Even if Israel’s Hamas figure is accurate — and it’s hard to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants when they are so closely intermingled in urban areas — that still suggests the terrorist organization has at least 11,000 fighters left. Hamas’s top commander, Yehiya Sinwar, remains at large. Israel attempted to kill Hamas’s No. 2 leader, Mohammed Deif, on July 13, but it isn’t clear if its bombing strike succeeded. Hamas has probably lost the ability to carry out large-scale attacks of the kind it mounted against Israel on Oct. 7, but it remains a formidable guerrilla force that is likely to reemerge if and when the IDF pulls out of Gaza.
In short, while the Israeli military has done great damage to Hamas, the terrorist organization has not been “destroyed,” as Netanyahu demanded. Nor have most of the Israeli hostages been freed — the other objective of the Israeli offensive. Some 120 Israelis remain in Gaza, and Israel estimates that roughly two-thirds of them are still alive. There is little reason to think that continuing Israeli military operations will achieve either objective — either destroying Hamas or freeing the hostages.
Meanwhile, the war continues to expand. On Friday, a Houthi drone apparently sent from Yemen exploded in Tel Aviv, killing one person and demonstrating an inexplicable failure of Israeli air defenses. On Saturday, the Israeli Air Force responded by bombing the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeida in Yemen — an over 2,000 mile round-trip mission. On Sunday, Israeli air defenses intercepted a missile fired at Israel from Yemen in apparent retaliation of the airstrike on Hodeida.
While the war between Israel and the Houthis is likely to remain very limited, given the distance involved, the conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon could spin out of control at any moment. Both the IDF and Hezbollah have fired thousands of missiles since Hezbollah struck northern Israel beginning the day after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. According to the New York Times, more than 100,000 Lebanese and 60,000 Israelis have been displaced from the border area, and 460 Lebanese and 29 Israelis have been killed, most of them Hezbollah fighters and Israeli soldiers.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that, from Israel’s perspective, there is no purely military solution to the threats that it faces. The IDF is tired from nine months of war and needs a pause to rest and retrofit. The last thing that Israel needs is a wider war with Hezbollah that could result in more than 150,000 rockets and drones raining down on the Jewish state. But Hezbollah has made clear that it will stop its attacks only if there is a cease-fire in Gaza.
Progress apparently is being made on a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, but it remains far from clear if one is ever going to be implemented. A U.S. government official assured me on Monday that a deal has been all but concluded and that the first phase of the cease-fire agreement could be implemented in two to three weeks. This phase, lasting six weeks, would mandate an end to fighting in Gaza and the IDF withdrawal from populated areas, along with the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israel and of elderly, wounded and female Israeli hostages in Gaza.
The first phase is supposed to lead to negotiations resulting in a permanent cease-fire, the release of all remaining Israeli hostages and the implementation of an international plan to rebuild and stabilize Gaza. But there have been plenty of reports in the past that a cease-fire was imminent, only to have the deal unravel at the last minute over crucial details.
It is clearly in Israel’s interests to implement a truce in Gaza, as demanded by its own generals, who worry that their forces are becoming exhausted and running low on munitions. But Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners keep threatening to resign if he agrees to any cease-fire deal while Hamas remains extant.
Aaron David Miller, a veteran U.S. diplomat who is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, suggested to me that Netanyahu, who is known as a wily political survivor, could thread the needle by reaching a final cease-fire agreement just before the Knesset goes out of session for a lengthy recess, lasting from late July to late October. It would be very difficult for the right-wing parties to bring down Netanyahu’s government during the recess, and there is no assurance that the cease-fire would last after the legislature comes back in session.
In the meanwhile, Netanyahu can use his latest appearance before a joint meeting of Congress to remind Israelis that he is still popular in Washington and remains the Israeli leader best positioned to defend that country’s interests in the United States — particularly if Republicans return to power in the Senate and White House in November. Netanyahu can postpone the next general election in Israel until at least 2025 and buttress his badly eroded political position.
All of this would be in keeping with what Miller calls Netanyahu’s “prime directive” and “organizing principle”: political survival. Those who appreciate the exercise of raw political power have no choice but to applaud Netanyahu’s ability to stay in office after having failed to prevent the most devastating attack in Israel’s history — and now having failed to accomplish the aims of the war he launched in response.
But Israel’s long-term interests are very different from Netanyahu’s. Israel needs a plan for pacifying and rebuilding Gaza that does not require perpetual Israeli military operations. That, in turn, requires the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state, no matter how unpopular that prospect remains with most Israeli voters at the moment. A safe bet is that there will be no commitment to Palestinian statehood in Netanyahu’s speech.
Netanyahu is likely to have a lot of bipartisan applause lines, but he is unlikely to offer much about what Israel most needs: a path to long-term peace.
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