What would a ceasefire in Gaza really mean?

Calling for the end of hostilities is the easy part. What happens the next day gets sticky. How about creating Dubai on the Mediterranean?

This is what I should have written last Monday:

Yeah, this is not going to happen. Image created by Microsoft Copilot

Hamas Announces Unilateral Ceasefire
Will Release Hostages, Recognize Israel

Doha, Qatar—Hamas representatives informed their Egyptian and Qatar negotiating partners to convey to Israel that they will cease all belligerence by midnight. They added they will be arranging with the Red Cresent to repatriate all Israeli hostages, both alive and deceased, within the next few days.

In a statement, Hamas leaders said: “After long and contentious deliberation, Hamas leadership has concluded that we need a new strategy to create a stable and prosperous Gaza and West Bank for all Palestinians. Our resistance to Israel’s long oppression has resulted in some successful battles, but it has also cost our people great harm, in loss of life, property, and security.

“We have therefore chosen a new path. For the good of the Palestinian people and to create a Greater Palestine, we and our allies have chosen to lay down our arms. We will recognize Israel’s right to exist. We will work toward creating a democratic government for Gaza. We will rebuild Gaza.

“After 70 years of struggle, we will now prove that we can create a peaceful, modern society that can live side by side with Israel. That is our new struggle. We will prove to Israel and the world that a free Palestine can exist peacefully alongside Israel.”

Of course, last Monday was April 1. This scenario is not going to be made real. But if the Palestinians want their own state sooner than continued cycles of violence and deprivation for the next 70 years, this would be the more productive immediate strategy.

The problem with simply demanding a ceasefire is in the details

Basem Naim, the head of political and international relations for Hamas, said that what Hamas requires is “A final and total ceasefire and not just a humanitarian pause; the total withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza; and freedom of movement for Palestinians within Gaza.” Essentially, this would be a surrender for Israel: nothing changes in Gaza, and Hamas lives to fight, as they have said they would, another day.

For those who see the world in ideological terms of oppressed and oppressor, of colonialism and imperialism, of whites against anyone with another skin pigment, and, let’s be clearheaded, anyone against the Jews, these ceasefire terms may sound about right. If one holds that the Jews should be displaced from “the river to the sea,” these terms would be about right.

But for the rest of us, it is intolerable to have a sovereign state live cheek-by-jowl with a rump state dedicated to their extinction. How about this analogy: the American Southwest and much of the West—what is now the states of states California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming— were the result of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican-American War. The U.S. annexed Texas after it broke away from Mexico.

Now, suppose a nationalist government in Mexico today demanded that the U.S. return that land to its “rightful” owners. And, when the U.S. refused, bands of Mexican “resistance fighters” started conducting raids into Eagle Pass, Texas, firing rockets into Tucson, and blowing up school buses in San Diego.

This analogy is not perfect, as much of that territory was uninhabited or was populated by Native American and it’s not clear how many Mexican citizens were displaced by the change in ownership. But the outcome—living next to an adversary that is willing to enact terrorist measures on our soil—is similar. It would not be tolerated. The U.S. would have the obligation to fight.

Why are there no demonstrations targeting Hamas demanding a ceasefire?

Back to Gaza: it takes two parties to have a war. Last week Israeli commandos ended a two-week battle—for the second time— at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. They withdrew “leaving behind several bodies and a vast swath of destruction, according to Palestinian residents.” The Israeli military has described the raid “as one of the most successful operations of the nearly six-month war. It says it killed scores of Hamas and other militants, including senior operatives, and that it seized weapons and valuable intelligence.”

But this wasn’t the soldiers taking target practice. They were there because, holed up in the complex, were militants using the facility for storing weapons and having a base for command-and-control operations. If the hospital had simply been treating patients, there would not have been a need for a two-week siege and the ensuing destruction that resulted. The very fact that Hamas militants were firing Kalashnikovs and rocket-launched grenades is confirmation on its face why Israeli forces were there. The Hamas fighters were not fighting to protect the hospital. There was no need for that. They were there to use it for its operations, as they have used schools, homes, and Mosques.

