Every Liberal Institution Will Support a Ceasefire Eventually, It’s Simply a Matter of How Many Palestinians Must Die First
Short of full blown ethnic cleansing of Gaza, there is only one way this ends. Everyone knows it—especially the White House—but few have the courage to say it.
Everyone from the White House to union leaders to electeds in Congress knows that the current “war” in Gaza will end with a bilateral ceasefire as all previous “operations” in Gaza have ended, but no one wants to say it. It’s obvious. It’s a fait accompli. It’s inevitable.
Everything else leading up to the eventual support for a ceasefire is purely a matter of cowardice and careerism.
The current conflict, which restarted in earnest last night after a “temporary humanitarian truce” ended and Israel went back to bombing dense civilian areas, can only end one of two ways: the full-blown ethnic cleansing of Gaza, or a ceasefire after an arbitrarily high number of Palestinian civilians is killed—with Hamas, or something like Hamas, remaining in power.
The current line coming from the White House and other liberal institutions that refuse to call for a ceasefire is that Israel will “eliminate Hamas,” but must do so with minimal civil casualties— a warning the White House issued on October 3, October 29, November 3, November 10, and again yesterday. This time, we are told, the message will stick.
But this theater is based on a deliberate sleight-of-hand, which is that the mainstream liberal definition of “Hamas” is not one, at all, shared by Israeli political and military leaders. Even setting aside the overtly genocidal rhetoric from Israeli leadership since the beginning of the bombing and siege of Gaza, US media and political leaders keep insisting “Hamas” is just the 30,000 or so fighters. But the Israeli government has made clear its definition of Hamas includes anyone who supports them, even rhetorically, along with key members of the UN, Doctors without Borders, the Red Cross, and a record-breaking 60+ reporters its killed. Put another way: “Hamas,” which is to say any violent opposition or anyone supporting violent opposition in Gaza, needs to go. And there needs to be either an Israeli or Israel-friendly proxy in charge of Gaza, assuming anything remains of it that is Palestinian.
Israel has, conservatively, killed 6,000 children to eliminate 1,000 to 2,000 Hamas targets. Assuming we split the difference and the figure is 1,500, at this rate Israel will have to kill 120,000 children—or over 300,000 civilians—to "eliminate Hamas” which is, per US and Israel officials, 30,000 strong. This is using conservative estimates that don't include permanent injuries and deaths from starvation and preventable disease. Any way one runs the numbers, what a “victory” looks like comes dangerously close to genocide, or is, at the very least, genocide-adjacent.
Thus, this ends only one of two ways: 1) a bilateral ceasefire with Hamas, or some version of Hamas still intact and running Gaza, or 2) something approaching a full blown ethnic cleansing event. To be clear, support for the latter remains, according to reporting from Al Monitor on November 17, the most popular outcome for Israeli leaders:
The first option, which enjoys the greatest support among Israeli decision-makers, is for Egypt to take control of the enclave in return for complete forgiveness of its massive foreign debt…
The proposals include rebuilding Gaza south of its current location — rather than rebuilding in the areas of destruction left by Israeli bombs — and moving some of its residents to Arab or other countries and leaving the rest in a rebuilt Gaza.
A similar plan, laid out in an op-ed by Gila Gamliel, the Israeli Minister of Intelligence in The Jerusalem Post on November 19, made clear the preferred outcome is ethnic cleansing, albeit one couched in liberal “voluntary” rhetoric.
“Another option [ed note: in the op-ed this is presented as the only option] is to promote the voluntary resettlement of Palestinians in Gaza, for humanitarian reasons, outside of the Strip,” Gamliel states, continuing: “It is important that those who seek a life elsewhere be provided with that opportunity. Some world leaders are already discussing a worldwide refugee resettlement scheme and saying they would welcome Gazans to their countries. This could be supported by many nations around the world, especially those that claim to be friends of the Palestinians.”
Given that, according to The Economist, North Gaza will be “uninhabitable for years,” and Israel’s current plan is to do to most of South Gaza what it did to North Gaza, this would render the whole of Gaza more or less unfit for human life. In the event this happens, “resettlement” of Palestinians will only be “voluntary” in the most superficial sense, the geopolitical equivalent of Vito Corleone’s offer they can’t refuse. Indeed, the official plan, as reported on by The Wall Street Journal, is to herd as many Palestinians as possible into internment camps near the Egyptian border. “Some Israeli military officials acknowledge that it would be impossible to corral two million Gaza residents into al-Mawasi, which is about the size of Los Angeles' LAX airport,” The Journal reported on Nov 19. But this remains the general goal in any event.
So this leaves only one other option: a bilateral ceasefire between Hamas and Israel that, like all other ceasefires, ends Israel’s “operations” in Gaza. What follows after this is, of course, deeply complex and fraught. But a ceasefire is a prerequisite to anything resembling a peaceful or just settlement to the fundamental problems of apartheid, siege, blockade, and occupation. Ceasefire has long been, and remains, the demand of MSF, the UN, OxFam, and all of Palestinian civil society, because it’s the baseline necessary for anything positive. Until then, nihilistic death and destruction with no military objective other than removing Palestinians from Palestine.
Yet, many refuse to reach this obvious and inevitable conclusion. The reasons for this cowardice are many: partisan loyalty to President Biden, fear of cry-bully intimidation tactics from pro-Israel organizations, simple racism. Some liberals probably honestly fall for the sophistry at the heart of the “remove Hamas, but surgically” sales pitch. “The US more or less defeated ISIS, why can’t the same be done for Hamas?” many ask. Never mind that ISIS was made up of 40,000 foreign mercenaries with little organic support, and Hamas is almost exclusively homegrown and has, at least some, meaningful percent of popular support. The comparison only makes sense because of racist vibes. No fair or sober observer thinks Israel can bomb its way out of the fundamental issues of occupation and apartheid against a refugee population native to Palestine. Not the least of which being Yaakov Peri, a former head of Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, who told The New York Times on November 9 that military and intelligence agencies would kill the Hamas commanders who carried out the October 7 attacks, but Israel is creating a new generation of fighters. “We’ll be fighting their sons in four or five years,” he said.
So even in the event of a “victory,” at the cost of hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, Israel will be fighting Hamas 2.0 in a few years anyway. This is because the conflict, such that it is, has no military solution, only a political one that Israeli and American leaders refuse to acknowledge. This is why every liberal institution, including the White House, will eventually call for a ceasefire, even if done so in private. Because it’s the only way this ends. All there is going back to the status quo––which, of course, was not sustainable or anything approximating justice to be begin with. But it wasn’t killing a Palestinian child every 10 minutes, and not doing this ought to be a baseline moral position for anyone. The question is, how many Palestinian civilians have to pointlessly die until our liberal institutions have the courage to state this obvious fact?