Editorial | Another Pointless and Superfluous Gaza War

A cease-fire was reached Saturday evening between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the current round of fighting has presumably come to an end after five days.

This is good news, but it does not eliminate the need to deliberate on the purpose, or rather the total lack of purpose, of such operations, which stand in contradiction to all the pompous declarations of the prime minister, defense minister and heads of the defense establishment. The bitter truth is that the latest round of fighting between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, like many that preceded it, was a war of choice lacking all purpose, benefit or political, military or human wisdom. This operation never should have happened in the first place.

In Operation Shield and Arrow, similar to its predecessors, targets, objectives and achievements served to justify another round of combat. These were quickly exhausted, after the first day, and in any event these achievements are short-lived. This operation, too, continued without a substantive reason, apart from the inability to admit the pointlessness of continuing to fight.

In fact, the continuation of the fighting mainly serves political goals: The operation kept the governing coalition united, because it allowed the government to align itself with the member who is the most extreme, dangerous and hungry for war, killing and destruction, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who threatened to quit because it was not extreme enough for him.

In addition, the operation tapped on the nation’s dulled reflexes for unity and enabled the government, and especially the one who heads it, to suppress the protest against it, to fill the schisms in the nation with emergency glue, to replace the threats of refusal to report for duty with the exuberance of mobilization and the sense of national mission, and to erase from the public consciousness the attempted government coup that his megalomaniacal, loose-cannon government fomented until recently.

Apart from benefit to a coalition that was on the verge of disintegration, the fighting brought primarily unnecessary death and destruction, mainly to Gazans but also to Israelis. In Israel the operation claimed the life of one person and injured at least 35 more. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, in the Gaza Strip 32 people were killed, seven of them children, and 106 were injured.

Iron Dome and other anti-missile defense systems are critical to Israel’s security. But they allow the government to persist in initiating rounds of warfare and to endanger Israelis, disrupt their lives and fan the hatred and desire for revenge that each round like this sows in generations of Palestinians.

It appears that common sense is insufficient to put an end to this folly. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman did well, then, when she stressed in a call Friday to Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer “the urgency of achieving a cease-fire agreement in order to prevent any further loss of civilian life and restore calm.” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who urged their Israeli counterparts to strive to end the operation in Gaza, also contributed to stopping the operation. The American message apparently got through and a cease-fire was reached. It must be hoped that in the days to come, particularly as Jerusalem Day approaches, the government will act wisely and make sincere efforts to calm tempers and avoid yet another unnecessary round of fighting.