Why a ceasefire in Israel would backfire 

The worst thing about a war is not to fight it, but to lose it. That’s why all of the well-meaning calls for the United States to pursue an immediate ceasefire in the fighting between Israel and Hamas are dangerously misguided — and why the Biden administration has been right to refuse them. A ceasefire now would only lead to more war and more killing in the future. 

At this moment, Hamas and Iran are winning this war, with Hamas mounting a shocking surprise attack on Israel and slaughtering 1,300 Israelis — including deliberately murdering infants, children, women and elderly. 

In so doing, they have set back the cause of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, eliminated any prospect of a more moderate Palestinian leadership emerging to challenge them, blocked the rapprochement between Israel and the Arab states, and driven a wedge between the United States and its Arab allies.  

Ending the war now would lock in all of those gains. It would be handing a great victory to America’s worst enemies in the Middle East. 

That would only ensure that they will repeat this ploy in the future, again and again until they achieve all of their goals, including, ultimately, the destruction of Israel, the overthrow of the Arab governments by regimes beholden to Iran, and the eviction of the United States from the region.  

Former President Barack Obama famously told the Saudis that they needed to learn to “share” the Middle East with Iran. The problem is that, as the Saudis understand, Iran isn’t interested in sharing. It wants to own the whole region — and as far as both Tehran and the Arab governments are concerned, it is succeeding.  

Look around the Middle East. Since 2009, when the United States began to disengage from the region, Iran and its allies have been on the march. As Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Quds Force, used to brag, today Iran controls four Arab capitals: Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Sanaa. If Tehran’s Palestinian ally can attack Israel with impunity, massacre its civilians, undermine its deterrent, and not suffer any meaningful consequences — while being lionized by the Arab street and much of the Western left — it would be another dazzling win for Iran.  

For that reason, forcing Israel to accept a ceasefire now would only ensure an even more violent future. When you reward an aggressor and prevent the attacked from fighting back, you simply encourage that aggressor to attack again, and encourage other would-be aggressors to do the same.  

That pattern has proven itself over and over again throughout history. In 2008, Vladimir Putin attacked Georgia and the world did nothing. In 2014, he attacked Ukraine and took Crimea, and the world did nothing. So in 2022 he attacked Ukraine again and attempted to conquer it outright. Even for those who do nothing but count bodies as the sole criteria for assessing wars, it would have been far better to have stopped Putin in Georgia and precluded his later wars. 

And for them, it is critical to recognize that the deaths of innocent Palestinian civilians do not matter to Hamas or the Iranians in the least. They are not interested in ending the conflict, only in stoking it until they achieve the destruction of Israel. They care about the Palestinian people only in some theoretical, millenarian future where there is a Palestinian state encompassing all of the land from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean — a land without Israel.  

Until then, they are glad to sacrifice every living Palestinian to accomplish that dream. 

In fact, as they are demonstrating once again, Palestinian civilian deaths are a bonus for them, because the world tends to blame Israel, not them. This, despite the fact that Hamas deliberately collocates its military assets with civilians to hamper Israeli military responses and to cause more Palestinians civilian deaths.  

By now, everyone recognizes the parallels between the October 1973 war and the October 2023 war. But there are two more lessons to be learned.  

First, in 1973, the United States resisted Arab and Russian calls for a ceasefire early in the war precisely because it would have locked in Arab gains before Israel could reverse the military situation. 

Second, there is a crucial difference between 1973 and 2023: in the former, Anwar Sadat went to war deliberately to bring about a fair and lasting peace. Egypt’s political victory and Israel’s military victory were both critical to that outcome. Israelis did not feel confident enough to make peace with Egypt until they felt certain that neither Egypt nor any other Arab state would dare attack them again — something that held true for 50 years and one day. 

In stark contrast, Hamas went to war (with Iranian backing) to preclude peace between Arabs and Israelis, and to demonstrate that Israel could be attacked to the benefit of the attacker.  

Thus, unlike in 1973, the only outcome that will make peace possible in this war is if Hamas is broken and driven from Gaza by Israel’s military response so that it is incapable of repeating this attack and deprived of control of the Palestinian people — and if Iran concludes that it would be a mistake for any of its other minions to try the same. 

We can all hope that, as in October 1973, the October 2023 war will lead ultimately to peace between Palestinians and Israelis. But we must recognize that peace requires the military defeat of the opponents of peace — Hamas and Iran — and not in arbitrarily cutting short this war before it has achieved that crucial destination. 

An immediate ceasefire might conceivably save lives now, but it will likely cost many more later.  

Kenneth M. Pollack is a senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute.