The last chance for a "win"

The death of Yahya Sinwar may have been the last chance that Israel gets to claim victory in the war in Gaza. They could have claimed to have "destroyed Hamas" after killing so many of its best known pre-war figures (Ismael Haniyeh, Muhammed Deif, Salih al-Arouri, and now Sinwar), called any remaining resistance "the remnants of Hamas," and said announce that Israel would withdraw from Gaza and enter into a ceasefire with those remnants immediately upon the release of the remaining hostages. The end of hostilities in Gaza is what Hezbollah demanded for their own ceasefire, so that could also be a basis for Israel to withdraw from Lebanon.

But of course that couldn't happen because Netanyahu doesn't want the war to end. If he stops slaughtering Gazans than his coalition will probably fall, he will cease to be Prime Minister, and will probably end up in jail. His party is openly planning to put Jewish settlements in ethnically cleansed Gaza and some members of his coalition are proposing settlements in Southern Lebanon. Because his position depends entirely upon racists monsters, Netanyahu will never stop the killing until he is forced to (which also makes him a racist monster).

I wonder if Biden has also missed an opportunity to try force an end to the conflict. He also could have announced that Sinwar's death marks the end of Hamas, told Israel that any further hostilities would require a suspension of all military aid to Israel. I'm not sure if it would work. Bibi wants and needs the war to continue so badly, it is far from certain whether anything that the U.S. does would really force an end to the conflict. But it would put even more pressure on Netanyahu to stop, far more than they have faced so far. Maybe it would cause Netanyahu's government to fall. But even if not, it would severely limit what the Israeli military could do, and create a a degree of international isolation far beyond what Israel has experienced in the past few decades, maybe ever.

But I don't know how Biden doing something like that would play out in American domestic politics. We are less than three weeks from a national election. There's a real risk it would upset pro-Israeli Democrats, and one year into this atrocious war, would be far too late to win back any pro-Palestinian voters who have already turned against the Democrats. The election is too close and because of our own poisonous political culture, I can see a lot more risks than benefits if I am thinking purely in terms of electoral calculations.

Part of me really hopes the Biden Administration starts acting radically differently towards Israel once the election is over. That's probably wishful thinking. I don't think that Biden is supporting Israel's belligerence purely out of some political calculation. But even if Harris wins the election and Biden is then inclined to make a serious attempt to force Israel to stop its war, the window for Israel to spin this as a victory will probably have closed. The odd thing about so-called "supporters of Israel" who cheer on this war is they are guaranteeing that Israel will lose.