The Strategic Case for Extending the Gaza Ceasefire

Israel's strategy is not working. Extending the humanitarian pause into a genuine ceasefire is in Israel's interest.

There are powerful humanitarian, legal and other reasons for ending Israel’s assault on Gaza, but the most effective argument may be the strategic one: Israel’s campaign isn’t working. Israel is destroying Gaza but it is not destroying Hamas.

On Monday, Israel and Hamas agreed to a two-day extension of the ceasefire negotiated to allow the release of hostages and prisoners and to get at least some humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Hamas would like to extend the ceasefire and will likely dangle the prospect of continuing hostage releases to stretch it throughout this week. Israel’s leadership would like to get as many hostages freed as possible and then to resume the war, bringing the campaign into southern Gaza, where they believe some Hamas leaders and thousands of fighters have fled.

Turning this pause into a permanent ceasefire, however, would be in Israel’s strategic interest.

Here’s why. Israel’s massive bombing and artillery assaults have killed an estimated 15,000 people in Gaza. But the majority of these are women, children and elderly Palestinians, not Hamas fighters. “Even a conservative assessment of the reported Gaza casualty figures shows that the rate of death during Israel’s assault has few precedents in this century,” The New York Times reports.

Israel’s use of massive, 2,000-lb bombs, the flattening of entire neighborhoods and the sheer volume of ordinance means that “even a conservative reading of the casualty figures reported from Gaza shows that the pace of death during Israel’s campaign has few precedents in this century.” Israel has killed in less than two months more civilians than Russia has killed in its almost two years of war in Ukraine.

But the military impact is not clear. Some senior Hamas leaders have been killed, but not many. Hamas claims that only four senior leaders have died. It is not known how many fighters have died, but it is likely several thousand and far more than the several hundred Israeli soldiers who have died in the October 7 attack and in Gaza thus far.

Hamas facilities have certainly been destroyed, but there is little evidence that they have included alleged “nerve centers” that Israeli leaders claim exist under the hospitals and schools that they have attacked, most notably the Al-Shifa hospital where scores of patients died in Israel’s attack and siege.

Hamas and other terrorist groups have lost the ability to launch large numbers of rockets into Israel. The attacks have not ceased but are significantly down from the hundreds of rockets Hamas launched as part of its horrific October 7 attack. Meanwhile, Hamas seems to be growing more popular in the West Bank, where IDF and settler attacks have killed over 200 Palestinians since October 7.

In short, Israel has significantly degraded the capabilities of Hamas, but not destroyed Hamas. Nor is it likely that Israel can do so. “The problem they have, which is the problem that they have had from Day 1,” an advisor to the Biden administration told The Washington Post, “is that the Israelis don’t have a strategy for doing what they want to do that does not harm, kill and expel a lot of Palestinians from Gaza.”

Israel wants to end the current ceasefire so that it can force hundreds of thousands of Palestinians now seeking refuge in southern Gaza into a so-called “safe zone” in Muwasi, a 14 sq km area in the south-west of the territory. Then, they can duplicate in the south the carpet bombing carried out in northern Gaza. “I don’t know how you do that with 2-plus million people in the south,” the outside advisor said.

In sum, Israel does not have an effective plan for carrying out its stated objectives. Nor does it have a strategy for what comes next. No one in Israel’s leadership nor in the Biden administration can answer the question that Gen. David Petraeus posed about the failed U.S. war in Iraq: “Tell me how this ends?” As some senior administration officials told me in private conversations, the administration wants to get through this phase of the war before it can begin to think about the next phase.

As Yogi Berra warned, “If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else.”

If Israel renews its bombardments, ground assaults and forced displacements it can end up in a very bad place, indeed. Support for the country will continue to plummet. Reuters reported in a survey conducted just before Thanksgiving that only 32 percent of Americans now back Israel’s war, down from 41 percent immediately after the October 7 massacre. “U.S. public support for Israel's war against Hamas militants in Gaza is eroding and most Americans think Israel should call a ceasefire to a conflict that has ballooned into a humanitarian crisis.”

There are solid alternatives to Israel’s approach. Doctors Without Borders is one of dozens of humanitarian and human rights organizations that have called for an immediate ceasefire, an end to attacks on hospitals and civilians, and unhindered humanitarian access. A growing number of American political leaders of calling for this and more. They want to condition aid to Israel, something previously unthinkable in American politics.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on November 18 called for conditioning the $3.8 billion the US provides to Israel each year as well as the $14.3 billion aid package President Joe Biden wants Congress to approve. “The Netanyahu government, or hopefully a new Israeli government, must understand that not one penny will be coming to Israel from the U.S. unless there is a fundamental change in their military and political positions,” he said.

Sanders called for an end to indiscriminate bombing, the right of displaced Gazans to return to their homes; no long-term Israeli re-occupation or blockade of Gaza; an end to settler violence in the West Bank and a freeze on settlement expansion; and a commitment to broad peace talks for a two-state solution in the wake of the war.

Senator Chris Murphy (D.-CT) has issued his own, similar calls for conditioning aid. “I do believe that the level of civilian harm inside Gaza has been unacceptable and is unsustainable,” he said. “I think there’s both a moral cost to this many civilians, innocent civilians, children often, losing their life, but I think there’s (also) a strategic cost. Ultimately, Hamas will get stronger, not weaker, in the long run if all of this civilian death allows them to recruit more effectively and ably inside Gaza.”

Such approaches offer a much better chance of bringing stability to Gaza and security for Israel. It could allow Israel to conduct targeted attacks on Hamas (as it has done for those who conducted previous terrorist attacks), allow for an extended IDF presence in Gaza but without the current levels of military attacks, and allow for a comprehensive, multi-national effort to rebuild Gaza (including rebuilding the 50 to 60 percent of Gazan housing that Israel has destroyed). It could help Israel restart diplomatic relationships with its Arab neighbors, now in disarray.

None of this will be easy. But its more promising that the current tactics-as-strategy approach that Israel now has.

The road to greater security for Israel may well begin with American political leaders who are courageous enough and smart enough to condition aid to one of our closest allies.