Palestinians may celebrate the Gaza ceasefire, but their relief will be short-lived. The Bible – and game theory – explain why.
“And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee” (Genesis 12:3, KJV)
Disguised in wigs and skirts and carrying submachine guns, an Israeli commando from an elite special forces unit moved through Beirut’s dark streets, hunting the masterminds of the Munich massacre. A door swung open, gunfire, a body fell. Only later did the team realize the man was not their target.
The lesson is stark: When harmed, Israel exacts revenge relentlessly, pursuing perpetrators until the score is settled – and the innocent may not be spared.
Broad swathes of the Palestinian population – including Hamas members – rejoiced at the 10 October 2025 Gaza ceasefire. Shortly after it took effect, Hamas combatants resurfaced prominently in Gaza for the world to see – an ostentatious display of defiant resistance.
Yet in reality, there is little reason for Palestinians, particularly Hamas, to celebrate. Israel still holds the power of life and death over all Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank – an unnatural state of affairs, but a grim reality.
True to its habitual logic and consistent pattern of retribution, Israel is poised soon to resume its relentless campaign of destruction in Gaza and beyond – literally stepping over bodies. Difficult, costly, time-consuming, and potentially unpopular, the strategy is nevertheless deemed essential for preventing future attacks, maintaining credibility, and ensuring the very survival of the state. It reflects Israel’s realist approach, prioritizing national interests over politics, ideology, and narrow moral concerns.
Specifically, Israel – succumbing to threat bias and operating in a whatever-it-takes mode – is very likely to swiftly renew its devastating assault on the Palestinian population at large for three interrelated reasons.
1. Prevention and deterrence
Israel’s vengeance in an extended pursuit can be understood as a forward-looking stance. It neutralizes active perpetrators and dismantles terrorist infrastructure, while offering both intelligence and operational benefits.
Strategically, it provides opportunities to gain insights into what Israel describes as terrorist networks and logistics, allowing authorities to anticipate and disrupt future threats. On the tactical level, it enables the interception of arms, funds, and communications, as well as the targeting of secondary actors who might otherwise perpetuate a seemingly endless cycle of violence.
The relentless pursuit of perpetrators also functions as a form of deterrence, lowering the likelihood of future attacks by signaling Israel’s operational capability and resolve to its adversaries.
Crucially, unremitting punitive action mitigates the game-theoretical problem of time inconsistency – shifts in behavior over the course of events, encouraging hostage-taking and other coercive actions by adversaries.
True deterrence demands a consistent no-negotiation policy, yet once hostages are seized, governments often concede under duress to save lives, rewarding crime and ensuring repetition. The short-term relief of capitulation carries long-term costs, as hostage-takers anticipate such weakness and exploit it in the future.
This dilemma is most acute in liberal democracies, where compassion for captives fuels political pressure that can unseat leaders. Authoritarian regimes, by contrast, often preserve deterrence by refusing to bargain, sacrificing hostages to prevent future incidents, a brutal but effective strategy.
Deterrence lies at the heart of Israel’s security doctrine, aiming at ensuring that every attack carries enduring consequences. Its logic is twofold: general deterrence, which warns others by showing that no perpetrator escapes pursuit, and specific deterrence, which keeps fugitive assailants under perpetual threat, limiting their ability to operate. For a small, exposed nation long beset by enemies, deterrence is not mere strategy but a means of survival.
Despite its uncompromising stance that terrorism must never be rewarded, Israel indirectly negotiated with Hamas in the lead-up to the 10 October 2025 ceasefire, agreeing to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for hostages.
Strategically, this was a game-theoretical blunder, incentivizing future abductions. Psychologically, it produced cognitive dissonance: the tension between principle and action.
Israel’s likely route to resolving the dissonance lies in retribution – resuming its blighting campaign against Hamas and eliminating freed prisoners to signal that hostage-taking gains nothing. A cynic might add that the ceasefire deal was profitable anyway: It saved Israel the cost of continued imprisonment while ensuring those released would not live to cause harm again.
2. Retributive justice
Retributive justice, a moral and legal balancing act, is the idea that punishment should be proportional to the wrong committed: If someone harms others, they deserve consequences in kind.
Unlike forward-looking approaches – such as deterrence (which aims to prevent future wrongdoing), or restorative justice (which seeks to heal relationships and repair harm), or utilitarian strategies (which focus on maximizing overall social welfare) – retributive justice is backward-looking, focused squarely on the past act and the perpetrator’s moral responsibility.
It is a core principle in ethics and law because it affirms that crimes have consequences, reinforcing a societal sense of fairness and accountability, restoring a precarious and delicate balance. In essence, it says: Wrongdoing demands redress, independent of any future benefit.
