Bruno Karsenti and Danny Trom examine the implications of this ceasefire agreement, which, while returning Israel to the sense of its historic mission, leaves the threat of Hamas unresolved and calls the form taken by the military operations carried out for over a year into question.
It has been clear for months that Israel’s two war aims in response to October 7 – to destroy Hamas and save the hostages – were incompatible. As a state born of the urgent need to protect Jews, freeing the hostages, doing everything in its power to save Jewish lives, embodies the very meaning of its mission. The State of Israel has inherited the traditional obligation to redeem captives, which has always been a priority for Jewish communities throughout history. It also rigorously draws on the lessons of the people’s modern history, where every Jewish life, one by one, was ultimately targeted, and where extermination was, according to this principle, practically accomplished in many of Europe’s Jewish centers.
Like any state, the State of Israel fights enemies which it has a duty to neutralize, as soon as they declare themselves and act as an existential enemy, as October 7 attested. It does so as a Jewish state, or more precisely as a state for the Jews. Saving the Jews and defending itself as a people through the state it has given itself – the two missions are inseparable. Sometimes they coincide exactly, sometimes they diverge, sometimes there is even contradiction between them. Nevertheless, the plural that expresses itself at one of the poles is never abolished by the unity of the other. The people matter through each of its members. Each life counts for the whole people, and the whole of the people never erases the presence of all its members within it, one by one perceived as valid for the whole.
The fact that the objective to destroy the enemy took precedence over the need to rescue came at a very heavy price, both for the hostages, who were abandoned by the state despite its denials, and for the civilian population of Gaza, who were affected to an extent not justified by any of the aims of the war.
Let’s face it, never in the course of previous wars, or in the entire history of Israel, has the contradiction between the two objectives reached such intensity. And it has to be said that, throughout these months of war, it has not found its articulation. This was the failure of Israeli government policy. The fact that the objective to destroy the enemy took precedence over the need to rescue came at a very heavy price, both for the hostages, who seemed to have been abandoned by the state, despite its denials, and for the civilian population of Gaza, who were affected to an extent that none of the aims of the war could justify. As for the overriding objective, the outcome of the war shows that it has not been achieved. What we see is that no amount of military pressure, however brutal, has been able to completely neutralize Hamas and its allies in Gaza.
Now that the logic of war has given way, those for whom the contradiction was not a contradiction at all, those who had made their choice in advance, since for them the State of Israel is not first and foremost the state that protects Jews, but one that unscrupulously asserts its domination – Jewish power, to use the name of Ben Gvir’s party – must secede and leave power. At least, so must Ben Gvir himself, while the other far-right party, Smotrich’s religious Zionist party, temporarily resigns itself, seemingly ready to be persuaded that the war against Hamas will be over as soon as the hostages are freed.
However, it is clear that we are now witnessing an inflexion. With this agreement, the axis of Israeli policy has been significantly refocused. The Netanyahu coalition, of which Likud is the linchpin, combining the two Orthodox parties – now also the small party of Gideon Saar, the current Foreign Minister, which was merely a dissident – was supported by all the Zionist opposition parties in order to bring this agreement to fruition. The axis of Israeli policy has thus shifted, not only under internal pressure, but also under that of the United States, the degree of which is difficult to assess in this case. The result is nonetheless a strong reason for hope: as things stand at present, Zionism’s the most disturbing internal deviations have been beaten back. At present, they are marginalized. At the same time, we must also suspect, and not without bitterness, that an agreement on the status of the Gaza Strip will come out of a regional negotiation, without it being known whether Hamas will be discreetly part of it, in one form or another. Unless a broad consensus can be reached to forcibly remove it, it will continue to carry weight, despite or thanks to the memory of October 7, and obviously to the detriment of peace.
As things stand, Zionism’s most disturbing internal deviations have been beaten back. At present, they are marginalized.
In the meantime, we can only rejoice that Israel has found a way to overcome its sense of failure in this war, in other words, not to feel humiliated, but on the contrary, to feel uplifted, by the choice that brings it back to the sense of its essential mission – however difficult this choice may be. In short, to have given in, but to have done so precisely by being itself, in the act by which it finally frees its hostages and puts an end to the ordeal of the civilian population of Gaza, which has endured non-stop Israeli bombardment while being held hostage by its own rulers.
For it must be stressed: if hostage-taking has been the jihadists’ strategic lever, if, from October 7 onwards, alongside massacres and executions, the act of kidnapping revealed the aim of the initiators of this very long conflict, namely to reach Israel by putting its own meaning to the test, it is because Hamas has no other motive than contempt for life, including that of the Palestinian population it claims to represent. Recognizing in their enemy those for whom saving their own is a cardinal value, to the extent that abandoning them means losing their identity, they express precisely what they themselves are not: representatives of a people and defenders of its cause. Could it be that this fact, too, will finally be acknowledged, in the period that is now beginning? It is necessary, both for the Palestinians and for Israel. In Hebrew, the release of hostages is called “returning home”, meaning returning to a now consolidated shelter, effective against any threat. Which, as everyone knows, brings back the shadow of the objective of neutralizing the enemy left behind.
The fragility of this agreement lies in the fact that neither side is committed to peace. On the one hand, the will to annihilate was expressed, unaltered, in the very celebration of the agreement. On the other, awareness of the reality of the danger remains intact. As we can see, it will take a great deal of patience if a broad negotiation is to lead to a territorial compromise solution with the Palestinians, despite the fact that October 7 set back the Palestinian cause more than any other event. However unrealistic it may seem today, there is no other way out.
