Those peace-process advocates who say it’s impossible to eliminate Hamas both overestimate the terrorists and fail to understand the existential nature of this war.
Even before the dust settled over the ruins of communities in southern Israel that were devastated by the Hamas Oct. 7 atrocities, the usual chorus of Middle East “experts” was sounding notes of caution about any effort to respond to the popular Palestinian group responsible for those crimes. Israeli forces were still mopping up the Palestinian terrorists who had crossed the border that Shabbat morning on the holiday of Simchat Torah, when they raped, mutilated, tortured and murdered more than 1,200 persons, including entire families. But the main concern of the American foreign-policy establishment, as well as the international community, was centered not on the victims or the hostages dragged back into Gaza but on their growing realization that Israelis were going to draw some harsh conclusions from the worst mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first said that the objective of his nation’s response to the war that the terrorists began on Oct. 7 was to eliminate Hamas, his comments were put down as rhetoric intended for a traumatized Israeli public and not a serious policy. Richard Haas, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, spoke for his fellow members of the foreign-policy establishment on Oct. 10—weeks before Israel’s ground offensive into Gaza began—when he warned that there was no defeating Hamas.
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