What should we make of the ceasefire that could have been concluded months ago, saving thousands of Palestinian lives in Gaza and the lives of at least some of the hostages held by Hamas and their allies? One can only celebrate that, at least for six weeks, Palestinian civilians in Gaza might no longer face regular bombardment, starvation, and deprivation at the hands of Israeli forces. And up to 33 hostages will enjoy their freedom for the first time since Oct. 7, 2023, as well as hundreds of prisoners held by Israel.
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At the same time, we must ask: why did it take so long? It takes two to agree to any accord, and undoubtedly there was some recalcitrance on both sides. Yet it was mainly Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who repeatedly moved the goal posts, adding new conditions despite the enormous suffering perpetuated.
The Israeli government has long said that it wanted to “destroy Hamas,” but that has always been a pipedream. Degrade Hamas? Yes, that was done, but destroying Hamas, a group that claimed thousands of members and administered Gaza for the better part of two decades, always seemed an impossibility. Yet it served to change the subject from an Israeli occupation-without-end that fuels violent resistance, and provided an excuse to keep fighting despite 15 months of horrors inflicted on the people of Gaza.
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Indeed, the very cruelty of Israel’s military operation—the destruction of entire neighborhoods, the repeated bombing of Hamas fighters or alleged fighters with little regard for the attendant civilian casualties, the increase in the death toll due to the destruction of much of the territory’s healthcare, and the imposition of near famine-like conditions—has proved a predictable spur to further Hamas recruitment.
The Israeli government made peace with the far-more-powerful Lebanese Hezbollah after simply degrading it but not “destroying” it. Why not with Hamas?
A big part of the answer lay in Netanyahu’s personal interests. His grasp on power depends on two far-right ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Hoping gradually to annex all of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, they saw the war in Gaza as an opportunity to push some 2 million Palestinians from the Strip.
Egypt, of course, doesn’t want them—it already has enough economic and security problems. But Smotrich spoke of the “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians out of Gaza, meaning the creation of conditions inside that were so dangerous and inhumane that Palestinians would feel they had no choice but to flee their homeland. Like the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” as Palestinians refer to their mass expulsion in 1948, the flight would be one-way; the Israeli goal was that they would never be allowed to return.
As recently as this week, Ben-Gvir warned that he would leave Netanyahu’s government if a ceasefire deal were struck. He still may. That would threaten not only Netanyahu’s hold on power but also his political future and personal liberty, because an end to the war is likely to mean a political reckoning for the intelligence failures that enabled the Oct. 7 attack and the completion of his trial on pending corruption charges.
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So what changed now? The timing suggests that an important factor was the impending return to the White House of Donald Trump. He had threatened that “all hell will break out” if a deal were not concluded.
It was never clear what he meant. The idea that he would cut arms sales and military aid to Israel when Joe Biden never did was not in the cards. As for Palestinians, it was difficult to imagine a more hellish condition, other than the mass forced deportation that would be a sure route to further global opprobrium for Israel.
Rather, Netanyahu seems to have used the excuse of Trump’s threat to insist to his far-right allies that he had no choice but to accept a ceasefire. Whether that excuse works remains to be seen. That the fate of 2 million Gazans depends on such political maneuvering is outrageous.
To be sure, Israel had every right to respond to Hamas’s horrendous attack. But it had no right to a response that showed such callous indifference to civilian life—one that a growing number of governments, human rights groups, and academics say amounts to genocide. And it had no right to perpetuate that war when its rationale as a matter of national security had long ago dissipated and the war had become simply a tool for one man to retain power.
Netanyahu already faces International Criminal Court charges for alleged war crimes in Gaza. But he also deserves our unadulterated condemnation. Let us hope he goes down in history not only as the man who was willing to rip up the most basic rules designed to spare civilians the hazards of war. He must also be known as the man who accepted countless deaths just to cling to power.
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