The Blind Centrist's Guide to Gaza

When it comes to the war in Gaza, I have been far more frustrated with well-meaning, reasonable-sounding liberals than with the Hamas sympathizers flooding our streets. The centrist shorthand for arriving at the truth seems to be to find the midpoint between the canonical Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestinian position. Lousy as this heuristic might be, it seems to do well on a vast majority of topics, on which both left and right both have several strong and mutually contradictory claims that make them look like lunatics. Your vague mid-point position might not be particularly truth-seeking, but it certainly appears more reasonable in contrast. But the war in Gaza is an issue on which this heuristic fails spectacularly. So if you seem to have a “It’s complicated” type of internal response that hints at some form of political neutrality, I understand it, but I think you can do better.  

There are a few things that are uncomplicated about the conflict in Gaza - the brutality of October 7th, the reality of human suffering in Gaza and the incentives faced by either side. Way before the ICJ ruling, for virtually no money, I would have signed a contract ensuring my biological castration if it were to be established that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This is wildly implausible and flies in the face of incentives that we can infer from Israel’s behavior. In fact, throughout this essay, I will try to do just that. I won’t assume that Israel is the more moral actor by default. I’ll assume they are both amoral actors playing an adversarial game. From the events that have transpired so far, we infer each side’s incentives, even if you ignore most of each side’s historical behavior before October 7th. I will argue that given these incentives and the events of October 7th, one must logically conclude the following:  

1. Israel had to respond with disproportionate force - targeted strikes is a dumb talking point.

2. Given Israel’s response, the most rational action for Hamas is to deliberately embed themselves in civilian areas and maximize non-combatant casualties.

3. All the public and egregious seeming crimes attributed to the IDF are overwhelmingly likely to be genuine mistakes, bad apples or just propaganda.

Game 1: Israel's Response to Oct 7th

For the sake of analysis, let's assume that both Israel and Hamas are amoral actors who are instrumentally rational. This means that while they might have ultimate goals that you disagree with, they choose the most rational options to achieve those goals given their constraints.

Before October 7th, there was an equilibrium where Israel had no presence in Gaza, and Hamas had de facto control. Netanyahu believed this equilibrium was stable, but he was proven wrong when Hamas chose to attack Israel. We won't speculate on Hamas' motivations for now.

After the attack on October 7th, Israel had a few theoretical options:

1. Do nothing and invest in strengthening defenses.

2. Conduct targeted strikes in Gaza to take out senior Hamas members while minimizing civilian casualties.

3. Level Gaza using mostly air power, guaranteeing the elimination of Hamas but killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Palestinians with little human cost to the IDF.

4. Take actions to decimate Hamas' military infrastructure and take out a significant majority of its fighting force.

Option 1: Israel Does Not Retaliate; Chooses Instead to Invest in Strengthening Defenses

For the sake of argument, let's assume that if Israel had done nothing, Hamas would have freed the hostages, even though this is highly unlikely.

In this scenario, Hamas, having proven it can strike Israel with impunity, remains untouched. It can take credit for expelling thousands of Israelis from the south of the country. Moreover, it has created powerful propaganda material - videos of terrified Jews as the Al-Aqsa Brigade infiltrates their homes.

The existence of these videos reveals Hamas' preferences and incentives, as they were recorded to showcase Hamas' brutality. Notably, Hamas had no incentive to broadcast its brutality to the Western world. Given that Israel has faced international pressure to end its offensives in the past, it's inconvenient for Hamas that the Israelis can use the October 7th videos to counter images of suffering children in Gaza. In fact, if Hamas could showcase its brutality to Israelis and the Middle East but not the West, it would likely choose to do so. However, the internet makes this impossible. These videos could plausibly serve two purposes: first, to terrorize the Israeli population and push them to consider leaving the Middle East; second, to broadcast the glory of October 7th to Hamas' allies and potential recruits.

This seems like a great outcome for Hamas. The only downside is that they would probably need to invest more effort to successfully attack Israel next time, given that Israel would certainly strengthen its defenses. But even this is a win for Hamas. While Israel might throw money at the problem, it would need to bolster its military presence on the Gaza border. This means less surveillance in the West Bank or on the northern border with Hezbollah. When your enemy is surrounded by allies on all sides, reallocating resources is rarely a loss.

It’s clear to most people that responding to attacks by strengthening defenses alone is game-theoretically infeasible. It leaves the enemy intact and emboldened while leaving you with all the costs. 

Option 2: Israel conducts targeted strikes in Gaza to selectively take out Hamas leadership and minimize civilian casualties.

Welcome to targeted strikes - the silver bullet that seems to be the preferred strategy of every center-left pundit - Ian Bremmer, Tom Friedman and the villain from my last piece, Rory Stewart.

