Paul Kearns: The Israel-Hamas war is over — but neither side has won
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv on Monday morning. Picture: (AP/Ariel Schalit
The war is apparently over. The bombardment of Gaza has stopped — for now, and the first of the remaining hostages will finally be released as I write this on Monday. Cautious optimism has given way to poignant celebrations in Tel Aviv and across the Gaza Strip.
But after two years of conflict in Gaza that has killed 67,000 Palestinians, and virtually destroyed the entire enclave, a challenging but crucial question needs to be asked.
Who are the main losers and winners in the so-called Israeli-Hamas war?
Arguably, the following somewhat grim balance sheet exercise is a gross simplification of reality. It helps to clarify and untangle some of the core issues arising from this war.
Unsurprisingly, there are more losers than winners. This is perhaps true of all wars. The list is as long as it is diverse.
The biggest losers are first and foremost those 67,000 Palestinians who have been killed, and the hundreds of thousands who have been injured, including the tens of thousands of orphaned children.
Israeli-Hamas 'war' is perhaps a misnomer. With 83% of Palestinians killed believed to be civilians, calling the conflict an ‘Israeli-Hamas’ war arguably feeds an Israeli government narrative that this was a battle between the Jewish state and a terrorist organisation.
The second biggest loser is the state of Israel itself. The reputational damage to Israel, its pariah-like international status, is here to stay — at least in the medium term.
Perhaps the third biggest losers are the Jewish global diaspora. There has been an undeniable surge in antisemitism across the world since October 7, 2023. Antisemitism, of course, takes many ghoulish forms from the murderous attacks on synagogues to far-right conspiracy theories the Jewish state somehow facilitated the massacre of its own citizens for nefarious reasons.
The Israeli hostages, both living and dead, including all the victims of October 7, are clearly losers.
Hezbollah is undoubtedly a loser. The terrorist-political movement in Lebanon has been significantly weakened, its leadership assassinated, and its political influence diminished.
Notwithstanding the flurry of recognition of a Palestinian state, the Palestinian Authority (PA) itself is also a loser. Sitting in its ministerial offices in Ramallah, the PA has been a helpless bystander as the genocide in Gaza unfolded.
Its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, who turns 90 in November, continues to cling to power. In an opinion poll earlier this summer, 85% of Palestinians want him to resign. There have been no elections for the PA since 2006. The PA wasn’t even invited to the peace summit in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt — the ultimate insult.
Television viewers in Israel throughout this war have been losers. The three main television news channels in Israel have failed miserably in their duty to report the horror unleashed in Gaza. Their failure has been a consistently underreported story throughout this war.
Other losers include the Israeli opposition and Israeli President Herzog. Caught between the trauma of the Hamas massacre on October 7 and accusations of war crimes against the Israeli state, the opposition and the president have found themselves flailing since the beginning of the war in their failure to sufficiently differentiate between their support for the Israeli people, loyalty to the state, and criticism of the government.
It is perhaps hard to believe that there are any true winners in a war that has destroyed so many lives. But winners, there indeed are.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the biggest winner in war is the armament industry — specifically the Israeli armament industry. The Israeli stock market has soared some 102% percent since the Hamas terror attack and the start of the war on October 7, 2023. Much of that gain is in the high-tech and armament industry.
The Palestinian national cause is also a significant winner. Palestine, the destiny of Palestinians, and the cause of the Palestinian people have been front and centre in news headlines for two years — partly, no doubt, because of the perseverance and resilience of Gaza’s civilians in enduring two years of hell.
If Israeli news television is a loser, the Israeli newspaper is a winner. has tirelessly criticised and condemned both the government and the war in Gaza. Some of the most impactful investigative journalism exposing Israel's war crimes in Gaza has come from reporters, including a damning revelation of a shoot-to-kill policy by Israeli soldiers at food distribution points in Gaza.
Hamas is perhaps a surprise winner. The organisation and its leadership may have brought devastation upon the Palestinians, and their leadership has been decimated, but many Palestinians will champion them for resurrecting the Palestinian cause. Opinion polls continue to show support for the party hovering between 30% and 40%.
The families of the Israeli hostages, who have tirelessly campaigned for two years for their release, are both winners and losers. Their efforts have been heroic despite being vilified by some Israeli government ministers, while facing a sometimes indifferent or jaded interest from the rest of the world.
The most notable name absent from either list of winners and losers is Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
If we judge his winner-loser status electorally, and thus very narrowly, then the jury is still out. The Israeli prime minister and his government remain deeply unpopular. If elections were held today, he would lose. Netanyahu, incredulously, has likened himself many times to an Israeli-Churchill, standing up to the country’s enemies in its hour of need.
If somehow he pulls off a surprise victory in next year's election, he will probably have done so by successfully pedalling the image of a war hero who defeated Hamas, Hezbollah, and disabled Iran's nuclear abilities. Churchill was, of course, unceremoniously dumped at the end of the war.
More broadly, Netanyahu is clearly a loser.
This is the first time since 1948 that Israel has voluntarily relinquished ‘sovereignty’ of Israeli-Palestinian territory to an outside organisation, the so-called "International Stabilization Force," which will, in effect, replace the Israeli army and operate as a military force in Gaza comprised of Muslim nations.
And it was, of course, under Netanyahu’s watch that October 7 occurred. He has since irreparably damaged Israel’s standing in the world. The International Criminal Court has already issued an arrest warrant for him for war crimes, and regardless of the findings of the International Court of Justice, he and his government will be forever tarnished by accusations of genocide.
History will not be kind to Israel's longest-serving prime minister.
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