Will Israel win the war against Hamas?
The question, despite the Jewish state’s apparent success on the battlefield thus far, is a bit complicated, according to experts, especially given the increasing calls from the international community for a ceasefire—a surefire way to prevent Israeli victory.
Einat Wilf, a leading thinker on the Israeli left and a former member of Knesset, has written and spoken extensively on the phenomenon of the West not allowing Israel to win wars.
It comes from “a combination of realpolitik—the size of the Arab world and the broad implications of letting Israel win due to the substantial level of humiliation that the Arab world cannot contain,” she says. But there is also a “deep theological resistance from the West against Jewish victory.”
Wilf points to the fact that historically from a Christian perspective, “Jewish ruin was a necessity.” This is because Christian dominance grew on the idea of replacement theory—the first Christian churches in Jerusalem were built overlooking the ruins of the Temple Mount, she notes.
From the Arab point of view, she says, Islam was born at a time when Jewish life was already ruined, so “strong Jews, powerful Jews and victorious Jews are an affront to proper order” in the eyes of the Arab world.
Furthermore, there is a Jewish psychology of fear of victory, Wilf says.
Professor Danny Orbach, a military historian at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, says that examples of the West preventing full-blown Jewish victory date back to the foundation of the modern State of Israel in 1948.
“Every time the IDF starts to win the international community calls for a ceasefire. But when the Arabs are winning they do not.”
Unlike places in Africa, where the West lets wars rage on for decades, “Historically superpowers tend to interfere in the Middle East … due to religious and cultural reasons,” Orbach says.
As for Gaza specifically, Orbach says the world is following a deeply wrong “structural interpretation of international law.” Most international law was written with the dependency of reciprocity, meaning that both sides are required to oblige by the laws if they are to have any effect, he notes.
However, Orbach says, “usually actors, mainly non-Western, did not care or require this.” This led to a “race to the bottom” where “most laws today are not reciprocal.”
“As we see with Hamas, actors who do not feel obligated by international law ‘hack’ the system, … they ignore the law as if it doesn’t exist, and then when Israel responds [militarily] they turn to the international community trying to stop it.”
Orbach says due to this, the laws are “so restrictive of armies that you can’t actually fight wars,” and as a result, “if you keep to the standard of law you cannot defeat Hamas.”
Thanks to this, Israel has found itself in a cycle of Hamas restocking and rebuilding after wars, leading to more conflict.
‘Forever wars’
Wilf laments, “We are where we are because we stopped talking about victory or defeat. … We’ve come to accept very low standards.
“For example, we call peace with Egypt ‘peace,’ but at best it is a non-belligerent agreement as they continue to be the biggest promoter of antisemitic content.”
Additionally, she says we have been “settling and complacent and indulging in the ‘River to the Sea’ ideology.”
As a result, we find ourselves in ‘forever wars.’”
Both analysts agree that any solution to the cycle of violence must include the complete destruction of Hamas and its ability to govern and threaten the citizens of Israel.
However, Israel still seems far from that goal, and calls from all major allies point in the direction of a temporary, if not permanent, halt to the fighting due to the rising deaths reported by the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza.
France has called for an “immediate humanitarian truce” and reports from Washington are that Israel has a week left at best before all-out calls from the administration to end the fighting. U.S. President Biden already told the press that he pushed for at least temporary pauses in the fighting in his calls with Israeli leaders.
This comes as cities across the world have thousands of protesters in the streets calling on their governments to push for a ceasefire.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and everyone in the War Cabinet have been firm in their resistance to this, though Netanyahu seemed open to a ceasefire if the hostages are all released, he told the nation on Tuesday evening. He also said that no fuel would enter the Strip until the hostages are returned home.
As the war wages into its second month, looking certain to pass 54 days, which would be Israel’s longest war in decades, the calls to lay down arms are sure to proliferate. The question is whether Israel’s leadership can brave to storm to ensure that residents of the north and the south can return to their homes certain there is no more threat to their lives.
