Abstract
When the fighting ends, Israel and Hamas both may be worse off than when it started. Hamas has inflicted tremendous pain on Israel, stalled its regional normalisation, restored its ‘resistance’ credentials and, for now, improved its popularity among Palestinians. Yet its military forces and infrastructure are battered, its leadership under siege and its long-term popularity uncertain. Israel has preserved deterrence vis-à-vis Hizbullah and demonstrated its military value to its new Arab Gulf partners, but it has failed to rescue most of the hostages Hamas took on 7 October 2023, and the humanitarian toll of its brutal campaign has damaged its international reputation. Iran has also gained from the diversion of international attention to Israeli killings of Palestinian civilians. With no plan for the day after in Gaza, Israel may find itself bogged down in a forever war or facing Hamas’s eventual return to power. The United States should push Israel to take the steps required to install an alternative Palestinian government in Gaza.
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