Peloni: Israel should annex one-third to one-half of northern Gaza. This would impose a penalty on Gaza for their war, one which provide a deterrance against war with Israel by any of her neighbors. So, while ending Hamas is a necessary solution to this war, it should not be the limit of the solution.
The preference for freezing wars instead of ending them is one of the more dangerous trends in Western policymaking. What was once widely recognized as an innovation of Vladimir Putin’s Russia has somehow become Plan A among a panicky Western public that refuses to look more than a few hours into the future.
And the insistence on applying this policy to Israel’s war against Hamas recalls the adage “it was worse than a crime; it was a blunder.” In this case, pressuring Israel to freeze its conflict with Hamas in place is more than immoral; it is irrational.
Throughout the history of warfare, postwar settlements have been driven and judged by whether they made renewed conflict more or less likely. It was understood that ceasefires simply for the purposes of allowing belligerents to rearm for the next battle do not constitute “peace.” Making such ceasefires the end goal of negotiations is a recipe for permanent war in every global hotspot.
Further, fears of one side not sticking to its commitments make it harder to strike peace deals. If one has an enemy that cannot be trusted to uphold agreements, but one still wants to end the cycle of violence, what option is left? Total victory.
Author and political scientist Dan Reiter, in his book How Wars End, estimates that, “Over the 1914-2001 period, nearly one third of all interstate war ceasefires (56 out of 188) eventually broke down into renewed war.” In the case of Israel and Hamas, renewed war is assured. What do people expect Israel to do here?
Reiter offers three forms of total victory that break this pattern: annihilation, annexation, and imposed regime change.
Israel is obviously not pursuing the first—evacuating millions to safe zones in a war that has resulted in about 20,000-25,000 civilian Palestinian deaths by definition rules out any discussion of annihilation.
Israel isn’t pursuing the second—annexation—because it has only moved in the opposite direction, having relinquished its occupation of Gaza entirely. Israel also continues to conduct multilateral diplomacy to determine who might be able to govern Gaza both interim and long-term, and that diplomacy does not include Israeli annexation even as an option.
Third and last is imposed regime change. This is the option Israel has chosen.
One reason Israel must pursue total victory is because Hamas has chosen to pursue total victory. No, Hamas isn’t going to destroy Israel. But what matters here is that Hamas has decided to try. That means war between Hamas and Israel will continue until someone is left in total defeat. This is now out of Israel’s control: It may be possible to continue getting temporary ceasefires, but it is not possible to end this war because Hamas will not end the war. That is just a fact that must be dealt with.
He omitted the fourth option: population transfer, whether forced, voluntary, compensated or not or otherwise incentivized as in the Jordan Option or some combination which makes this article a straw man argument.