Yemen-born journalist Hussein Alwaday has suggested that to defeat Hamas Israel must kill every last member of the terrorist group, because of what he dubs the “Palestinian delusional disorder.” Simply put, according to Alwaday, “As long as one Hamas terrorist remains alive, he will stand in front of the whole world and declare, We’ve won.”
“I propose to call it the delusional disorder of victory, or the illusory victory disease, to define the strange situation in Arab politics from 1948 until today,” he writes. “The danger of this disease, as we saw in Yemen from 2015 to 2022, in Lebanon in 2006, and in Gaza in 2023, is that it diverts attention from reality and the necessity to stop the slaughter and save civilian lives, and throws the infected carriers into an illogical spiral. of denying reality and embracing the illusion of greatness and power. The greater the illusion, the greater the number of the graves, the displaced, and the starving.”
With that instructive analysis in mind, it appears that Israel and the IDF are not going to win the war to the satisfaction of the very people who must internalize this win if a semblance of peace is ever to return. Indeed, the IDF appears to already be preparing the Israeli population for the final phase of the Gaza war when it would follow in the footsteps of the late Republican Senator George Aiken from Vermont who suggested regarding the war in Vietnam: “Let’s declare victory and go home.”
Historians go nuts whenever this quote appears anywhere in print because, like all great quotes, it was never uttered, especially not by Senator Aiken. What Aiken did suggest was: “Let’s declare that we have achieved victory in our struggle to meet attainable military goals and then redeploy our troops in cities that the enemy could have no hope of capturing, thus forcing them either to escalate the war, and thereby face the condemnation of the world, or agree to negotiate.”
PARTIAL VICTORY IS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER
As the war in Gaza is entering its third month, it is becoming evident that Israel is not going to kill every last Hamas terrorist. Moreover, the hundreds of Gazans, some semi-clad, who were captured and then captured in the IDF Spokesperson’s unit’s videos are not terrorists. These are men the IDF detained for questioning and only dozens of them were successfully identified as terrorists. Not nearly as many Hamas members as one would think have laid down their weapons, the men in the pictures are mostly ordinary citizens.
According to Ynet, about 70% of the Gazans who were detained and documented in the past week or so will be released to their homes after it has become clear that they are not identifiable terrorists. Only a few dozen out of the hundreds we’ve seen lined up on the streets of Gaza and hauled away on trucks are terrorists. Everyone else, according to the Shin Bet analysis is not.
As a result, the IDF is still very far from defeating or even severely degrading Hamas. According to Israeli media reports, the common denominator for all the captured Hamas fighters is that they were disconnected from their commanders and had no idea what to do next. Some are choosing to take independent action and attack IDF soldiers sporadically, others put down their weapons and surrender. But so far, the IDF’s attempts to locate the terrorists who are hiding among thousands of civilians have not yielded decisive results.
As News12 military correspondent Nir Dvori recently put it: “Among the detainees in Gaza, 40% are terrorists, including those who are considered ‘ticking bombs.’”
He used “detainees,” because that’s what he was told by the IDF Spokesperson who updated him. The IDF is going back to the language of roundups, detention, and prosecution. This is no longer the great war to avenge the victims of October 7.
So far, the IDF succeeded in taking over large areas in the Gaza Strip, but Hamas did not really try to defend the urban areas. Instead, it gives up territory to win time and uses the civilian population as a military asset. Its strategic depth is not the residential neighborhoods but their residents.
There, when it comes to the need to distinguish between civilians and terrorists, is where the IDF will continue to fail, unless it does what must be done, ignoring the relentless pressure from Israel’s Western allies, most notably the US, and level all of Gaza, terrorists and bystanders. In this instance, the IDF’s moral superiority renders it inferior when facing an enemy that has no scruples at all and takes pleasure in displaying wanton cruelty.
The ruined cities of Gaza, the thousands of dead Gazans, and the sight of 1.9 million displaced people do not make an impression on Yahya Sinwar and the Hamas leadership. On the contrary, they incorporate these values into the ethos of victory they are now writing for themselves and future generations. And unlike Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens, the Hamas leaders speak fluent Gazan Arabic.
PEACE THROUGH PERMANENT OCCUPATION
Within the current (external) limitations placed on the IDF’s ability to fight, only one move on the part of Israel can shift the balance of power between mad murderers and rational defenders: occupation (territorial liberation).
According to the Hamas charter, all of “Palestine” is an Islamic territory and must remain so eternally. The Muslim world view since the hordes of Arabs followed the prophet Mohammed out of the peninsula to fill the void that was left by the declining Roman empire is made up of two parts: the area of peace, and the area of war. The former includes all the territories that have ever been captured by the Muslims, including those from which they were later repelled. The latter includes all the territories that are yet to be turned Muslim, including Western Europe, the US, and Canada.
In the face of a delusional Hamas that declares victory even while it is taking deadly blows on every side, only the taking of Haram or waqf land would spell defeat. That was the Nakba of 1948-49 and the Naksa of 1967. When Gazan Arabs are deprived of their land and most of them are driven off to host countries, Israel will celebrate a victory that cannot be denied even by madmen.
Israel doesn’t have to kill every last Hamas terrorist, it must instead kill their spirit.
Unfortunately, President Biden has made it clear that his administration won’t accept that territorial solution either.
