declaring victory

The talk of ceasefire in Lebanon has heated up again.. so I wanted to comment on victory as it has been on my mind for a while..

What is victory? How does this war end? When will a ceasefire be justified? Are we going to fight forever until someone on the other side holds up a white flag of surrender? Minister Betzalel Smotritch said the other day that he will not support ending the war until every last Hamasnik has been killed - is that even possible or is he condemning us to live with an active war forever?

Let's start by mentioning that the return of the hostages is one of the objectives of the war, so perhaps there is no victory until that is achieved. the thing is, it looks like this can only be achieved by a deal. The vaunted "only increased military pressure will bring them home" has not [yet] proven itself. While the IDF conducted heroic rescue operations, they succeeded in bringing home just several hostages, and killed several as well. More hostages have been brought home by a deal than by military operations, and the numbers aren't even close. And with the rescue operations, as heroic as they are and as happy we are for each hostage that gets rescued and for each body that gets recovered and brought back for a Jewish burial, many more hostages remain in Gaza with their whereabouts unknown despite the 13 months of war and destruction of Gaza above and below ground, with Hamas seemingly not having budged an iota in its demands when discussing the possibility of a deal.

So with the return of the hostages being one of the objectives of the war it might be difficult to declare victory as long as that has not been achieved.

Personally I do believe that from a military perspective we won the war a long time ago. 

Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah were strong enough to destroy Israel, though they made a lot of trouble for us and maybe Hezbollah could have made more. But the IDF recovered and destroyed Hamas and then went and destroyed Hezbollah. once the IDF started getting to work, Hamas and Hezbollah had no chance. They are fighting a war with rockets, with their fighters and rocket supplies being diminished every day by the IDF, while we are destroying everything about them with our air force and ground troops. Militarily we already won, even though the war continues. We can stop at any time that we deem we have hurt them badly enough and they are willing to give us the security we demand..

At what point do we say we have achieved victory? havent we won already? I am ok with any ceasefire deal that the security forces and political leadership are comfortable with because militarily we have won and continue winning, and we can't do this forever. I believe we have destroyed their capabilities moving forward, we have destroyed much of their leadership, and we have destroyed most of their infrastructure. 

Isn't thought though just fighting to a stalemate? We have been fighting for the past almost 14 months just to go back to where we were on October 6, though with our enemy much weaker now? Wars used to be won by conquering land, and that would be an easily defined victory. The war between Russia and Ukraine is over land and if there is a decisive victory (rather than an agreement of cessation of hostilities) of some sort it will almost definitely include some land going one way or the other. For us to declare victory the old fashioned way, besides for giving Hamas and Hezbollah a beatdown, and besides for getting our hostages back, we really should take land from Lebanon and Gaza and incorporate it into Israel. That seems to not be acceptable nowadays, or at least not when Israel is involved, so we are limited to declaring victory by how much we destroy Hamas and Hezbollah - in that regard, even though we can continue to beat them down further, we have already won the war. If we are not going to take land as part of our conquering of Gaza and Lebanon, then we can declare victory by the level of destruction we have already sown and by the level of dominance we have displayed, and by the deterrence we have created.

How would you define and declare victory in this seemingly never-ending war?

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