Leave the substance of the argument aside - it’s oddly convenient that they sincerely believe this is the option that is in Israel’s best interest, while it also happens to be the most politically correct option for them to endorse and defend. We should have all been more suspicious of this claim when it was floating around because it’s really two claims disguising as one. Targeted strikes apparently optimize for two things: Israel’s strategic goals AND minimizing civilian casualties in Gaza. In general, if someone tells you that the same action optimizes for two things, you should be suspicious.

Of course, one doesn’t need formal logic or proof to intuit this. This piece of advice implies the only thing stopping Israel from conducting targeted operations to destroy Hamas in the past was willpower - like Israel was a high school kid that just needed a slap in the face like October 7th to realize it should really conduct targeted strikes to remove the genocidal death cult at their doorstep. Israel always had an incentive to weaken Hamas by taking out leaders when it could reliably do so, as detailed by this glorious video footage.

This is perhaps not as convincing as it would have been in a world in which Netanyahu wasn’t seen as supporting the existence of Hamas to sabotage the dream of a Palestinian state. But this is overdone. Hamas has been more popular and exponentially more militarily capable than the Palestinian Authority for a while. The former deposed the latter in a violent coup in Gaza, remember? It would have taken serious military involvement from Israel to shift this balance of power. This might still have been a good investment for Israel but it’s ludicrous to claim that this wouldn’t itself have escalated and that these pundits wouldn’t be on air once again asking Israel to exercise restraint.

Some may argue that targeted strikes, even with some civilian casualties, would be less messy and garner more international support for Israel. This concedes that protecting Palestinian civilians may not always align with Israel's strategic interests. It appears that proponents of this view first considered what would minimize Palestinian civilian casualties and then sought to rationalize why it would also serve Israel's interests, often citing international reactions or public opinion.

Then comes my favorite: “An invasion is exactly what Hamas wants Israel to do so Israel should exercise restraint”. Pay attention to how this phrased. It could have been phrased “This will be good for Hamas” or “This will be bad for Israel” but instead they try to dangle in front of Israel the psychological satisfaction of not killing people that just killed and raped Israeli civilians. Isn’t this an argument to never respond to an unprovoked attack?

If what Hamas really wants is for Israel to fight them, then why are they bargaining for a permanent ceasefire now? And why did they release hostages in exchange for a temporary ceasefire? What Hamas wants is for Israel to fight, lose a bunch of soldiers and then be pressured by the international community to negotiate a ceasefire in which they also get thousands of Palestinian prisoners released. What they categorically don’t want is for Israel to stay and eliminate 95% of their fighting force. 

Okay, so maybe what the pundits mean is this instead: “If you go into Gaza, you might get in a long counter-insurgency battle or kill too many civilians such that the international community will pressure you to stop.” This is somewhat circular reasoning. You can’t use your position that Israel should try to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza as justification for the claim that Israel should do that. It’s as if these pundits and politicians are Israel’s therapists giving them advise on the margin, while holding exogenous forces of the “international community” constant.

Most importantly, this is a naive course of action. If Israel makes it clear that it’s going to be carefully targeting leadership, the easiest thing for Hamas leaders to do is temporarily exile themselves. This leaves the military infrastructure intact; still allowing them to fire rockets into Israel every now and then; all the while regrouping for another attack or waiting for the Israelis to cool off so that they can return. It leaves military infrastructure intact and the very fact that Israel would through its actions advertise targeted strikes as their strategy would end up making them much less effective.

Option 3: Israel could level Gaza (using mostly air power) to guarantee the elimination of Hamas, and kill hundreds of thousands if not millions of Palestinians

We assumed that Israel is an amoral actor. So, it theoretically could have done this. They would have lost fewer soldiers and presumably finished the job sooner but incurred collateral damage in the order of double-digit percentages (of Gaza's population). The fact that they didn't do this, assuming you think Israel has no inherent moral compass, is most likely due to reputational risks - losing US support or peace treaties with their neighbors.

At minimum, this is evidence that a significant part of Israel's payoff function is affected by these reputational considerations that arise from too many civilian casualties. This reputational cost always has to be balanced against the military advantages that come with being more callous. I'm happy to concede this. It is, of course, true that the option to wage war more viciously is a military advantage. It must be, like any other form of optionality, by definition.

Option 4: Do what it takes to decimate Hamas’ military infrastructure and take out a significant majority of its fighting force

This is what Israel ended up doing, and it's the only one that makes sense. One can argue on the margin about the pace of the invasion and the specific tactical choices. But just because one can argue about this doesn't mean one is well-positioned to evaluate this on its military merits.

Think back to Israel's incentives here. We have already established that reputational or diplomatic costs are part of its payoff function. At any point, Israel is balancing military benefits against these reputational costs since the latter increase the likelihood that they'd be pressured to stop fighting. Not only does it make zero sense for Israel to deliberately bomb a hospital or strike civilians, but it also probably doesn’t make any sense for them to send troops into a hospital unless the military advantage from doing so actually overrode the reputational costs.

