With the war largely over, for now, people are taking stock of Israel's achievements and failures against the multiple terrorist organizations and its state backer Iran.
Ask your average close watcher of this war in Israel and most will tell you that Israel won in its direct clash with Iran and against the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq - as well as against Hezbollah.
Yes, all three continue to rant and rave and threaten, but all were forced to sheath their swords and stop firing at Israel on terms they explicitly rejected before the IDF hit them as hard as they did.
Yet ironically, it is Hamas, the terrorist group which started the war in the first place, which appears to have come out wounded but alive, and definitely not defeated.
Why is that?
Some will say it's the hostages. Because Hamas still holds around 60 live hostages according to Israeli estimates, they still hold a trump card that prevents Israel from truly going in for the kill against the terrorist group.
Others might say that it's the international community, which constantly forces Israel to fight with so many handicaps that it would take a century to finish the job in the Gaza Strip.
While all these are part of the story, I would propose there is another major factor: political control.
Simply put: Lebanon has a state. And an army. Hezbollah may be a state within a state, but it is still formally subject to the country's laws and involved in its politics. It cannot act entirely freely, and the IDF's operations against Hezbollah appears to have strengthened the state's power against it.
The same goes for Iran and its militias in Iraq. The Iraqi government may not be all-powerful, but it is there, and it can be used to restrain militias with enough support from more powerful countries such as the United States.
In short, all these forces - in theory - have a higher political power to which they must answer and which they must heed.
Hamas has no such handicap. They are the formal government in the Gaza Strip and they answer to no-one but themselves. This is why all the calls for the nations of the world to pressure Hamas are unlikely to go anywhere, anymore than efforts to pressure North Korea will have an effect.
It is here that many on the left will say this is why the Palestinian Authority will need to take over and indeed why the Palestinians must have a state - to ensure there is always a higher power which could, in theory, restrain terrorists.
This was a nice sounding idea and was indeed the basis for the Oslo Accords in the first place. But it is fatally flawed.
Most polls show overwhelming support for Hamas in Judea and Samaria, where the PA formally has control. If and when they hold elections, they will easily sweep into power, and even if no elections are held, the PA's lack of popular support and power means their ability to restrain Hamas and other terrorist groups is very limited.
The recent IDF operations in Jenin have also demonstrated how weak the PA is in restraining even weakened terrorist groups in its vicinity. If the IDF were not operating in the area constantly, it would likely collapse or be taken over.
We saw this in the Gaza Strip this century: after about a year of full PA control, Hamas tossed Fatah guys off rooftops. Rest is history.
Fundamentally, there is no state control solution to Judea and Samaria or the Gaza Strip because the Palestinian desire to eliminate Israel and throw out the Jews is far stronger - and directly at odds with - their desire for an end to "the occupation" and a state existing alongside Israel.
Lebanon, Iraq, Iran all have interests separate from and greater than that desire. "Palestine" does not.
Blame Bibi all you want for his many mistakes this war - and he will often deserve it! - but no-one on the right or left has really proposed a tenable solution which would resolve this problem in a way that ensures lasting peace.
So I would argue that Hamas didn't lose this war because the Palestinians are still deadset on Israel's elimination, regardless of what banner they fly in trying to murder, rape, and burn their way through the hated Zionist entity. They didn't lose because Gazans are all on board with Hamas' aims even if Hamas ceased to exist.
God willing, we will find a way to entirely destroy Hamas' military and even governing capacity. But let us not fool ourselves that real quiet is coming anytime soon.
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