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“The White House on Thursday said it was exploring a series of pauses in the Israel-Hamas conflict to help people safely exit Gaza and allow humanitarian aid to get in, but reiterated its opposition to a full ceasefire… President Joe Biden spoke on Wednesday about the need for a pause to provide time for the release of hostages held by Hamas.” Reuters
“Israeli forces on Thursday encircled Gaza City - the Gaza Strip's main city - in their assault on Hamas, the military said, but the Palestinian militant group resisted their drive with hit-and-run attacks from underground tunnels.” Reuters
The right blames Hamas for civilian casualties and opposes a pause in fighting, which would benefit Hamas.
“It’s not that there is no fuel left in Gaza–there is plenty of it. Rather, Hamas has a war machine to run and civilians be damned… For Hamas, the civilians of Gaza are nothing more or less than a human resource, from whom to recruit fighters and a propaganda prop whose suffering they cause to generate sympathy. Their strategy is transparent: they are holding the civilians in Gaza about whom we care hostage as well. The more that Gazans suffer, the more Hamas benefits. Antisemites get more incensed at Israel, and decent people around the world just want to make the suffering stop…
“Hamas’ headquarters are, conveniently, located at and below the largest hospital in Gaza. Israel revealed this recently, but everybody in the [mainstream media] knew it long ago. Why? Because that is where Hamas leaders would do interviews with them. It wasn’t even a secret. This is a war crime, but if anybody at Shifa Hospital gets hurt it will be Israel who gets the blame…
“Shifa is actually a legitimate military target now, but if Israel tried to take the headquarters out there would be an outcry the likes of which have yet to be seen in this war.”
David Strom, Hot Air
“We know IDF military vehicles have entered the Gaza Strip from at least three points… If the Israeli government were to declare a cease-fire, those forces would be stopped, deep in Gaza, with likely all kinds of Hamas forces in front of them and attempting to outflank them. A cease-fire would leave all these troops dangerously exposed to an ambush or counterassault in the not-too-distant future. And as we see from recent history, Hamas has no moral qualms about breaking a cease-fire if the group believes it is in its military interest…
“It seems reasonable to conclude that the IDF is bringing a lot of firepower and advanced tactics to this fight. A cease-fire is what Hamas needs to get up off the mat. Calling for a cease-fire now is asking Israel to squander whatever battlefield advantages and momentum that it has, and to allow Hamas to recover and reposition itself to repel the IDF and inflict greater casualties upon the Israeli forces. ‘Israel must agree to a cease-fire,’ is amounting to arguing, ‘Israel must agree to lose the battle, or at minimum to lose a lot more soldiers in order to win the battle.’”
Jim Geraghty, National Review
“The official line is that the pauses [the Biden administration is calling for] would simply be to get more hostages (including Americans that Hamas refuses to let leave) out of Gaza, and more relief supplies in. This is complete nonsense. For starters, enough relief is already getting in; the only issue is that Hamas won’t let it get where it needs to go…
“And if the terrorists learn that holding onto their hostages can get Biden to make the IDF freeze its assault, that’s exactly what they’ll do. Such games are why they took the hostages in the first place… Plus, the president is pushing Israel only to put the fight on hold; he’s not even mentioning a demand for Hamas (and Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran’s other proxies) to stop firing missiles and rockets at Israeli civilians for the duration.”
Editorial Board, New York Post
The left worries about the civilian casualties in Gaza, and urges a pause in fighting to save lives.
The left worries about the civilian casualties in Gaza, and urges a pause in fighting to save lives.
“The Israeli bombing campaign launched in the wake of Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 pogrom has killed more than 9,000 people in Gaza, some 40 percent of them children, in a community that has already endured decades of occupation and blockade. While the Israeli government has both the right and responsibility to protect its people, it does not have the right to commit a massacre, which is what the world is witnessing…
“It is worth noting that a cease-fire is not a peace treaty. Contrary to the claims that such a move would only benefit Hamas’s ability to rearm (something that more than 15 years of blockade and multiple previous wars against Gaza have been unable to prevent), a cease-fire is an ad hoc measure under which combatants do not waive their right to resume military operations if other efforts to permanently end an armed conflict fail. But such a measure is needed right now to save lives and to potentially open a path to saving more.”
Matthew Duss, Washington Post
“I’m uncomfortable with a number of things that the U.S. government has done since Oct. 7… [such as] condoning a hyperaggressive Israeli bombing of Gaza that has killed thousands of people, including children. The New York Times recently described the bombing as ‘one of the most intense of the 21st century, prompting growing global scrutiny of its scale, purpose and cost to human life.’… The lack of forceful criticism of Israel cutting off access to food and electricity in Gaza…
“[And] the constantly repeated refrain from administration officials that ‘Israel has the right to defend itself,’ answering a question no one is asking (‘Does Israel have the right to defend itself?’) and not giving much guidance to the actual questions (‘How should Israel defend itself? How much pain and suffering should Israel inflict on Palestinian civilians in retaliation for the Hamas attacks and to prevent future ones, with the rhetorical and financial backing of the United States?’)… While privately prodding is useful, the U.S. government needs to be publicly and forcefully calling for greater restraint by Israel.”
Perry Bacon, Washington Post
“The ratio of those killed is now five Palestinians to one Israeli. Will the Biden administration be able to tolerate ten to one? Fifteen to one? Twenty to one?… Further–and another clear reason for a change in the Israeli approach–is that there is no evidence that waging a full-scale war against terrorists actually works. Certainly, that was the experience of the U.S. Two massive multi-trillion dollar wars in the Middle East ended up producing more terrorists today than existed on 9/11…
“Bin Laden is gone. But the Taliban is back. And clearly, the region as a whole is no closer to peace today than it was when we intervened with all our might, know-how, and a twisted self-righteousness that sounded very much like the Israeli government of today. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians died as a result of our moral and strategic failures. Just as President Biden has argued Israel should not repeat our errors, we must also not compound our own past mistakes by supporting the misguided policies of an ally.”
David Rothkopf, Daily Beast
Winners of the 2023 Nature Conservancy Photo Contest.
The Atlantic
