A Ruinous War and Peacemaking in Gaza | The New Yorker - 0 views
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Even a temporary ceasefire displays the moral power of peacemakin
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On both sides, the celebrations were tempered by an awareness of those still in captivity. Hamas freed children and their mothers but not their fathers, and elderly women but not their husbands. The two hundred and forty prisoners whom Israel released were, according to the Jerusalem-based human-rights group B’ Tselem, a fraction of the nearly five thousand Palestinians held on security grounds as of September
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(A study of sixty-seven civil wars published in the Journal of Peace Studies in 2021 found no evidence that ceasefires and prisoner releases led to sustainable peace agreements.)
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Because of Israel’s deep alliance with this country, its wars run on a timer: When will the U.S. conclude that its interests, and Israel’s, require that hostilities end? After the atrocities of October 7th, the Israel Defense Forces launched an unprecedented retaliation and, because of the predictable killing and immiseration of innocents which followed, effectively shortened the time that the Biden Administration and European allies were likely to offer unqualified support.
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there is no way for the I.D.F. to fight what amounts to a war of attrition without killing many more noncombatants
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In any event, Israel cannot “destroy” or “eliminate” Hamas anytime soon. With international diplomatic support, however, it might be able to disarm, suppress, and further delegitimatize the group
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Doing so would require the committed help of those powerful Arab states, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, whose leaders fear and despise the Islamist ideology that Hamas espouses.
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Durable Israeli security cannot be achieved without Palestinian sovereignty. The alternative to re-starting the difficult work toward a sustainable deal is violence with no end in sight. ♦