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Notes -
The following is a comment about US media, not about the war in Gaza.
Whenever the mainstream US news covers the humanitarian disaster in Gaza (and the suffering is absolutely horrendous), the underlying subtext I get is "Israel should stop assaulting Gaza". But there's another path that would also end the humanitarian disaster, and that's the unconditional surrender of Hamas.
I'm not shocked that Hamas doesn't surrender, but I am shocked that the option is never even mentioned in passing by the talking heads. Do they not think of it? Is it too far outside the bounds of normal discourse? If this were any other military conflict in all of history, it would be considered decided by now, and Gazans would be suing for peace.
I am not American, so cant comment on the exact tone of US media. But perhaps they bought in to the whole "only democracy in the Middle-East" and "most moral army in the would" slogans. After all, Hamas is roundly condemned as a terrorist organization by both sides of the political establishment in the US (and nearly the whole of Europe), so perhaps it doesnt really make sense to make moral appeals to them?
I think the really interesting question here is if Hamas would have anything to gain by an unconditional surrender. While I agree that Israel is likely to win a decisive military victory, I think Hamas so far is winning a slight PR victory and a perhaps even bigger political victory. I dont have any illusions about how Hamas value the sanctity of life, either Palestinian or Israeli, so I think the chance of a political victory is much more important for them in the long term.
It would be an understatement to say that the pre October 7th status quo was dire for the Palestinians. With between 700 000 - 800 000 settlers on the West Bank gradually encroaching on more and more Palestinian land, and talk of annexation of the West Bank becoming mainstream in Israel (Netanyahu had this a campaign promise in 2019 and won the subsequent election). This was all happening with the tacit approval of the US (and probably also most Arab countries), the dream of a two state solution was more or less dead. With this as a back drop Palestinians were witnessing Arab countries pursuing a politic of normalization with Israel, while giving lip service to the Palestinian cause. From the ground in Palestine the status quo probably looked a lot like a slow moving ethnic cleansing. Palestinians gradually getting more sympathy in the US and Europe did not seem to help their case at all, and as we saw earlier this year, having the sympathy of western populations did nothing to help the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh against being ethnically cleansed by a western ally.
Now fast forward a couple of months to today, the plight of Gaza is front and centre again. The US is finding itself increasingly isolated on the global stage as Israels guardian angel. Arab countries had to distance themselves at least optically from anything Israel does. Behind closed doors many of them are probably wondering if a normalization will be possible at all with the current Israeli political scene. We are also in a situation where there is a real chance that Bidens reelection might be in jeopardy due to his support of Israel. Just the perception that this is a possibility is an unprecedented win for the Palestinian cause, and we now have Blinked take some symbolic steps to be seen addressing Palestinian concerns, such as sanctioning violent settlers.
If we assume that there are countries pulling the strings of Hamas, perhaps Qatar, Iran and even Russia, the case for a political win becomes even stronger. Did anyone even notice or care that a female Iranian dissident won the nobel price just now? Does the liberation of Iranian women even register to people when 50 000 pregnant women in Gaza are being bombed daily? However no country has had a bigger PR win over the war in Gaza than Russia. Not only is the attention towards Ukraine diminished, the passion in the "slava Ukraini" camp has been decimated. Many people who thought they where "on the right side of history" and supporting the little guy Ukraine against the bigger aggressor, are having second thoughts about the morals of their side, which is cheering on the Israeli offensive in Gaza. I clearly see this among my normie friends in Norway. People are seeing the Ukraine conflict more in term of realist politics and not absolute morality, and if you are being a realist, perhaps it makes sense to let Russia keep the Russian speaking parts of Ukraine for a ceasefire.
In this scenario the death of many thousands more Palestinian children seems like a small price to pay for what Hamas has achieved.
One would have to look at this both from a foreign-policy and a domestic-policy perspective as well. Domestically, Hamas loses ground to Islamic Jihad or the Al Aqsa Brigade if they are seen as conciliatory to Israel. This is one reason Hamas remains competitive with the PNA.
Or from a second-order game theoretic perspective, the Palestinian power structure incentives this kind of distributed authority. In a game of chicken, they've dismantled the steering wheel and dispersed it into a dozen little pieces.
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