An Israeli tank moves along the border between the Gaza Strip and southern Israel on April 2, 2024. (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images)

President Joe Biden’s red line on a Rafah invasion threatens to leave Hamas in control of Gaza.

Gabriel Scheinmann and Senior Fellow Michael Doran write that only a full demilitarization of Hamas—not the World War I–style armistice that Biden calls for—will create a truly stable order in Gaza.

Key Insights

1. President Biden is approaching the conflict in Gaza with the mindset that ended World War I.

In 1918, the United States and its allies sought a German surrender that would neutralize Berlin’s war-making capabilities without having to transform its state and society. Leaving Germany unoccupied and its latent capacity for war intact, the armistice failed to establish a stable European order. A true solution to what contemporaries called the “German question” came only after World War II, when America and its allies demanded unconditional surrender from Hitler, occupied Germany, and de-Nazified its institutions. The Israelis believe, correctly, that only Hamas’s unconditional surrender, the dismantling of its military capabilities, and the de-Hamasification of Gazan institutions will deliver a stable order. But Biden has been significantly distancing America from these aims.

2. The idea the Palestinian Authority can or will work with Israel to suppress Hamas is a fantasy.

In 2006, Gazans voted the Fatah movement, the Palestinian Authority’s organizing element, out of power in favor of Hamas. In 2007, Hamas gunmen ousted PA security forces entirely from the Gaza Strip. Even on the West Bank, which Fatah dominates, Hamas’s power is growing. Since October 7, West Bank support for Hamas has quadrupled from 12 percent in September 2023 to 44 percent in December 2023. The only force preventing a Gaza redux in the West Bank is critical Israeli military control. The armistice the president is trying to force on the Israelis will not only lose the war but cost the peace as well.

3. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu follows Franklin D. Roosevelt’s example, Biden dreams of an armistice.

After Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt studiously avoided announcing a postwar political order. It was only in January 1943 that he defined the military aims of a war he had been raging for more than a year. “We had a general called U.S. Grant. His name was Ulysses Simpson Grant, but in my . . . early days he was called ‘Unconditional Surrender’ Grant,” he told a British audience. “The elimination of German, Japanese, and Italian war power means the unconditional surrender by Germany, Italy, and Japan. That means a reasonable assurance of future world peace.” But the Biden team routinely excoriates Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for behaving like FDR. The first step toward creating a truly stable order in Gaza is for the Biden administration to think less about revitalizing the Palestinian Authority and more about revitalizing its connection with the American historical experience.

Quotes may be edited for clarity and length. 

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