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Thomas L. Friedman

By Thomas L. Friedman

Opinion Columnist

It is time for the Biden administration to give Israel more than just gentle nudges about how it would be kind of, sort of nice if Israel could fight this war in Gaza without killing thousands of civilians.

It’s time for the U.S. to stop wasting time searching for the perfect U.N. cease-fire resolution on Gaza.

It’s time for the U.S. to tell Israel that its war’s aim of wiping Hamas off the face of the earth is not going to be achieved — at least not at a cost that the U.S. or the world will tolerate, or that Israel should want.

It’s time for the U.S. to tell Israel how to declare victory in Gaza and go home, because right now the Israeli prime minister is utterly useless as a leader: He is — unbelievably — prioritizing his own electoral needs over the interests of Israelis, not to mention the interests of Israel’s best friend, President Biden.

It’s time for the U.S. to tell Israel to put the following offer on the table to Hamas: total Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, in return for all the Israeli hostages and a permanent cease-fire under international supervision, including U.S., NATO and Arab observers. And no exchange of Palestinians in Israeli jails.

What would the advantages of this approach be for Israel?

First, if I am reading the mood in Israel correctly these days, the overwhelming majority of the country today wants their 120-plus hostages returned — over and above any other war aims. Israel is a small country. Many, many Israelis know someone — or know someone who knows someone — with a loved one taken hostage or killed in Gaza.

The hostage issue is making Israelis crazy, for good reason, and it’s making rational military decision-making there impossible — especially as many experts believe the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has now surrounded himself with Israeli hostages as human shields and it will be impossible to kill him without also killing many of them. Any Israeli government that does that would sow the wind and reap the whirlwind of wrath from the Israeli public.

Second, Israel has inflicted vast damage on Gaza’s main urban areas and on Hamas’s tunnel network and killed thousands of Hamas fighters, along with, tragically, thousands of the Gazan civilians among whom Hamas embedded itself. Hamas as a military organization deserved to be punished and pummeled, and it has been considerably degraded. But that huge toll of killed, wounded and displaced Gazan civilians has produced a humanitarian disaster. And........

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