Can a Bibi-Led Israel Get to "Yes" on a Ceasefire?

A recurrent theme I've been hitting regarding calls for a "ceasefire" is that the term is meaningless without explication of the ceasefire's conditions. Everybody is fine with a ceasefire under certain conditions; the disagreement is regarding what those conditions should be. This, after all, is the basis for the obviously smarmy "Hamas could just surrender" take as a mechanism for ending hostilities -- it would cease the fire if "agreed" to, it just isn't a proposal that actually will be agreed to.  

Going off that insight, I've sometimes wondered why various Jewish groups -- or the U.S., for that matter -- haven't gone on offense a little bit in terms of proposing their own "ceasefire" plans whose conditions are agreeable. In general, any ceasefire proposal competes against whatever the belligerent parties think they can obtain from continuing military action, minus the costs of continuing military action. "Hamas could just surrender" may be a bit too brazen, but there are absolutely possible ceasefire conditions that wouldn't be quite so obvious non-starters that nonetheless could and should be viewed as substantial victories for Israel.

A ceasefire proposal based on immediate return of all hostages would be an obvious place to start. It could be paired with some other goodies -- Hamas' leadership agrees to go into exile into another country; proceedings against Israel at the ICJ are dropped. Submit that to the UN Security Council and make other countries vote against it. Make the other side be the one to say "yes, we might have said 'ceasefire now!', but not like this ...." The fact is, after all, that both Israel and Hamas have found themselves in the position of rejecting certain ceasefire proposals, but in the war of public opinion it would seem advisable for Israel and its allies to be seen as authoring proposals for peace rather than nixing them.

There are undoubtedly a multitude of reasons why this is too clever by half. But I think there is one specific, uncomfortable reason why we haven't seen Jewish groups pushing a line like this -- putting forward "ceasefire" conditions or urging the Biden administration to do the same. Simply put: they're worried that Israel would reject even a good, "reasonable" ceasefire proposal. And if that happens, after the Jewish groups endorsed the parameters, they'd have boxed themselves into the awkward position of positioning Israel as the obstacle to a just peace.

Several years ago, I broached the generic version of this worry in discussing the possibility -- unthinkable, in the Jewish world -- that contemporary, Bibi-era Israel might not be willing to agree to a "fair" peace agreement with the Palestinians. And at the moment, this worry is more than generic. Consider how Tom Friedman described the situation the other day in a conversation with Ezra Klein:

Netanyahu, I would argue, Ezra, doesn’t want to win. He wants to be winning, OK, that is, he wants to be able to say, we’re winning. We’re winning. We’re winning. It’s just around the corner. But he doesn’t want to actually win because, if the war actually ends, two things are going to happen. Then he can no longer avoid what is the new political end state. And I believe there will be an eruption, a massive eruption, of Israeli anger at him that I hope and pray will drive him from power because I believe he is not only the worst leader in Israel’s history. I believe he’s the worst leader in Jewish history.

And that’s a long history. And what is Netanyahu’s calculation? It’s very simple. If he is not in power and has to face the conclusion of his trial and three corruption charges without the protection and influence that comes over the judiciary from being in power, he has a very good chance of going to jail. People forget. Israel jailed a president and a former prime minister. They’re not afraid to do that. And he does not want to go to jail. And he does not want to give up power.

And so this is a terrible situation where Israel is in a existential war, and its prime minister has basically dual loyalties, one to the state and one to himself. And at every turn, he is prioritizing himself.

Put differently, where one takes Israel's goals to be things like "bringing the hostages home" or "destroying Hamas", one can at least understand opposing a ceasefire proposal to the extent that such a proposal will not lead to those outcomes (whilst continuing hostilities might). But the corollary to that is that if one believes those are Israel's goals, then a ceasefire proposal that does effectively accomplish them would be agreed to be Israel. And the corollary to that is that if Israel does not agree to such a proposal, it pretty decisively falsifies that these are the real goals. In short: making the proposal really puts that belief to the test, and no matter what they aver publicly I don't think most Jewish organizations are confident that this bet would pay out.

In a recent social media thread, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), alluded to this point. The cause of bringing home the hostages and incapacitating Hamas is indubitably just. But Bibi has not been comporting himself as if these are his primary goals. He's been acting in a fashion that suggests that his main goals are dragging this war on indefinitely to prolong his moment of political reckoning and appeasing his ultra-right coalition mates. And those objectives are absolutely not worth opposing a ceasefire for.

It is possible -- and proper -- for the United States to put this to the proof: if Israel wants to continue to receive American military backing, it has to show its objectives are what they say they are, rather than a self-centered way for Bibi to save his own skin while permanently kneecapping the political and social viability of Palestinian nationhood. If Bibi decides that the latter is more important than maintaining American support, well, that's his call to make (until the next election anyway), and the rest of the world in turn can make any number of justified inferences from those revealed preferences.