My view: Israel should just get out and let the person who started this terrible war, knowing but not caring that it would lead to the death and destruction of thousands of innocent Gazans, manage the cleanup. And that is the Hamas leader, Sinwar. The best way to discredit and destroy Sinwar is for Israel to leave Gaza and make him come out of his tunnel, face his people and the world and own Gaza’s rebuilding on his own.
I can tell you from experience what I think will happen. On the first day, Sinwar will strut around the rubble of Gaza like a peacock, declaring how he and his men inflicted terrible damage on the Jews, and supporters will carry him on their shoulders, shouting “Allahu akbar.”
On Day 2, with the Israelis gone, they will scream at Sinwar publicly and privately: What were you thinking? Who gave you permission to launch this war? Who is going to repair my home? Who is going to bring back my loved ones? How are you going to get any help rebuilding Gaza if you keep on lobbing missiles at Tel Aviv? You thought Hezbollah, the West Bankers, Israeli Arabs and Iran would all jump full-scale into this war and rise up against the Jews. It didn’t happen — except at some American colleges — and now all we have are ruins and the dead.
How do I know that will happen? Because it’s what happened in Lebanon in 2006, when Hassan Nasrallah foolishly launched an unprovoked war against Israel, leading to enormous destruction in Shiite villages both in the south and around Beirut.
How do I know that will happen? Because it is already happening. Consider this Bloomberg report from Dec. 11:
Since the war, life in Gaza — which never was easy — has become unbearable. And while most Palestinians are furious at Israel, some are also expressing anger at Hamas, which has ruled the strip since 2007, when it threw out the Palestinian Authority through a brief and violent civil war. “Hand over the hostages and stop the war,” Rahaf Hneideq, a Gaza-based professor of Islamic studies, wrote to Hamas on Facebook. “Enough death, enough destruction. Stop the displacement. Don’t your people deserve that?”
How do I know that will happen? Because while polls conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research show support for Hamas growing in the West Bank since Oct. 7 — which are really signs of contempt for the Palestinian Authority and antipathy to the violent Jewish settlers — support for Hamas in Gaza, which usually rises during wars, has not significantly increased. Moreover, despite the increase in Hamas popularity in the West Bank, “the majority in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip does not support Hamas,” Khalil Shikaki, the director of the P.C.P.S.R., found.