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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
After almost seven weeks of devastating conflict between Israel and Hamas, a deal to secure the release of 50 women and children held hostage by the Islamist group and to pause hostilities has at last delivered some positive news. The plight of about 240 hostages, including civilians, has amplified the deep trauma felt by Israelis after the Palestinian militants’ horrific October 7 attack triggered the war. Their release is long overdue.
As part of the deal, Israel has agreed to a four-day halt to its land and air offensive on Gaza to ensure the hostages’ safe passage out, and to allow much-needed aid into the besieged strip. This should bring some temporary relief for the 2.3mn Palestinians trapped inside the coastal enclave who have endured Israel’s bombardment. They are desperately in need of food, water, medicine and fuel as Israel has allowed only a trickle of aid into Gaza since launching its war against Hamas.
This diplomatic breakthrough must not be wasted. The pressure must be on Israel and Hamas to extend the agreement to secure the freedom of remaining hostages and ease the suffering of Gazans, more than half of whom have been displaced. The deal should lead to a humanitarian ceasefire. The catastrophe in Gaza needs to end and far more aid has to be delivered. Israel should use the moment to refine its objectives and shift away from its maximalist rhetoric.
Its desire to crush Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2007, is understandable after the group’s fighters carried out the deadliest ever attack on Israeli soil, killing some 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials. But the toll on Gaza has been dreadful, with almost 13,000 people killed, Palestinian officials say. Israel clearly lacks a coherent political plan to accompany its ferocious assault.
Even if Hamas’s military capability and leadership structure is severely depleted, the group, or militants under a different banner, will continue to mobilise and fight. Its ideology will not be crushed by bombs. Israel has already made progress in degrading Hamas. A more realistic goal of its operation would be to ensure the group cannot pose a threat, rather than eradicating it entirely — which can only be achieved by razing Gaza to the ground.
The carnage in the strip risks breeding the next generation of militants in the Palestinian territories, imperilling the very security objectives Israel seeks to achieve, and undermining support for it around the world. The longer the offensive continues with no endgame in sight, the more it will bear the hallmarks of vengeance, rather than strategy.
There appear to be no serious discussions in Israel about who will govern, even if Hamas, which has controlled the strip for 16 years, is removed — or who will provide services, internal security, aid and urgent reconstruction. Washington has suggested the Palestinian Authority, the weak body that administers parts of the occupied West Bank, should move into the strip. That has some logic in theory but is likely to prove unrealistic in practice.
Israel seems to be betting that it can offload responsibility for what comes next to the US and Arab states, amid talk of some form of international administration or peacekeeping force in Gaza. But no outside actor will want to be seen to be riding into the wreckage of Gaza on the back of Israeli tanks, take responsibility for a desolate population, and face an insurgency.
Until the bombardment of Gaza ends, it is impossible to understand what reality will then exist in the strip. Discussions in western capitals about the “day after” are important, but cannot be divorced from what happens today to Gaza and its people. If Israel continues on its current path, there will be little left but a wasteland where the roots of the next crisis will inevitably start to take hold.