Why Israel Must Win The War In Gaza

Thousands upon thousands of Palestinians invaded the country in wave after wave. They were unified in their barbaric hatred of Jews and bloodlust. The atrocities the Palestinians committed against their overwhelmingly Jewish victims were like nothing we had ever imagined. And they were made all the worse by the fact that everyone participated.

Roaring crowds handed torches to 10-year-olds, giving them the honor of lighting homes ablaze, burning entire families alive. The Palestinian hordes whooped and laughed in ecstasy as they raped, tortured and murdered their victims. And when they arrived home to Gaza with their hostages—dead and alive—they were greeted by crowds of thousands as conquering heroes. Yes, Hamas planned the sadistic genocide. Yes, Hamas led the charge. But it was a whole-of-society endeavor.

Somehow, over the past two weeks of President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff’s dealmaking, the events of Oct. 7 seem to have faded from view. The deal he demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accept is incomprehensible in the context of that day. Ignoring Oct. 7, Witkoff and his Israeli cheerleaders present the deal as a step on the road to peace. When the ceasefire becomes permanent, he has said, the Saudis will rush to make peace with Israel. So will Qatar and everyone else. Indeed, Witkoff told Fox News on Wednesday, even Hamas would be welcomed at the table. And Trump will get a Nobel Peace Prize. In the same Fox News interview, Witkoff explained that his deal is precisely the deal that former president Joe Biden tried to coerce Israel to accept last May. The Biden deal, at its core, was a ransom deal. Israel, Biden said, would pay Hamas “generously” for the release of some of the hostages. How generously? Well, it depended on which phase you were in.

The Biden/Witkoff deal is a three-phase deal, and each phase is essentially a separate agreement. The first involves massive Israeli concessions to Hamas that are rife with dire strategic consequences for Israel in exchange for 33 hostages—including all of the women hostages. To receive the 33, Israel is required to free nearly 2,000 terrorists, hundreds of whom are convicted mass murderers. It must withdraw its forces from the cities of Gaza and from the Netzarim Corridor, permitting the mass return of Palestinians to northern Gaza. And it must permit the full resupply of Gaza, still under Hamas control. All told, Israel is paying for the 33 in a manner that risks all of its soldiers’ hard-won gains on the battlefield over the past 15 months of war.

While that is a steep price, it pales in comparison to the price of moving to the second phase. Under the terms of the Witkoff/Biden agreement, in the second phase, Israel is to withdraw all of its remaining forces from Gaza, including from the border separating Gaza from Egypt. In other words, Israel must cede control of Gaza to Hamas. In exchange, Hamas will return the remaining live hostages to Israel—but retain the bodies of the hostages it has murdered.

• Phase 1 will make it difficult for Israel to restore its previous gains and go on to achieve victory in the war.
• Phase 2 secures Hamas’s victory. The implication of a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza is that Hamas wins the war. It survives not only intact, but in full control of Gaza, respected worldwide as the jihadist force that committed genocide and survived to rebuild and do it again and again.
• Phase 3, if implemented, involves Hamas’s return of the bodies of the dead in exchange for the establishment of a Palestinian proto-state controlled by Palestinian terrorists. So if implemented, Phase 3 ensures that Hamas will renew its genocidal assault on Israel sooner rather than later.

Biden’s administration sold this deal by ignoring the strategic implications of Oct. 7. He and his advisers abjectly refused to draw the necessary conclusion from what happened. The atrocities of that day showed that the Palestinian war against Israel is a zero-sum game—either Israel wins, ensuring its survival, and the Palestinians are defeated; or the Palestinians win and Israel’s countdown to destruction begins.

Instead of accepting that self-evident reality, Biden and his advisers talked about Israel as a “traumatized society.” A traumatized society is not one that needs to win. It is a society that needs a hug.

Israelis who demanded the destruction of Gaza were demonized as genocidal extremists rather than realists who understood the implications of the bloodlust. The administration refused to accept the legitimacy of Israel’s war goals of destroying Hamas and preventing Gaza from ever posing a threat in the future. They placed hostages at the center of the narrative instead. The Palestinians weren’t an enemy, they were victims of Israel, which was waging a war for no reason. Israel had the right to defend itself, but not to harm its enemy.

The hostage ransom deal as crafted by Biden administration officials was a means of joining Hamas in exploiting Israel’s anguish over the plight of the hostages to prevent Israel from winning the war. Israel, Biden and his advisers believed, would be ensnared in the deal as Phase 1 moved to Phase 2. The deal was structured in a way that would make it almost impossible for Israel to walk away. Negotiations for Phase 2 are to begin 16 days after implementation of Phase 1 begins. And if Israel walked away, the last of the 33 would remain behind.

Given the stakes, two questions arise. What does President Donald Trump intend to do with Biden’s agreement going forward; and what does Israel intend to do?

President Trump’s messaging regarding the deal has shifted several times over the first week of implementation. Initially, he said the deal will bring all of the hostages home—a statement that indicated he expects all three phases will be implemented. A couple of days later, the president said he is uncertain that the second and third phases will be implemented. By adopting Biden’s framework, Trump placed himself in a box. Trump wishes to prevent new wars from happening in the Middle East. But if he maintains faith with this deal, he ensures that even larger wars will break out in the region during the course of his four years in office. He also guarantees that massive jihadist assaults in the U.S. and the West will occur. After all, if Hamas’s success in murdering 1,200 Israelis in a day gave rise to the avalanche of antisemitism and jihad worldwide, there can be little question what a Hamas victory over Israel in the war will bring.

This is doubly true if the reports that President Trump is insisting that Israel withdraw its forces from Lebanon next week and that he is urging Israel not to attack Iran’s nuclear installations are true. Hezbollah has not withdrawn its forces north of the Litani River. And the Lebanese Armed Forces, which are supposed to force Hezbollah forces to decamp to the north, are helping them to remain in the south. Under the circumstances, an Israeli withdrawal projects weakness that invites a future invasion.

As for Iran, if Hamas survives and Hezbollah survives, then Iran will emerge as the victor in this war. If Iran, the victor, is also permitted to keep its nuclear installations, it will quickly cross the nuclear threshold. The Iranian regime is not interested in a deal. It is interested in destroying Israel and the United States. That is why it has been trying to assassinate President Trump. And that is why it built terror armies all around Israel and has deployed thousands of Revolutionary Guard personnel to Central and South America, all while building nuclear weapons.

To win the peace of the Middle East, Trump must walk away from Biden’s failed policy of standing with Iran and its terror proxies Lebanon and the Palestinians in Gaza. He must restore his first term’s doctrine of supporting America’s allies against America’s enemies. If Trump backs Israel in returning to the battlefield to secure Hamas’s defeat in Gaza, and maintaining its buffer zones in Gaza permanently to prevent the area from threatening the Jewish state in the future, then he will build the foundation for a long-term peace between Israel and the Arabs of the region.

If President Trump stands with Israel and backs its requirement for a security zone inside Lebanon that will prevent Hezbollah and other terror forces from invading northern Israel, and if he stands with Israel in its efforts to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations and supports the Iranian people that have fought for their freedom from the regime for decades, then he will restore America’s standing as the only significant superpower in the region. If he fails to do these things, then he will cede the U.S.’s position to China. China has been a beneficiary of Biden’s weakness and determination to realign the U.S. away from its allies and toward Iran and its terror armies.

As for Israel, the dilemma is whether to sacrifice its future collective security for the salvation of the hostages today, or to secure its national survival. Israelis who support the first option speak of the damage to Israel’s soul if we accept that the hostages may continue to suffer.

For those who receive their news from most Israeli media outlets, the dilemma isn’t too large. With a few notable exceptions, the Israeli media have been serving the public a diet of demoralization for nearly a year. Israel cannot win, they are told. There is no purpose to the fight. All it does is prolong the suffering of the hostages. The only reason we are still fighting is that the man they have spent the past decade demonizing—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—refuses to quit. He refuses to capitulate despite the futility of the fight, because fighting is the only way he stays in power. The media—like the Biden administration— prefer to ignore the strategic ramifications of Oct. 7, which they prefer to present as a one-off. The Palestinians aren’t really the people who beheaded their victims, and who mutilated their bodies as they butchered them. That was a mistake, or something. And anyway, fighting is futile. Bring them home.

This week, former Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren wrote an article resonating this view. Oren admitted that the deal means that Hamas wins the war. But then he counters that Israel will save its soul by showing its devotion to the lives of its hostages by losing. “Our victory is moral, deep and long lasting,” he crooned. The problem with Oren’s argument and the broader claim of the deal-at-any-price advocates is that the war is not futile. Our heroic soldiers are winning and can win. And they must win. Oct. 7 will only be a one-off if Hamas is annihilated and Gaza remains pacified forever. They are willing to pay a steep price to secure the freedom of 33 hostages, but the fight cannot be forsaken.

Hostage taking is the cruelest form of psychological warfare. And it is the most powerful weapon that Israel’s enemies have in their arsenal. They know that while they sanctify death, the sanctification of life is the foundational creed of the Jewish people. Those who seek a deal at all costs are right about the soul of Israel. Our collective soul was bludgeoned on Oct. 7, and the wound remains unhealed every day the hostages remain in Gaza. As the years pass, the wound will become a scar that every Israeli and every Jew on earth will carry till the end of time. But our ability to carry those scars requires Israel to survive.

Oct. 7 showed us our enemy. And now that we have seen it, we cannot ignore the truth. For the nation of Israel and the State of Israel to survive, Israel must win this war no matter what the cost.

Caroline B. Glick is senior contributing editor of Jewish News Syndicate.