Combat and killing is so much easier than forging peace. That is true in Ukraine, where Putin's demands are impossible; in Gaza, where neither side thinks that it can afford a real cessation of hostilities; in Sudan, where personal ambition stands in the way of war's end; in Myanmar, where the long-dominant Tatmadaw military regime would forfeit everything if it agreed to ending a war that it is losing; and in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where slaughtering innocent villagers brings loot and power.
Ukraine
Putin says over and over that his war would end if Ukraine let his invading forces keep all of the Donbas and Crimean territories in eastern Ukraine that it occupied illegally in 2014 and annexed equally illegally in 2022. He even seeks the terrain that Ukraine has recovered since 2022 from Russian forces. Furthermore, he wants Ukraine to give up joining NATO -- to become a "neutralized" country capable of being influenced in future by an avaricious Russia on its borders.
These demands are all non-starters. Putin was using them last week for propaganda purposes in the hope of disrupting the Ukraine-summoned recovery conference that took place over the weekend in Switzerland.
For a real peace, Ukraine conceivably would be willing to put its NATO membership on hold for, say, five years because it could take that long anyway to secure such an accession and to overcome the likely vetoes by Hungary and Slovakia. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will not give up territory already won back from the Russian invaders, especially along the western bank of the Dnieper River in Kherson. His maximalist position is the return of all Russian occupied lands, especially including Crimea. Neither he nor the rest of the West trust Putin's word, either, because of Putin's duplicity ever since signing the Minsk Agreements in 2014 and 2015.
Nevertheless, Ukraine's Western supporters want the mostly stalemated combat in Ukraine to halt. They will support Ukraine "for as long as it takes" but also want to find an honorable solution that safeguards the integrity of Ukraine and enables it to be restored (with sequestered Russian cash?) to freedom and normality.
Perhaps Putin has given them an opening. But one of his other conditions -- to remove sanctions on his economy -- is a further sticking point.
Just conceivably, a grand bargain could be concluded that removes the sanctions five years hence IF Putin obeyed the provisions of a peace settlement that included the withdrawal of all Russian troops and equipment from annexed eastern Ukraine and Crimea AND permitted the inhabitants of those regions to vote in an UN-supervised referendum on whether they wanted to be part of Russia or Ukraine.
No one trusts Putin, but such a plan might enable him to save face and to be able to sell such a peace plan to the all-out war party surrounding him in the Kremlin.
Civilians in what is now most of free Ukraine, especially those persons being pummeled near Kharkiv and Chasiv Yar might also welcome an end to bombardments. But getting from today’s bitter contest to meaningful negotiations will demand recalculations in Moscow and nimble novel thinking in Kyiv.
Gaza
Whereas Putin probably realizes that Russia cannot conquer Ukraine easily or quickly and Ukrainians also are aware that ousting Russia completely from its territory will take years of fighting, the war in Gaza is harder to conclude because Yahya Sinwar -- leader of Hamas in the tunnels -- does not want to be captured or killed and has backed himself into dark corner.
For him, a sometime Israeli prisoner exchanged in 2011 along with 1,026 other detainees for a single Israeli soldier held hostage, hatred of Israel drives him, not a broader calculation. Sinwar spent twenty-two years in an Israeli prison for crimes committed in 1989. He wants revenge. And he wants Hamas to remain in charge in Gaza so that he can retain a base of operations against Israel, and keep an ability to amass arms and cash to continue a lordly lifestyle and the battle against Israel.
Ideology initially drives such movements; subsequently, as with Hamas now, a prime motive is keeping itself viable. If Hamas is eliminated in Gaza, Sinwar and his colleagues have no place, no efficacy.
Sinwar doesn't want simply to save his own life by accepting free passage to Doha -- although that would be one way to achieve an enduring cease fire.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is also attempting to preserve his own power and place, and his dominance of the Israeli political scene. A peace deal that does not end Hamas' governance of what is left of Gaza will not work for Netanyahu even though, or perhaps because, he has not managed to indicate how the Strip will be governed after hostilities cease.
Sinwar needs the hostages to protect his continued existence. Israel needs them safely returned. And, so far, Netanyahu has been willing to sacrifice hostage returns in order to try to weaken Hamas's remaining military capabilities. The rocket-launched explosion of a transport carrying Israeli soldiers on Saturday hardly indicated Hamas' diminished capacity for mayhem.
With Washington and its allies all attempting earnestly to forge a peace deal, the pressure on Netanyahu to chance his personal political future as Israel's leader is obviously great. It seems, too, that he is ready to move forward only IF Sinwar and Hamas's remaining operatives in Gaza accept defeat.
The endgame is within reach on the Israeli side but for Sinwar and Hamas a peace deal -- depending on its terms and promises -- could mean the end of their control over the Strip and their movement. If Hamas permanently loses control over Gaza, the movement will live on in exile, but without much purpose or standing.
Gazans, according to a weekend report from the Strip, are even more disillusioned with Hamas than they were under its strict yoke before Oct. 7. One Gazan summed up widespread feelings: "But what we don’t support is them [Hamas] continuing with this war when they have not accomplished any of the goals they set out to accomplish." “This isn’t resistance. This is insanity.” Moreover, "They could have surrendered a long time ago and saved us from all this suffering.” A summation by another seemed representative: "There is uncontrolled anger against Hamas. It [Hamas] threw the Palestinian people into the bottom of the well."
Closing a negotiating gap that might appear small and manageable is in fact a broad gulf because neither Sinwar nor Netanyahu can personally afford a solution that will save innumerable human lives and spare civilians and soldiers on both sides from mortal peril. Hamas, as I've said, clings to a lasting control of the Strip; otherwise, it has no purpose and little hope of attracting funding. If Netanyahu relents, allowing Hamas to remain in Gaza, and somehow in autocratic control, will mean his being overthrown, and possibly convicted of corruption -- or more.
Squaring the circle in both cases, as President Biden and his team have been trying mightily to accomplish, is exceedingly difficult because of the desperate needs of individual leaders. Consequently, there are too few straightforward paths to peace.
A brilliant take on some of the most intractable problems of our time ....and that could sadly send Donald Trump back to the Oval Office, rendering each of these issues only more toxic !
I think you have stated the dilemma very precisely. The corrupt and entirely selfish leadership on both the Israeli and Hamas side are unlikely to budge; they would lose too much personally. It is a difficult and unhappy situation for everyone. Regards, Frank