A Time for Peace

The ink isn’t yet dry on the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas-it won’t actually be signed until tomorrow-but one would be a fool not to hope for its success. Within two days, assuming there are no last minute kinks, 33 innocent and tortured hostages will be released and the fighting will end in Gaza.

As King Solomon is credited with having written in his Book of Ecclesiastes, all possible phenomena have their time. This includes” a time for war and a time for peace.” After Hamas’s genocidal pogrom of October 7, 2023, it was a time for war. That war has been decisively and convincingly won by Israel, so it is the time for peace.

Israel has reduced Hamas to a small and shrinking group of seasoned fighters hiding in ratholes, with untrained new recruits winding up as little more than cannon fodder for IDF troops. (One immediate benefit of an end to fighting and neutral international force working with Israel and Gazans will be the end of Hamas and their ability to trick young men into needlessly dying, or to use any civilians as human shields.)

Hamas is harboring kidnapped hostages as their last ticket out alive. They could have cashed that ticket long ago, when more hostages and many more Gazans were alive.

Israel had long ago stated that the fighting would end if Hamas laid down their arms, released the hostages, and renounced violence, in exchange for which Hamas fighters would be allowed to live unharmed. Hamas refused this offer, and now, after they caused so much more death and…