s stated goals—eliminating Hamas as a threat and winning the return of all the hostages Hamas is holding—are not only incompatible, they simply can’t be achieved.
Hamas still has some rockets to fire at Israel, but not many. Evidence of this is the single rocket that was fired at the central Israeli city of Rishon Lezion last month. It fell harmlessly in an open area. Contrast that to the salvos of dozens of rockets Hamas fired toward Israel’s heavily populated center at the beginning of the conflict.
So, after 11 months of fighting, Israel has degraded Hamas to a fraction of its former terror capabilities. The challenge is to keep them there. That requires a change in tactics, moving away from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “total victory” pledge.
The second goal, securing freedom for the hostages through military operations and pressure, is unrealistic. Hamas has made it clear it won’t allow the Israeli military to rescue the remaining hostages. That’s the lesson from the brutal murder of six hostages last month, as Israeli soldiers closed in on them in a Gaza tunnel 20 meters underground.
Few hostages have been rescued alive. Nearly 100 were freed in a cease-fire deal months ago. Hamas is still holding about 90, some of them probably alive—but the clock is ticking.
So, how does Israel get the maximum out of this unfavorable situation? Instead of doubling down on its unachievable goals, it can redefine the conflict.
Instead of calling it the “Gaza War,” Israel should look upon it as a “Gaza battle.” There have been many, and there will be more. That’s the reality of the 21 st century—no one wins wars anymore. Not a single war has ended with total surrender since World War II.
Not Korea, not Vietnam. The closest, ironically, were Israel’s two wars against Arab forces in 1967 and 1973—but those, too, ended with negotiated cease-fires, not unconditional surrender.
Kissinger's approach
It was legendary American diplomat Henry Kissinger who invented the tool of redefining a conflict to end it. Faced with an unwinnable quagmire in Vietnam, growing opposition at home, and ever-increasing casualties among American forces, Kissinger adopted a policy of “declare victory and get out.” He negotiated a flimsy cease-fire with North Vietnam in 1973 to end the war, and the US pulled its troops out.
It didn’t fool anyone, except possibly the Nobel Peace Prize committee, which awarded its accolades to Kissinger and North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Le Duc Tho. As expected, despite the accord, North Vietnamese troops surged into the South. Just over a year after the Nobel Prize announcement, the North Vietnamese took over South Vietnam and even renamed its capital after the legendary leader of the North, Ho Chi Minh.
By then, the American troops were long gone.
No two historical events are identical, and Vietnam and Gaza are not even similar. But the Kissinger principle would work for Gaza.
If Israel declares the current conflict a “battle,” and behaves as if it were over, Israel can withdraw its forces from Gaza, get as many hostages as it can—hopefully with world pressure—and live to fight another day. The “Kissinger method” could help correct some of Israel's many mistakes over the past 11 months.
After dedicating huge forces to a lengthy Gaza war with diminishing returns, Israel could redeploy its soldiers to more dangerous fronts like Lebanon, and, increasingly, the West Bank.
Israel could reestablish a working relationship with Egypt to control the vital Egypt-Gaza border, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, where Hamas has been smuggling weapons through tunnels and bribing Egyptian border guards to allow in massive amounts of contraband, including a tunneling machine big enough to dig a subway. Israel has infuriated Egypt by demanding the right to post Israeli soldiers on the Gaza-Egypt border. It would be more productive and effective to work with Egypt. The Egyptians have already blocked many of the Hamas tunnels on their side, and it’s known that Egypt’s president despises Hamas.
Israel could develop an alliance that is just waiting to join forces to combat the real threat in this region—Iran. It’s time to scrap the notion that Israel must go it alone against a hostile world. It can’t, and it shouldn’t. Israel should even resist calls from armchair experts and cynical “friendly” politicians to attack Iran or attack the Houthis in Yemen by itself. These are world problems, not Israeli problems, and Israel should not be expected to do the world’s dirty work and absorb the consequences alone.
Israel could work to restore some unity among the fractured, wounded, and hate-damaged Israeli public. That, however, would require a clean sweep of the current leadership, both political and military. It should be obvious that the leaders responsible for building up Hamas, ignoring intelligence reports, and botching the response to the Hamas pogrom on Oct. 7, 2023, cannot remain in power.
Even if it appears as if Israel has lost this battle, it’s not the end of the world. Despite Israeli leaders throwing around the word “existential,” the Gaza conflict does not threaten Israel’s existence. Golda Meir might have been right in the 1970s when she said that if the Arabs lose a war, they just lose a war—but if Israel loses a war, it ceases to exist—but this isn’t the 1970s. Israel needs to grow up, accept reality, and recognize the rules of the 21st century.
That might mean losing a battle here and there.
Mark Lavie has been covering the Middle East for major news outlets since 1972. His second book, Why Are We Still Afraid?, which follows his five-decade career and comes to a surprising conclusion, is available on Amazon.