Hamas’s Best Option: Surrender Now

1/23/24

Anyone with humanitarian instincts has to be horrified by the scale of the destruction and devastation that Israel has rained down in Gaza. And it continues. Every day, the news captures and broadcasts the latest developments, chronicling a rising toll of death and suffering. It’s heart wrenching. As heart wrenching as it is, though, the expanding calls for Israel’s unilateral ceasefire are unjustified and unfair. It wouldn’t be so hard to hear if the developing antipathy toward Israel were coming with at least some recognition of Hamas’s responsibility for the carnage that’s occurring; but I don’t see that.

Those in support of an unconditional demand for a ceasefire on the part of Israel fail to give sufficient consideration to the fact that a ceasefire would still leave Israel subject to the events of October 7 or their ilk being repeated. Hamas would still retain military capabilities, and it continues to maintain its unrepentant goal of eliminating the Jewish state. I expect that many (if not most) of those calling for a ceasefire have genuine concerns about the suffering of those in Gaza, but they fail to appreciate the threat to Israel that a ceasefire would impose. That demand for an unconditional ceasefire is no less toxic for Israel than the statement, “Palestine, from the river to the sea.”