The Jerusalem Post June 1, 2025
Ceasefire could mark dangerous change in evolution of modern warfare.
It would also validate and entrench a dangerous evolution in modern warfare: the systematic abuse of the laws of war as a weapon.

Hamas has built its entire doctrine around this, deliberately violating every principle of international humanitarian law while relying on those same laws to constrain its adversary.

This is not just hypocrisy. It is a form of calculated warfare sometimes called lawfare:
1. turning schools, hospitals, mosques, and civilian neighborhoods into military facilities,
2. embedding command centers and weapons under protected sites,
3. and then using civilian casualties as a political weapon.

When those civilians inevitably suffer, Hamas leverages the images and statistics to win global sympathy and condemn the very nation trying to dismantle their terrorist infrastructure. How 'authentic' are these "images"?

A Hamas victory would establish a new, horrific standard: that if you
1. violate every rule of war with enough strategic cruelty
2. using your own population as shields,
3. storing rockets in clinics,
4. placing snipers in minarets,
5. and ensuring the maximum number of civilians are exposed to danger
— then international outrage will fall not on you, but on the state trying to stop you. Those anti-Israel 'allies'

It would teach regimes and terror groups everywhere that protected sites are no longer protected — they are exploitable.
That civilian deaths are not just tragic but useful, even essential, to political victory.

The consequences of rewarding that strategy would echo far beyond Gaza:
it would put every civilian population under the control of evil dictators or armed non-state actors at even greater risk.