If Israel, as its leaders and President Biden pledge will not be the case, allows this pause in the conflict to turn into a durable cease-fire in which completely innocent Israeli civilians, many of them children, women, and elderly people, have been seized and removed as hostages are gradually returned in exchange for a much higher number of legitimately convicted Palestinian terrorists, and the conflict effectively ends here, it will be a decisive defeat for Israel.

There is no equivalence whatsoever between the seizure and removal of citizens in the midst of a slaughter of the innocents in breach of an agreed cease-fire, and the apprehension and conviction of terrorists. The atrocities of October 7 committed by Hamas after invading Israel were, by virtue of their horrifying proportions, an opportunity for Israel to do what it has stated through all the spokesman of an instantly formed national unity government it will do: completely destroy Hamas as a military force.