It’s taken more than half a year, but, finally, President Joe Biden has publicly unveiled an Israeli plan that could end the bloodshed in Gaza.
Generally, there are two ways to make peace; one is the total capitulation of the enemy, which happened after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan surrendered, so ending World War II. The other is that the combatants recognize a “mutually hurting stalemate” as a prelude to making a deal, which is surely where we are in Gaza today.
But getting the two sides to actually agree to and implement the peace plan is far from a certainty. The fact that the terms of the deal were announced could even be a bad sign, since in sensitive negotiations terms are often kept secret until there is a firm deal.Also, the military leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, who is ultimately calling the shots on the Hamas side, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both have their own reasons for possibly prolonging the conflict; Sinwar because every dead Gazan civilian chips aways at Israel’s standing in the world, while Netanyahu faces domestic political challenges that would likely only multiply the day after the guns fall silent.
Yet, the Israelis are unlikely ever to achieve Netanyahu’s goal of “total victory” over Hamas. US intelligence estimates that only about a third of Hamas fighters have been killed after seven months of war, according to Politico, while a total of some 36,000 Palestinians have already been killed in the war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. (Other estimates have suggested that the number is at least 24,000 killed. In any event, the death toll has been large.)
For Netanyahu to achieve total victory would require fighting a seemingly endless war with untold more tens of thousands of dead Palestinians and Israel’s increasing isolation around the world—some 140 countries now recognize a Palestinian state, while the International Criminal Court is considering an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister.
As the Gaza war continues, Israel’s dreams of normalization with the Arab world will steadily erode. Crucially, the war is also steadily losing support with Israel’s most important ally, the United States. Support for the Gaza war among Americans has dropped from 50% at the beginning of the war in November to 36% in March, according to Gallup. (Facing a close election in November, Biden and his team are also surely well aware that the evaporating support for the Gaza war harms their chances in swing states like Michigan.)
Palestinians are waiting for aid trucks to cross in central Gaza Strip on Sunday, May 19, 2024.
Still, speaking on the Senate floor, Schumer condemned Netanyahu, saying he “has shown zero interest in doing the courageous and visionary work required to pave the way for peace, even before this present conflict.”
Schumer, in effect, was warning the Israelis that the bipartisan American coalition that had helped to sustain Israel since President Harry Truman first recognized the Jewish state was fracturing. In the long term, that would be very bad for Israel since the young Americans protesting the Gaza war today are tomorrow’s middle-aged voters.