The term “total victory” has been on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s lips a great deal recently. It has about it the ring of the phrase adopted by Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at Casablanca in the middle of World War Two – “unconditional surrender” – implying that the Allies would be content with nothing less than the complete and utter defeat of the Nazi enemy. There would be no armistice, no haggling over the terms of a cessation of hostilities. Unconditional surrender became the ultimate war aim of the Allies.

Total victory could be described as Netanyahu’s ultimate war aim. It implies both the complete elimination of Hamas as a fighting force and the liberation of all the hostages held by them. The military defeat of Hamas would mean also the end of its control of the Gaza Strip. How Gaza is to be administered and its reconstruction put in hand are urgent problems that will require attention and cooperative international action as soon as the Hamas military machine is no more.

Netanyahu used the term “total victory” several times on February 8 in response to the most recent hostage-for-ceasefire offer by Hamas. Back in November negotiations conducted with the help of intermediaries produced a pause in the fighting in Gaza and the freeing of 105 hostages held by Hamas, matched by the release of 240 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. Ever since there has been a constant to-and-fro of further negotiations in an attempt to reach a another deal acceptable to both Hamas and Israel.

Hamas’s aim has been to secure Israel’s........

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