Now Is the Time to End the War in Gaza - Opinion - Haaretz.com
We'll begin with the facts: The Gaza Strip has paid an astronomical price in this war, whose consequences will affect Israelis and Palestinians for decades to come. The widespread killing and destruction in the Strip are not reflected in the public discussion, but it is essential to be aware of their magnitude in order to understand the situation that the Israel Defense Forces is creating there.
According to the figures of the Gazan authorities, the official number of dead is over 24,000. In addition, there are about 8,000 missing Gazans, and many of them are assumed to be buried beneath the ruins. Many bodies are lying on the roads, as reported by Palestinians who saw them when they fled southward.
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The numbers don't distinguish between Hamas militants and ordinary citizens, but according to the figures, also cited by the United Nations, a huge number of the dead – 70 percent – are women and children. According to those figures, there are over 60,000 wounded, about 6,000 of them in serious condition and in urgent need of evacuation.
In addition, the UN notes that 60 percent of the buildings in the Strip have been destroyed or damaged. About 85 percent of the population – 1.9 million people – have been uprooted from their homes and many have nowhere to return to. About a million are crowded in subhuman conditions in shelters and tent cities that were set up in the southern Gaza Strip. Gaza has been declared "uninhabitable."
Site of an Israeli strike on a house in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, January 2024.Credit: Arafat Barbakh/ Reuters
The civilian infrastructure has also incurred serious damage. The health care system is collapsing and is incapable of providing solutions for the tremendous needs of the population, hunger and diseases are spreading rapidly and are expected to claim many victims, and the humanitarian aid is negligible relative to the situation on the ground. In many cases, there is no way of transferring it to those in need.
For quite a while it has been clear that the fighting isn't advancing the release of the hostages, and is only spurring Hamas to toughen its conditions for their release. It has already sustained the serious blow that had to be delivered after the murder of about 1,200 Israelis on October 7. Thousands of terrorists have been killed, according to the IDF, which also admits that the terror organization cannot be totally destroyed through military activity.
Every stockpile of weapons will be replaced with another, every battalion commander killed by the IDF will also be replaced. In order to ensure that this doesn't happen, much greater force would be needed, and even then it isn't a solution that can last forever. The United States was in Afghanistan for 20 years, and after their withdrawal, the Taliban flooded the country.
The question is, what's there to gain from continuing the war. The costs are growing global isolation, a daily trickle of dead and seriously wounded soldiers, and additional devastated families in Israel. Gazan society is disintegrating with every day of the war, and the destruction of any political and economic horizon increases the pull of terror organizations.
At the same time, Israel's messianic right is exploiting the opportunity in order to promote fantasies of a return to Gush Katif – Israeli settlements in Gaza that were evacuated in 2005 – and Israeli society is undergoing a process of militarization. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is actually profiting politically from the situation.
Israel can continue going after the Hamas leaders who are responsible for the massacre for the rest of their lives. But in the case of the present war, anyone who thinks that there are additional "achievements" to be gained must explain precisely what they are. Anyone who supports a continuation of the fighting must explain when and how it's supposed to end. For too many days these questions have remained without an answer. Israel hastened to bring large forces into the Strip, but in the course of over 100 days it has refrained from positing goals that can be achieved in the path it chose.
People gather with signs calling for a ceasefire during a protest for the release of hostages held by Hamas since the October 7 attack, near the Israeli defence ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv in October 2023.Credit: Ahmad Ghrabli/ AFP
Now is the time to acknowledge the fact that another bombing won't "rehabilitate the deterrence" and won't contribute to Israel's security. We should declare that the Gaza Strip and Hamas have paid a high price and focus our efforts on negotiations for the immediate release of all the hostages, who were abandoned once in their homes and again in the tunnels. We need a buffer zone arrangement that will allow for the rehabilitation of both the Israeli communities and the Strip, and Arab countries should be included in the effort.
Now is the time to rehabilitate the relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel, to strengthen moderate Palestinians and to progress on the diplomatic path that sees the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as a single Palestinian entity – because that's the way to dismantle Hamas in the long run. A cease-fire doesn't prevent renewing military action if the threat returns, but it opens a necessary and belated door to diplomacy. Now is the time to stop the war.