The Gaza War May Be Ending Soon, And Maybe Ukraine, Too. Let's Hope.

What a week it's been. More like 15 months.

Hamas – the government of Gaza – launched a far-ranging terrorist pillaging and plundering attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, and killed over 1,200 Israeli civilians, raped girls and women, and took over 200 hostages and dragged them back to into the Gaza Strip. Before the Israeli Army had secured its own territory and the scale of the Hamas attack was understood, the campaign in the West to "Free Palestine" had begun. A surge of antisemitic attacks from the left have surged ever since.

The Gaza Strip, the source of the attacks on Israel, had been completely free of Israeli or Egyptian control since 2005. Israeli checkpoints and settlements remain – and in some cases are expanding – in the West Bank, but Gaza was, in some ways, an experiment: what would happen if Israel completely withdraws?

Israel has known the answer since 2007. Hamas seized control of the territory from Fatah and began launching rockets indiscriminately at Israel for the next 17 years. What Israel didn't know, or the extent of it, was that Hamas was secretly spending billions of dollars of international aid on underground tunnels for purchasing weapons, storing rockets, and planning attacks on Israel.

The goal or mission of Hamas and groups like Hezbollah (based in Lebanon) is simple: the eradication of Jews and the State of Israel. You know, genocide.

For Israel, the goal is equally simple: Security. Would a West Bank free of Israeli settlements and checkpoints – in other words, an independent State of Palestine – be another Gaza? To say that the two-state solution is in jeopardy following the Hamas attack is an understatement.

One thing that was made very clear on October 7th and since is that Israel cannot allow Hamas or any like-minded group to take hold in Gaza, the West Bank, or anywhere near Israel's borders. It's just too dangerous. Israel has therefore been forced to go into Gaza and fight Hamas despite the density of the civilian population. To make matters worse, Hamas lives amongst the civilian population and uses them as human shields.

The Gaza Strip, let alone Gaza City, is densely populated. Once the October 7th attacks happened, Israel was faced with war in a dense urban environment – the very worst kind of warfare because of the presence of a dense civilian population. There was no way around it: civilians would be killed.

Despite Israeli efforts to limit the war's impacts on civilians – for example, ordering civilians to leave targeted areas, and even evacuating particular buildings before attacking them – casualties have mounted. In the West, Israel is accused of genocide. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is accused of prolonging war because he was facing corruption charges before it started.

In the meantime, Hezbollah joined Hamas by launching rocket attacks on Israel from Lebanon on October 8th. Houthi rebels in Yemen fired ballistic missiles and drones at Israel, and has been attacking shipping in the Red Sea since the October 7 attack on Israel. Each of these groups are proxies of Iran, and Iranian military personnel have been training them for years. When Iranian personnel were killed in an Israeli strike on Hezbollah in Syria, Iran also joined the war by launching ballistic missiles and drones against Israel.

When Israel killed the commander of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran again fired missiles and drones.

As pressure mounted and the war expanded, Netanyahu and Israel have pressed on. Hamas and Hezbollah have both been decimated. And in Syria, where Hezbollah played a major role in aiding the Assad regime in that country's civil war, anti-Assad rebel groups have swarmed into Aleppo, Syria's largest city. Russia, which operates a naval base nearby, was forced to evacuate some ships and personnel.

Israel, by pressing forward despite enormous pressure to settle unconditionally for a cease-fire even as Hamas continues to hold hostages from October 7, 2023, appears to be winning the war. Let's hope it draws to an end soon. With Russia making recent gains in the Donbas region of Ukraine, while also being knocked on their backfoot in Syria, let's hope that the Ukraine War, too, winds down soon. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has recently acknowledged that Ukraine may have to settle the war with Russia holding on to its territorial gains, and then work for their return to Ukraine through diplomacy (which I doubt will ever happen).

Let's hope the wars end soon.