There are all sorts of things that go unmentioned in the conflict between Israel and Hamas. I’ll list a few.

Hamas is composed primarily of irregulars and as such they are not protected by the laws of war.

Hamas’s tunnels are themselves a war crime. Attacking them is not a war crime or, more precisely, civilian deaths that result from such attacks are Hamas’s war crimes.

The same is true of placing military headquarters, ammunition dumps, etc. under or within hospitals, schools, or mosques—those are war crimes. Civilian deaths that result from attacking them are Hamas’s war crimes.

The laws of war were fashioned for Western societies. Western societies have made distinctions between combatants and non-combatants that simply don’t exist in any other culture and those distinctions go back thousands of years. Arab societies do not make such distinctions. Neither do Jewish societies except to the extent that they’ve been Westernized.

I’ve posted about this before but I have long thought that Israel has erred in not granting the West Bank + Gaza statehood. Then, when the inevitable attack against Israel occurs, they should declare war against that Palestinian state and seize some of its territory as a buffer. Lather, rinse, repeat. Eventually there would be no Palestinian state. I don’t support or approve of the Israelis’ (or the Palestinians’) goals. I merely point this out in passing.

I’m going to begin this post with the conclusion: I think that the very notion of a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict is a fantasy. In his Washington Post column Shadi Hamid provides his proposal for a ceasefire and the reasons he does not think such a thing is a fantasy:

What might a plausible cease-fire look like in practice? The specifics matter. Any proposal must take seriously Israel’s legitimate security needs. First, Hamas must agree to release hostages and commit to halting rocket fire into Israel. In exchange, Israel would agree to stop its bombardment of Gaza as well as any ground incursions into Gazan territory.

Once this first step is taken, a cease-fire would allow for further negotiations on what comes next. These talks should be led by the United States, with the active support of governments in communication with Hamas — namely Qatar and Turkey. These countries should demand that Hamas offload its governing responsibilities in Gaza to the Palestinian Authority.

While it will be challenging to iron out the specifics of such an arrangement, some rough outlines can be sketched. Just as it is unrealistic to ask Israel to accept an unconditional cease-fire, so, too, is the notion that Hamas can be “eradicated.” Unlike al-Qaeda or the Islamic State, both of which often relied on foreign fighters, Hamas members and their families are Palestinian. Truly eliminating the organization — one with hundreds of thousands of supporters and sympathizers — would require mass killing on an unprecedented scale.

But if Hamas members won’t disappear, what happens to them? Any intra-Palestinian negotiations should include a path for low- and mid-level Hamas cadres, as well as members of the group’s political leadership, to be incorporated within any future governing structure. Without one, the Palestinian Authority will continue to suffer from a major legitimacy deficit. Under any such “reconciliation” agreement between Palestinian factions, armed groups would need to demobilize and integrate their military forces within those of the Palestinian Authority. Elections would need to be held within a reasonable time and, in order to participate, members of Hamas and other militants would need to commit to pursuing any political aims through the ballot box.

His justification is terribly weak. He argues from precedent but the precedents he cites, in 2014 and 2017, are self-refuting. The last seven years are an indication of their failure not of their success.

To his credit Mr. Hamid recognizes that any ceasefire must not be limited to the Israeli Defense Force—Hamas must end hostilities as well.

My reasons for believing a ceasefire is a fantasy include:

What about Palestinian Islamic Jihad?

In the unlikely event that Hamas would end hostilities, there is another terrorist group operating in Gaza and firing rockets into Israel: Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). As long as that’s the case any ceasefire would be hollow.. Hamas would blame any attack onm PIJ and vice versa. A ceasefire would need to a complete end to all attacks on Israel emanating from Gaza.

That won’t happen.

Hamas’s very reason for existence is to make war against the Jews in Israel. It’s right in the organization’s charter.

Precedent is against it.

There have been multiple rocket attacks directed against Israel every month this year except September which might have given us a clue that something was in the wind. That’s not an aberration. It’s typical—it has been true every year for the last ten years. Under present circumstances I doubt that giving Gaza-based terrorist organizations a few free shots every month would be popular in Israel.

What’s in it for the Hamas leadership?

Hamas is not a benevolent society or fraternal organization. It’s more like an organized crime syndicate. Like all such organizations it’s a Ponzi scheme. The leadership has been siphoning off billions in donated money for more than a decade. Some has gone to making war against Israel but a lot has gone to letting the leadership live the high life in other Gulf Arab countries. I have little doubt that more is sitting in nice, secure Swiss bank accounts. I don’t believe the leadership will give that up.

If there isn’t a ceasefire, what will happen? I honestly have no idea. I don’t see a stable endpoint to this conflict. It’s a zero-sum game.

I couldn’t bring myself to watch the Republican presidential candidates’ debate. Did I miss anything.

My own view is that it doesn’t make a great deal of difference. Judging by the midterm and mid-midterm election results the Democrats have found a winning formula and I strongly suspect they will continue with that formula in the general election. That suggest that whatever his failings we are likely to see a second Biden term which I also interpret as as a Harris presidency at some point in that term. I doubt that President Biden will make it until 2028. He’ll either die or be removed on 25th Amendment grounds.

I don’t know whether this Wall Street Journal column by Walter Russell Mead is equally a free flight of fancy, either. I don’t know what the Iranian mullahs are thinking. I doubt that Dr. Mead does, either.

His thesis is that Iran has been trying to halt the rapprochement between Israel and its neighbors going on for the last few years and has miscalculated:

We don’t yet know how closely Iran was involved in the planning and timing of last month’s attacks, but it’s clearer what the mullahs hoped the attacks would accomplish. At one level, Iran wanted to remind everyone how savage and powerful the country and its proxies have become. Terror serves Iranian state interests.

Beyond that, Tehran hoped to disrupt the emerging anti-Iran bloc in the Middle East. The idea was that Hamas’s dramatic attacks would electrify public opinion in the region against Israel, the U.S. and the Arab rulers willing to work with them. This, Tehran hoped, would drive a wedge between the Arabs and Israelis as Arab rulers sought to placate their angry publics by abandoning any plans to work closely with Israel.

So far, this plan has failed. Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have all signaled that they intend, once the storm has passed, to go on working with Jerusalem for a safer, more stable Middle East. Worse from Iran’s point of view, the Arabs are committing to a revived form of Palestinian governance that can exclude Iran’s proxies from both the West Bank and Gaza.

I find it incredible that the Iranians should make such an error. The Iranians are Shi’ites; the Gulf Arabs are predominantly Sunni. The Sunni-Shi’a schism goes back to the earliest days of Islam.

Clearly, Hamas will accept money from anyone willing to fund their cause. That doesn’t mean they are becoming Shi’ites. It means they aren’t particularly scrupulous.

Iran has been trying to impose its will on its neighbors for three millennia (at least). Support of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other revolutionary groups are merely today’s version of that.

And Iran isn’t the only Middle Eastern country vying for influence within the greater world of Islam—for the Saud family retaining such influence is a matter of survival. They maintain that influence through control of the Muslim holy places. None of this is a secret from the rulers of Iran and I doubt they think they can unseat the Sauds from their present position. On the contrary I think their goal is more likely to maintain the tension.

If that’s Iran’s goal, it looks like they’re succeeding to me.

I honestly don’t know where some people get their ideas. I hope that the viewpoints expressed by Nadia Schadlow in her op-ed in the Wall Street Journal spring from attending too many cocktail parties with German and French diplomats. Otherwise it’s completely detached from reality. Here’s the nub:

Chaos is spreading throughout the world as a direct consequence of America’s failure to deter Russia, Iran and China. The balance of power in key regions is faltering, leading to instability and global disorder. Like it or not, the U.S. is the only force that can restore equilibrium.

and

The challenge for the U.S. now is to restore balance in the world. The Biden administration’s management of the Israeli response in Gaza and the continuing war in Ukraine are crucial. America’s adversaries are watching.

The U.S. can’t be passive in its support for allies. It isn’t enough to be the arsenal of democracy. America has unique military and intelligence capabilities that can help Israel and Ukraine defeat existential threats to their sovereignty. American diplomats must convince the Arab world—particularly the Gulf states—that a region dominated by Iran and roiled in conflict will doom their growing economies. If the U.S. succeeds, it will send a clear message to China about the perils of messing with America’s friends.

Practically nothing in those passages has any referent, i.e. they doesn’t refer to anything real. In the actual, material real world there is no such thing as a “rules-based order”. There are countries that pursue their own secular national interests, bending or breaking the rules of the rules-based order to the degree that furthers those objectives and that they can. For a brief period, the merest flick of an eye in terms of world history, from 1992 to 2007 (at the very latest), the United States could impose its will on a less than willing world largely unimpeded. That was the period of American hegemony. It’s been over now for fifteen years.

