Possible to end Hamas as an entity than it was for us to end the Taliban as an entity. We ultimately got Mullah Omar, but as we’ve seen, that did nothing to “end” the Taliban.

I’m very torn about what to hope for. It is the most densely populated war zone imaginable, and every innocent Palestinian death is both a tragedy and a Hamas accomplishment. They want as many martyrs as possible. So, is Israel achieving their goals, or Hamas’ goals if and when it resumes?

For Hamas to remain in the clear, so to speak, they’ll need to keep releasing hostages. That’s obviously a good thing. We can argue about whether it’s a good thing, net net, given the pause in fighting and the released Palestinians, some of whom are probably in jail for very good reasons. But if the fighting resumes with daily body counts and images of kids dragged from wreckage going viral, we’d have to have the same argument.