Swords of Iron: Is the Status still Quo?

Zugzwang in Gaza

Until late 2023, there had been two days over the last few years when my brain simply short-circuited: the fall of Kabul to the Taliban (again) on August 15, 2021, and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Both of these were predictable and predicted events, but the anticipation did not reduce the despair when they occurred.

Then October 7 joined that wonderful pantheon of disastrous dates, and unlike the others, it was not some ineluctable cataclysm. That day was among the worst, most shocking days of my life, not least because one of my siblings came close to being killed in the initial attack. Rumours swirled throughout the synagogue that day that something terrible had happened, but they were too ridiculous to be believed. That evening we discovered the rumours did not come close to capturing what had actually transpired.

My initial catatonia eventually gave way to a grim conviction, one almost universally shared by Israelis and Jews, that a total war to dest…