A temporary ceasefire is the first stop to a permanent ceasefire.
If Israel wants to win militarily against Hezbollah, i’d say Gaza is a cautionary tale for that. Despite all of the destruction Hamas is weakened but nut destroyed and only very few hostages were freed by force (with insane numbers of Palestinian civillians killed while doing it). The vast majority of hostages was freed by negotiations.
John Mearsheimer said that military action is a very limited tool. We have seen this in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Vietnam…
A temporary ceasefire is the first stop to a permanent ceasefire.
One of Hezbollah’s stated goals is the “liberation of Israel”.
And Likud wants Israel to be “from the river to the sea”. More extreme Israelis want a “greater Israel” from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, to Iraq through Syria up until Turkey.
But if we want to achieve peace we need to deescalate things, then establish justice and drive the extremists out. The only alternative to deescalation is a great war, that would kill and displaces millions of people and quite possibly start world war 3.
In Afghanistan and Iraq we already knew that bombing people was not how you get rid of ideas. That’s why we spent 20 and 10 years (respectively) in those countries. We weren’t bombing anything if we could help it. And in Iraq we managed to put in a semi-stable government. In Afghanistan we managed to push the majority of the fighting into the mountains, away from most civilian population centers. We just straight screwed up the civil part afterwards.
We learned that bombing doesn’t kill morale in World War 1, World War 2, Korea, and Vietnam. Vietnam is the last time we tried carpet bombing civilian populations, and is often cited as the reason we developed the guided bomb kits, small diameter bombs, and even kamikaze drones that specifically do not explode and cause as little disturbance as possible other than people they directly impact.
This has been a learned lesson with a known solution for decades.
Gaza is a cautionary tale for that
Just like with Vietnam, it seems the measure of success is in blood. Since the population of Gaza has been decimated - quite literally 1 in 10 Palestinians are now dead and we’re expecting tens to hundreds of thousands more dead before the end of next year due to famine and disease, nevermind war - while the Israelis report minimal casualties, they believe they are “winning”.
We have seen this in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Vietnam…
The lesson of these wars to the political class is that they win reelections, they generate enormous profits, and they never seem to bother the median voter over the long term.
