A Decent Outcome Is Possible in Gaza

Everyone seems to agree that no good outcome is possible in Gaza. They’re wrong. It’s possible for a decent Gaza-led administration to emerge, which could make autonomy and even statehood possible.

That may seem unlikely, given the deep and longstanding anti-Zionism in Gaza. In 1967, Gazan school books taught arithmetic with problems like, “You have five Israelis. You kill three of them. How many Israelis are left to be killed?”

But over the past 15 years, Gazans have endured something monstrous and possibly unique in human experience: exploitation by their rulers as cannon fodder for public relations.

Tyrants’ treating their subjects as expendable to attain battlefield victory is routine—think Wagner Group prison recruits dying in Bakhmut, Ukraine. Hamas, however, uses civilians to score propaganda points. It attacks Israel to provoke retaliation, correctly expecting that the bombs, destruction and death will bring Iranian approbation, Islamist support, Muslim solidarity and leftist sympathy. After each attack, the narrative about culpability invariably shifts from Hamas to Israel.