This is the context within which one should inform their priors about things like Al Shifa or shooting at the aid convoy. Unless strong evidence to the contrary, you should believe that Israel went into Al-Shifa Hospital because they believed significant numbers of militants were seeking refuge there. And that the incident with the aid convoy was clearly either a mistake or bad apples. The institutional incentives say so.

With the blocking of aid trucks, it's true that the incentives that Israel faces aren't as clear. Aid is easily diverted and stolen by Hamas, increasing their viable duration underground. One could also argue that, more cynically, starving the population is one way to break the will of the people without whose support Hamas can't effectively operate. But this calculation is far from obvious. Even though the support for Hamas increased right after October 7th, it almost certainly decreased when Gazans had to reckon with the destruction caused by the war. In that context, it's plausible that being "nice" to Gazans on aid is a benefit to Israel and not a cost. I mostly see this one as a wash. In so far as the aid includes fuel, Israel has a strong reason to block it. Hamas doesn't have infinite fuel stores, which are necessary to sustain ventilation inside tunnels. So, since Hamas has every incentive to steal fuel and aid more generally, Israel has some opposing incentive to limit that.

Consider the present halt on the offensive in Rafah. Every day that Israel stalls on the invasion is a day that Hamas can use to regroup, strategize, or flee. The operation in Rafah has been on hold for over a month, despite popular support for it among the Israeli public. This is direct evidence of reputational costs being a part of Israel’s calculus.

Israel’s payoff looks something like this:

• Eliminate Hamas with no reputational cost: 100 (basically impossible)

• Significantly degrade Hamas’ infrastructure and leadership with some reputational cost: 70

• Ceasefire with Hamas weakened: 50

• Ceasefire with Hamas intact: 30

• Withdraw with Hamas intact: 0

Hamas’ optimal strategy

Conditional on Israel’s hands-on military operation in Gaza, how do incentives line up for Hamas? Leaving any assumptions on morality aside, Hamas are already international pariahs. They have no external incentive to care about playing by the rules of war or to reduce civilian casualties per se. One could argue that even though Hamas rules by force, all else equal, it’s better for Hamas to keep support from its population, as even dictators often seem to be inclined to do. However, all else is not equal. Israel’s invasion is an imminent existential threat to them, by far the biggest one they’ve ever faced. So, it’s completely rational to prioritize halting the Israeli offensive and worry about crushing internal dissent later.

As for the primary objective, they can’t hope for much more than halting the Israeli offensive. Neither Hezbollah nor Iran have done enough to give them a shot at shifting the balance of power. So, the most effective way for them to achieve this is to ensure that the international community pressures Israel to stop. The only plausible way to do that is to emphasize and exaggerate the human catastrophe in Gaza to elicit a visceral reaction.

Here is a plausible elucidation of Hamas’ payoffs:

• Unconditional ceasefire with military infrastructure and leadership mostly intact: 100

• Ceasefire with moderate military and infrastructure losses: 70

• Ceasefire with heavy military losses: 40

• Eliminated as a political and military force: 0

What does this mean?

The conflict between Israel and Hamas highlights a significant vulnerability in the international system, one that has implications far beyond Gaza. The global order is built on a set of norms and laws designed to constrain the behavior of states and promote peaceful conflict resolution. But these constraints only apply to those who participate in the system. When a conflict involves an actor that operates outside of these norms, it creates a fundamental asymmetry.

Israel, as a member of the international community, is bound by the rules of the global order. It is subject to the laws of war, the scrutiny of international institutions, and the court of global public opinion. These constraints shape its choices and limit its freedom of action, even in the face of provocation.

Hamas, on the other hand, operates by a different set of rules - or rather, by no rules at all. This gives Hamas a perverse kind of advantage. It can take actions that would be unthinkable for a law-abiding state, such as deliberately targeting civilians or using human shields. Yet Hamas can still leverage the rules against Israel, manipulating global opinion by provoking an Israeli response and showcasing the inevitable civilian casualties.

Crucially, despite the intense scrutiny and condemnation Israel faces, it has not been found to be in violation of international law in its Gaza operations. However, many politicians and commentators act as if it has, marring Israel's reputation and effectively kowtowing to Islamofascists and far-left activists in their own countries. This sends a troubling message to other nations and allies facing similar asymmetric threats, like India and Saudi Arabia. It suggests that adhering to international norms is a handicap rather than a virtue, and that the way to gain support is not to play by the rules, but to subvert them.

This is the challenge the Gaza conflict poses for the international order. It's not just about Israel and Hamas. It's about whether our system can adapt to the reality of asymmetric conflicts, whether it can find ways to support those who adhere to its norms while still holding wrongdoers accountable. The future of a rules-based international system may well depend on getting this balance right.