A way out of the Gaza disaster
Israel could turn the tables on Hamas, if it was led by wiser people
The entire world, more or less, is on edge waiting to see whether Israel invades the last Hamas stronghold in Rafah. But this is not a battle Israel should be eager for, because it would be fighting with one hand tied behind its back -- because of the hostages. The Gaza war has reached the point at which Israel should be more clever.
Let’s take stock. Hamas is surrounded in Rafah, almost certainly with most of the remaining 100-plus hostages and a million Gazans, mainly displaced people, as human shields. Talks are going nowhere because Hamas will not release all the hostages without the war ending.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s international credit line has run out because of the tens of thousands Gazan civilian deaths and the months of war amid a not-unreasonable suspicion that he doesn’t want it to end for his well-known political reasons. That he prefers to drag things out until the fading of memories over his culpability over Oct. 7, the worst disaster in the post-Holocaust history of the Jewish people.
If Israel invades Rafah a bloodbath is likely – the deaths not only of tens of thousands of Gazans and many hundreds of Israeli soldiers but quite possibly the hostages. The entire world will be against Israel, Europeans will consider an arms embargo, the Biden Administration will be livid and the United States will be speaking of unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state. In a worst-case scenario, all of that could happen.
This would be the usual calamitous outcome of the mindless maximalism that typifies the right wing in Israel, featuring the excess of hubris and paucity of thought that have brought the current nadir. There is a better way. Here are the contours:
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