Israel has been fighting Hamas in Gaza for nearly a year. Ukraine has been fending off Russia for more than 2 1/2 years. But despite horrific civilian and military losses and the catastrophic destruction of civilian infrastructure, none of the parties seem willing to settle for anything less than total victory. Or in the case of Hamas, political survival.
The two wars are different in myriad ways well beyond who is David and who is Goliath, but all four sides seem impervious to diplomatic solutions for the same reason — their leaders hold to mutually exclusive demands and deeply believe compromise would be tantamount to defeat.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says nothing less than total victory will guarantee that there will never be another attack like Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas brutally tortured and murdered 1,200 people and took roughly 250 hostages.
“We have set four goals, to eliminate Hamas, to bring all of our hostages back, to secure that Gaza’s not going to be a threat over Israel, and to return safely our residents in the north,” Netanyahu said in explaining why he’s resisting a temporary ceasefire that would allow Hamas to live to fight another day.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is holding out for a permanent ceasefire that would salvage something from the disastrous attack he masterminded, one that provoked a fierce response from Israel that resulted in as many as 40,000 deaths, displaced 90% of Gaza’s population, and destroyed all its main cities.
“A permanent ceasefire … essentially allows Hamas to survive the war intact as a political movement, intact as a depleted, but still active governing force that controls Gaza,” Patrick Kingsley, Jerusalem bureau chief for the New York Times, said in a recent podcast. “It may not be enough to save [Sinwar’s] life. Israel will probably pursue him for the rest of his days, but it allows Hamas, as a movement, to survive the war.”
Netanyahu is similarly fighting not just for Israel’s future security but also for his political survival.
The embattled Israeli leader is beholden to a far-right governing coalition that could drive him from power at a time when he is on trial for corruption, says William Cohen, a former Clinton administration defense secretary.
“They have threatened to abandon him and, as such, bring down the government should he, ‘quote, ‘negotiate with Hamas,’” Cohen said in a recent appearance on CNN. “So, as a practical matter, no negotiations, no discussions, no resolution. And the beat, unfortunately, that of the bullets and bombs will go on, and more people are going to die.”
Both Netanyahu and Sinwar have strong motives to keep the war going, and both have been accused at various times of making new demands that have derailed delicate negotiations just when it appeared a ceasefire and hostage release deal was imminent.
The White House says an agreement, based on a three-phase framework announced by President Joe Biden in May is 90% done, with only two remaining problems.
One is Netanyahu’s insistence that Israel must maintain control of a narrow, 8-mile border zone between Gaza and Egypt known as the Philadelphi Corridor, which Israel claims Hamas uses to smuggle arms into Gaza.
“It was clear that if we don’t have the corridor, there will be rearming,” Netanyahu said in a televised news conference defending his demand. “There will be the creation of a monster. The evil access needs the Philadelphi Corridor, and for that reason, we must keep control of the Philadelphi Corridor. This is why Hamas insisted we are not going to be there, and this is why I insist that we are going to be there.”
American, Qatari, and Egyptian negotiators thought they had finessed the matter with some artful, ambiguous language that carefully never mentioned the Philadelphi Corridor by name.
“What the agreement says is [Israel] withdraw from all densely populated areas, and a dispute emerged whether the Philadelphi Corridor, which is effectively a road on the border of Gaza and Egypt, is a densely populated area,” a senior administration official told reporters this month.
“So that is an issue that’s in dispute, and there’s the issue of the prisoner exchange that’s in dispute,” the official said. “Other than that, that’s about it. So, that is basically where this negotiation stands. But, of course, you don’t have a deal until there’s an agreement.”
And for now, the odds of an agreement before Biden leaves office are fast fading, especially after Hamas executed six hostages, including an American, in a narrow underground tunnel just as Israeli forces were closing in.
“We’re not doing formal negotiation talks at this point,” White House national security communications adviser John Kirby said. “They ended without effect, but the conversations are continuing.
