On policy options – Tom Phillips in Haaretz:

‘Hamas has also already demonstrated that it is a force to be reckoned with, merely by surviving the IDF onslaught for longer than any war Israel has ever fought. In doing so, they have thoroughly dented Israel's much vaunted deterrent status. In brief, and with daunting potential long-term consequences for Israel, the IDF no longer looks invincible.’

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‘The crisis has also raised intriguing question marks over the extent of Iranian control over its allies in the region, particularly the Houthis.’

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‘the crisis has demonstrated America's waning ability to call the shots in the region and created space for others to seek to expand their influence, particularly Russia (which is also a huge winner in terms of the dramatic shift of international interest from Ukraine to the Middle East).’

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‘Indeed, Hamas has achieved what Palestinian Authority President Abbas has failed to achieve – putting the Palestinian issue back squarely on the international map, after years in which it has lingered in the "Too Difficult" tray while at the same time being seen as essentially manageable.
In doing so, Hamas has inter alia exposed the fragility of European support for Israel whatever the immediate reaction to the horror of October 7, in part because of the need to take account of the sensitivities of the large Muslim minorities in many European countries, but also because of a more general and increasingly widespread perception of Israel primarily as an occupying power denying Palestinians their rights, and (even more so, after the deaths of World Central Kitchen staff) of the current IDF campaign as disproportionate and indiscriminate, even genocidal.’

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‘The understandable further hardening of Israeli opinion against the creation of a potential Palestinian "terror state" is also a factor. But my own worry has long been that a number of factors, including the settlement enterprise in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the ongoing shift to the right in Israeli society and politics plus – on the Palestinian side – the inadequacies of the Ramallah leadership, mean that the window for a two-state solution, which would have been the right solution to a problem involving two valid nationalisms, is now closed.
If so, the trouble is that for the foreseeable future there is no alternative solution, other than a continuing conflict which is in the tragic process of corroding both societies.’

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‘As someone who knows many Israeli and Palestinians who have been working for a peace I doubt they will ever see, my heart is breaking, although despair should never be a policy option.’

Read the article here.

Despair should not be a policy option, but the alternatives are few, if any.

And yes, Hamas won, this was already clear on October 8.

And Israel squandered more goodwill than necessary, the incompetence of the ruling class there can be seen in more countries, but the results of the incompetence in Israel and Palestine are especially disastrous.

The refusal to despair might be a policy option.