On Sunday morning, Sept. 1, some of the saddest news out of Israel was reported since the war with Hamas began in October: Six hostages, including Israeli-American citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, were executed by Hamas shortly before the Israel Defense Forces reached their location in the Gaza Strip. News of their execution sparked outrage in Israel, leading to a massive protest in Tel Aviv against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Protesters accused the prime minister of being unwilling to compromise on negotiations with Hamas that would see the release of hostages. Even U.S. President Joe Biden joined in with calls that Netanyahu is not doing enough to secure the release of hostages. But for there to be peace in Israel and Gaza, the State of Israel must not compromise on negotiations; it must defeat Hamas.
In a recent interview with broadcaster Piers Morgan, journalist and political commentator Douglas Murray pointed out that we in the West have become accustomed to the idea that every war must end in negotiation, in some brokered peace. Good diplomacy, the thinking goes, is the only medium through which wars end and transform into peace. But that’s not the reality of war. Historically, wars end not with diplomacy but through decisive victory. Diplomatic agreements are a part of the history of war, but lasting diplomacy only exists in the aftermath of a decisive victory. One of the reasons that the peace established after World War I didn’t last is because, as U.S. Gen. John Pershing noted then, the Germans were not completely defeated. Israel must remember this fact as it prepares for “the day after” in Gaza.
Decisive victory is the breeding ground for lasting peace and stability. Take, for example, the end of World War II. When the war was over, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were utterly crushed, their regimes disbanded, and their capacity to wage war and genocide obliterated. When Allied forces released German and Japanese prisoners of war, there was no concern that they would rise again to rebuild the military might of their former nations. Why? Because those powers had been completely defeated. There was no Nazi war machine left to restart. Imperial Japan no longer had the resources to continue its brutal campaigns. It is unthinkable to imagine, say, a negotiated agreement with Nazi Germany where their army was left intact or their weapons were untouched.
This brings us to Gaza. Thousands of Hamas militants currently sit in Israeli prisons. If any number of those prisoners were released without the utter decimation of Hamas’s capacity to wage terror against Israel, what would stop them from rearming, regrouping and reigniting the same bloody cycle of violence? How could negotiating a settlement with Hamas in this stage of the war ensure that Israel can live without fear of Hamas terrorism? For there to be any hope of peace in Israel and Gaza, Hamas must be thoroughly dismantled and their infrastructure of terror obliterated so that they no longer have the means to fight.
In fact, Israel may need to go even further. A portion of Gaza itself may need to come under Israeli control for a set period—think of China ceding Hong Kong to the British for 99 years in the aftermath of the First Opium War, which ended in 1842. This model could allow for a new generation in the coastal enclave to grow up free from Hamas’s tyranny and radicalization, paving the way for a society that values peace, culture and economic prosperity.
Another historical model is that of the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. Rome, recognizing Carthage as a continuous existential threat, ultimately decided that Carthage had to be destroyed. While the level of destruction used by Rome is not appropriate today (the Romans leveled Carthage and salted the ground), the lesson remains: Existential threats must be defeated so completely that they can no longer pose a danger. Gaza, under Hamas, remains a threat to Israel’s existence, and only through Hamas’s defeat can that threat be neutralized.
Additionally, we must understand the cultural dimension at play. In the Arab world, shame and honor are powerful forces. A thorough and humiliating defeat of Hamas would bring shame to the movement in the eyes of the Arab people—much in the same way that Germans still carry the weight of the Nazi era. Hamas must become an emblem of failure and disgrace, not resistance and heroism.
If Hamas were to be defeated, Gaza itself could have a future of prosperity. There’s no reason it couldn’t evolve into a cultural and economic beacon in the Middle East, akin to Tel Aviv. The people of Gaza deserve the chance to build a future free of terror. But for that to happen, Hamas must first be removed from the equation entirely.
In the end, wars end with victory or defeat, and for peace to flourish in Gaza and Israel, Hamas needs to be soundly, unequivocally defeated.