“What’s not clear to us, certainly in the wake of the execution of those six hostages … is whether Hamas will ever be able to come to the table in sincerity and sign onto something.”
In Ukraine, there is a more extreme maximalist dynamic at work, with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
While there was some brief discussion of perhaps negotiating an agreement to declare energy infrastructure off limits, Ukraine’s surprise seizure of some 500 square miles of Russia in the Kursk border region soured Putin on any negotiations.
“It seems the opponent is aiming to strengthen their negotiating position for the future,” Putin said after the surprise attack. “What kind of negotiations can we have with those who indiscriminately attack civilians and civilian infrastructure, or pose threats to nuclear power facilities?”
From the early days of the invasion, Zelensky has remained adamant that Russia can’t be trusted and that any ceasefire would only work in Putin’s favor.
“Even if Ukraine were to negotiate with the Kremlin at this stage, Russia will simply wait, rearm, and resume its effort to conquer the ‘remaining [Ukrainian] lands,’” Zelensky wrote in a letter to Biden last month. “The Russians have been unambiguous about their goals. They intend to conquer Ukraine, overthrow its democratically elected government, and erase the identity of the Ukrainian people.”
“Some will ask what is more important for you, territory or people?” Zelensky told the BBC in July. “People are important but it doesn’t mean we can give them 30% of our land. Who says Putin does not simply want us destroyed? And if he sacrificed 500,000 people of his country who said he wouldn’t want to kill another million of us?”
“We will not leave anything or anyone in captivity,” Zelensky reiterated this past week at a forum on Crimea in Kyiv. “I want all our citizens in the temporarily occupied territories to hear this: Ukraine does not trade its land and does not abandon its people.”
Meanwhile, Putin has no incentive to seek peace, so long as former President Donald Trump has a chance of winning the November election and delivering on his promise to end the war immediately. That’s something that realistically could only be done if the United States withdrew support for Ukraine and Trump successfully pressured Zelensky to surrender the land Russia currently occupies.
“Putin’s whole narrative right now is a very cocky very smug one,” CIA Director William Burns said at a rare public event in London. “It’s ‘time is on my side, it’s only a matter of time before the Ukrainians are going to be ground down, and all of their supporters in the West are going to be worn down, and I’ll be able to dictate my terms for a settlement.’”
Perversely Ukraine’s audacious offensive into Kursk, which embarrassed Putin and boosted morale on the home front, could make peace even more elusive.
“I think Ukraine rolled the dice, both in a military sense and in a political sense,” Daniel Byman, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air. “And it’s still a bit too early to tell if this was a success or not. This could backfire. By embarrassing Putin, it may make him less likely to want to negotiate.
“This Kursk attack probably puts even limited negotiations on the back burner,” Byman said. “It’s very hard for Russia to be seen as making concessions in the face of Ukrainian victories, again going back to Putin’s self-image but the image he projects as a strongman, that he cannot be seen as bowing in the face of foreign pressure.”
The Biden administration continues to send a mixed message about Ukraine’s chances of achieving its maximalist goals, saying on the one hand that it wants Ukraine to win and on the other hand that it wants to improve its bargaining position for an eventual peace deal.
“I think that, eventually, this conflict will be resolved at a negotiation table, but when that point comes, it’s hard to predict,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at the most recent meeting of Ukrainian allies in Germany. “So, we’re going to continue to work to put Ukraine in the best possible position that it can be in when, and if, that day comes.”
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Whether it’s Ukraine’s existential battle with Russia or Israel’s battle to rid itself of the scourge of Hamas, it’s “fat and lazy” thinking to assume that wars end by some kind of compromise, conservative British author and journalist Douglas Murray argued.
“Historically, most wars end because one side wins and one side loses,” Murray said. “And one of the reasons, in my view, there is these endless rounds of war in this region is because the Israelis are never allowed to win, and Hamas, in this case, are always allowed to draw. And I think that that is simply to set up the precursor for the next conflict.”
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.