Hamas leaders knew with close to 100% accuracy that Israel’s response to the October 7 massacre would be big-time retaliation. They expected that the civilian deaths in Gaza that were inevitable, given how Hamas disperses its fighters and materiel, would raise the world’s sympathy and put pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire after a few weeks, leaving their tunnels and structure intact. And, though it’s taken far longer and with greater carnage to their own people than they expected, they are getting closer to the ceasefire that they want. Indeed, an Israeli diplomatic source said on April 6 that “Hamas believes it can force a ceasefire on Israel without releasing hostages ‘because of the international pressure on us, and because of the internal crisis between Israel and the US.’ ”

What does Israel need for a ceasefire and beyond?

Israel’s immediate goal in the war is the return of the hostages. And its strategic goal is the elimination of Hamas as a viable force. A ceasefire might accomplish the former, but if imposed today, is not likely to result in the latter.

Any ceasefire other than one for short-term days or weeks may allow more aid to flow into Gaza to alleviate the humanitarian crisis Hamas has created. What lies beyond that?

The two-state solution

The international community has focused on a two-state solution, most recently reiterated by President Biden. But short of the April Fools scenario I fanaticized with at the start, that is not likely to happen, certainly not under the ultra-right Netanyahu government. Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, itemized the six principles that Washington and Jerusalem coalesced around between 2002 and 2009 required for Israel to agree to a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

“ … if Palestinians embrace democracy, confront corruption and firmly reject terror.” Netanyahu itemized Israel’s conditions as a “guarantee regarding demilitarization and Israel’s security needs,” plus recognition of Israel “as the State of the Jewish people.”

To date, none of their requirements are close to being accomplished.

The one-state option?

Tareq Bacon, the author of “Hamas Contained” and the president of the board of al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, believes a single state is the only practical model. He explains why two nations just aren’t going to happen, in large part picking apart most of the six conditions summarized by Pipes. His conclusion:

A single state from the river to the sea might appear unrealistic or fantastical or a recipe for further bloodshed. But it is the only state that exists in the real world — not in the fantasies of policymakers. The question, then, is: How can it be transformed into one that is just?

Of course, his last sentence asks not a trivial question. Many Israelis believe that would lead to the end of a homeland for Jews.

Dubai on the Mediterranean?

Bret Stephens, thinking very much out of the box, has a unique, probably long-shot proposal: an Arab Mandate for Palestine.

The (very) long-term ambition would be to turn Gaza into a Mediterranean version of Dubai, offering a proof of concept that, in 10 or 15 years, would allow a Palestinian state to emerge on the model of the United Arab Emirates — future-oriented, federated, allergic to extremism, open to the world and committed to lasting peace.

The key lies in persuading moderate Arab states that they have the biggest stakes of all in achieving a better outcome for Gaza: first, because a Hamas-controlled Gaza is another outpost (along with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen) of Iranian-backed militancy in the heart of the Arab world and, second, because a long-running crisis in Gaza will become a rallying cry for religious extremism in their own populations.

While there is an immediate war to be ended and a humanitarian crisis that must be addressed now, the pattern of relying on terrorism to find accommodation for the Palestinians cannot be allowed to be repeated for another 70 years. It’s in no one’s interest, other than professional terrorists. Neither the U.S. nor Israel can impose its will for a lasting solution. I think Stephens is correct in principle,¹ if not necessarily in all the details: it is ultimately up to the Arab states to use their influence— and their money— to undercut the terrorist model for a sustainable and productive strategy, led by the Palestinians who want a better life for their children.

Calling for a ceasefire is the easy part. What happens the next day gets sticky.

---

Update on “I went to college. Maybe I shouldn't have”

Last month I wrote that perhaps we are encouraging too many high school graduates to pursue four-year college degrees. Three weeks later The Wall Street Journal headlined, “How Gen Z Is Becoming the Toolbelt Generation,” finding “More young workers are going into trades as disenchantment with the college track continues, and rising pay and new technologies shine up plumbing and electrical jobs” Good to know.

1. See, also, the thoughtful report from the Vandenberg Coalition and the Jewish Institute for National Security for America which makes the case for an International Trust for Gaza Relief and Reconstruction, with a “realistic pathway to an eventual two-state solution.”