There is also no “arsenal of democracy”. We and our NATO allies gave Ukraine a bunch of stuff we weren’t using and have been struggling to restock our shelves ever since. Not only are we unable to supply Israel and Ukraine at the same time, we can’t supply Ukraine by itself.

In time given the will we might be able to but it would take years for us to catch up. Add another conflict. Or imagine that Israel’s campaign against Hamas (with occasional punctuation by Hezbollah) were to spread into a regional conflict. What would we do then?

Two more points. First, Dr. Schadlow mentions the risks in Central Europe, the Middle East, and Asia but there’s a significant omission from that list. Latin America is presently being “destabilized” or, as Dr. Schadlow would put it, falling into chaos as the result of China’s efforts in the region, at least according to this statement (PDF) made to the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere last year by Dr. R. Evan Ellis.

My last point is that there’s some evidence that Germany is being roused from its multi-decade fugue into fantasy. I hope to get to that in another post. I think that we and Germany would have been better off if they hadn’t been kidding themselves for the last forty years or so.

I’m inclined to agree with Tasha Kheiriddin’s argument at GZero:

As the Israel-Hamas war intensifies, there’s talk that Ukraine is being pressured to seek a settlement in its war with Russia, now in its 20th month.

On Saturday, a current and a former U.S. official, both anonymous, claimed US and European officials have spoken to Kyiv about possible peace negotiations. The speculation follows an Economist interview with Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny who said the conflict has hit a stalemate, and that unless Ukraine acquires more advanced weaponry and information technology, “(t)here will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”

She’s arguing that neither the Ukrainians nor the Russians are prepared to negotiate and, consequently, pressing for such negotiations is premature.

Sad to say, I think that’s probably right. The Ukrainians who’ve voted with their feet don’t count and by the time those who’ve chosen to remain are ready to negotiate, what state will the country be in?

At RealClearDefense Seth Cropsey argues that the Biden Administration is engaging in a policy of appeasement with respect to Iran, not unlike the policy of Britain and the United States before the German invasion of Poland kicked off World War II in Europe:

Khomeinism dictates that Tehran export the Islamic Revolution across the Ummah in a quest for global strength. Israel’s democratic particularism is inimical to Iran’s theological universality, while the U.S. is the crusader-usurper that stands with Israel blocking Iran’s strategic path.

Because Iran’s goal is regional conflict, the U.S.’ attempts to “deescalate” the situation only guarantee a wider war. The prudent move would have been to allow an Israeli strike in the north shortly after 7 October, while using U.S. naval air power and rapidly deployed tactical aircraft and air defense units to demonstrate to Iran the real cost of escalation. By contrast, the Biden administration blocked an Israeli offensive in the North while also restraining action in Gaza. This is coherent only if the Biden administration is correct that Iran seeks de-escalation, and that it will only attack if “provoked” by an Israeli or American countermeasure.

This assumption is as farcical as it is dangerous. Mr. Biden is committed to a policy of restraint that allows Iran to harass and probe the U.S. and Israel, escalating at a time of its choosing after it has thoroughly prepared the battlefield. Iran is proving this in Lebanon, where Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both under IRGC control, are eroding Israel’s surveillance system in the north in preparation for a major attack. It is doing so in Syria, setting the conditions for an attack on al-Tanf, a U.S. base that sits astride the Baghdad-Damascus highway on the Syrian-Iraqi-Jordanian border, the natural logistics route for Iran to support Hezbollah and Syria in a conflict with Israel. Iran is playing for time, setting the stage for a much broader set of operations that are meant to end America’s Middle Eastern position.

I’m not entirely convinced by Mr. Cropsey’s argument largely because I don’t think the analogy he’s using is particularly strong. Is Iran actually expansionist? I mean in a way different from any other Islamist country that professes the unity of all believers in Islam? It’s not that I don’t think that Iran is a threat, particularly to Israel, but that I don’t think it’s a threat to us. Iran is no Germany and a genuinely expansionist Iran would be receiving more pushback from the Gulf Arab states than Iran is receiving. Saudi Arabia is unlikely to join ranks with Iran regardless of what either Israel or the United States does.

In my view our policy with respect to Iran should be one of negative reciprocity. And were Iran to be so injudicious as to detonate a nuclear weapon, our policy should be to stand out of the way.

Institutions of higher learning and their students who have put their names on petitions in support of Hamas even implicitly may be in for some surprises. At Fortune Janet Lorin reports that some top law firms have warned schools:

More than two dozen top US law firms sent a letter to more than 100 law school deans telling them to take an “unequivocal stance” against antisemitic harassment on their campuses.

The letter, which was signed by firms including Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP and Wachtell Lipton Rosen and Katz LLP, comes after some law students saw their job offers rescinded for comments made about Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,400 Israelis. Israel’s retaliatory bombing of Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, has fueled protests across the country.

and

The letter was written this week by Joseph C. Shenker, senior chair of Sullivan & Cromwell, after he was contacted by Jewish law students from top universities. He circulated the draft to the other firms, each of which sent a copy to the law schools they work with on Wednesday night, Shenker said in an interview.

When asked if the firms would curtail recruiting from schools where they have seen concerning behavior, Shenker said, “People can draw their own conclusions. The letter speaks for itself.”

Contrary to whatever you may believe, “no hire” lists are completely legal in the United States.

The surprises may go deeper than that. At the Wall Street Journal Leslie Lenkowsky remarks in a op-ed:

Missouri Rep. Jason Smith denounced universities and student organizations for statements “celebrating, excusing, or downplaying” the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas in Israel. “Releasing such statements, or failing to condemn them,” he said last month, “is unforgivable and runs counter to our values as a nation.”

Mr. Smith’s comments have more weight than most because he is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax policy. That includes policies governing nonprofit organizations, including colleges and universities as well as groups issuing statements and staging rallies throughout the U.S. Statements celebrating Hamas’s violence, Mr. Smith adds, “call into question the academic or charitable missions they claim to pursue”—in other words, their tax breaks.

The U.S. has traditionally given charities and their supporters great leeway in handling controversial issues. Constitutional guarantees of free speech and assembly protect their activities and require government to demonstrate a strong reason for restricting them. But Congress and the Supreme Court—as well as nearly three dozen states—have agreed that providing aid to terrorist groups like Hamas is a justifiable reason to forbid donors from supporting them.

Mr. Smith’s statement suggests the tax exemptions of organizations backing Hamas—or tolerating such activity—may be in for congressional scrutiny. Virginia’s Attorney General Jason Miyares has launched an investigation of AJP Educational Foundation, aka American Muslims for Palestine. Mr. Miyares’s office said in a press release that it is looking into whether the group “used funds raised for impermissible purposes under state law, including benefitting or providing support to terrorist organizations,” as well as whether it was properly registered to solicit contributions in the state.

I would think that the first step might be to render such institutions ineligible for government grants. Loss of non-profit status, however, could well prove a death sentence to a struggling college. Even for a highly endowed institution like Harvard or Yale it would be a notable inconvenience.

I think that Australian diplomat Bob Bowker’s concerns expressed in his piece at The Strategist should be heeded. Here’s how he sees the aftermath of the present conflict between Israel and Hamas:

Aid will begin to flow from Western countries and the Gulf when the conflict winds down. In due course there will probably be some sort of UN and international coordination mechanism for reconstruction of housing and the restoration of education, health and medical services in Gaza.

Hamas and its militant counterparts will use that reconstruction effort to rebuild their capacity, drawing on support from around the Arab and Islamic world, and Iran.

The result of the current assault, and its most likely aftermath, will not, therefore, be a rejection of Hamas. Unless the occupation of Palestine ends, which is not in prospect, the aftermath will most probably be the emergence of Hamas Mark 2, more violent, more authoritarian and ideologically driven, and possibly more globally focused than before.

Hamas will not lose the will to fight. Nor will the Palestinian victims of its actions and the Israeli response insist, to any meaningful effect, upon an end to violence. As on the Israeli side of the equation since the horrors of 7 October, a fundamental line has been crossed.

Western rhetoric notwithstanding, there will be no two-state solution, nor much prospect of meaningful steps being taken towards achieving one. Instead, there will be recurring cycles of violence.

Israel will prevail in those conflicts with the Palestinians until, one day, it doesn’t. And when that day comes, even generations from now, the reckoning will be terrible.

I wonder if he understands the implications of what he’s writing?