For Israel, retributive justice is not abstract – it is a guiding principle in national security and conflict response. When perpetrators of attacks against Israeli civilians or soldiers are identified, punishment is not only a practical necessity for deterrence and intelligence-gathering; it is a moral imperative.
This explains why, even after the safe return of hostages from Gaza, Israel is likely to resume military operations: The attackers’ initial crimes against innocent citizens still remain unredressed, and retribution is required to restore moral and legal balance.
In the broader context, this stance aligns with Israel’s traditional approach to security – its society expects that wrongdoing will not go unanswered, that enemies will face consequences.
3. Symbolic messaging
Beyond deterrence and retribution, Israel’s forceful actions convey a profound religious, cultural, and historical message. Its military and intelligence operations represent not merely a pragmatic choice – they symbolically reinforce the identity, values, resilience, and collective memory of the Jewish state, shaping norms and expectations in a society shaped by historical trauma and existential threat.
God’s covenant in Genesis 12:3 promises blessing for those who support Israel and curses for those who oppose it, establishing a moral principle linking human behavior to divine justice. Attacks against Israel, like Balaam’s failed curse (Numbers 22–24), reinforce national resilience and identity rather than weaken it.
Israel bears a divine duty to pursue justice (“Justice, justice shall you pursue,” Deuteronomy 16:20), and preventing or confronting evil remains obligatory even if immediate action is impossible.
The command to “remember what Amalek did unto thee” (Deuteronomy 25:17) transforms memory into moral vigilance, guarding against the recurrence of cruelty and unprovoked aggression and preserving the nation’s ethics and collective soul.
The approach of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is consistent with how the people of Israel has long responded to threats: from the vengeance of Simeon and Levi at Shechem – an early act of retribution to defend communal honor – to the Israelites’ punitive campaign against Midian – undertaken to avenge moral and physical aggression – to modern history, including the post-Holocaust pursuit of Nazi war criminals by figures like Simon Wiesenthal and the decades-long hunt for the masterminds of the Munich Olympics massacre.
In each case, decisive action communicated that attacks against the Israeli people will not go unanswered, reaffirming both domestic and international perceptions and expectations.
Citizens see that assaults on Israelis meet consequences, bolstering national morale, social cohesion, and confidence in the state.
At the same time, adversaries abroad are reminded that Israel internalizes historical lessons – its survival depending on determined action – and responds to threats decisively.
International supporters of Israel are also swayed by its symbolically embedded reputation management.
Evangelical Christians worldwide embrace Genesis 12:3, viewing Israel as God’s channel of blessing and believing that how nations treat Israel determines God’s favor. This reading fuels ardent political and moral support Israel’s relentless actions, particularly in the US.
Amid the religious fervor, theological inaccuracies are largely inconsequential. The evangelicals’ one-sided interpretation overlooks the New Testament perspective, which presents Israel as a “type”, foreshadowing the Church as God’s covenant people, and emphasizes love for enemies – without negating the legitimacy of just, temporal punishment.
Ultimately, Israel’s punitive action becomes a statement of enduring principles, moral order, and national identity, connecting the present to its storied past – communicating that Israel’s values, memory of past struggles, and societal norms demand that attacks cannot go unanswered. Every operation, raid, or counterstrike carries this symbolic weight, merging strategy with religious, cultural, and historical expression.
The Retributor’s Curse: The empire strikes back – and will be struck again
I term this the “Retributor’s Curse” as it applies to the Jewish state: Israel’s assertion of national exceptionalism – vilifying and dooming those who resist its bid for supremacy – provokes retaliation and counter-retaliation, generating a cycle of “destructive resilience.” This pattern, a veritable paradox, runs like a red thread throughout its history, binding past and present in an epic narrative of struggle and survival.
Israel’s religious and cultural DNA nurtures both extremism and fragility, helping explain why the nation has so often faced near-annihilation. Yet that same inner code also sustains a resilient “holy remnant,” enabling Israel, time and again, to rise from the ashes against all odds.
Both Palestinians and Israelis are destined to suffer as a result of the ill-conceived US Gaza Peace Plan unveiled by President Donald Trump on 29 September 2025, under which the Nobel Prize-seeking dealmaker-in-chief would effectively assume the role of de-facto governor of a protectorate – a stark reminder that a bad deal can be worse than no deal at all.
Hamas’ self-destructive miscalculation
Hamas’ attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which the movement saw as an act of resistance, was in reality a deadly miscalculation. Harming innocent civilians was morally reprehensible – that goes without saying. Yet, viewed against the backdrop of Israel’s self-conceived identity and moral code, even the grim logic of defiance was fatally flawed, most notably in the hostage-taking.
While the attack shocked the world, the ruthless abduction triggered global pity – stronger than in other crises, not least because of the human relatability of the victims.
Both aspects provided Israel with a convenient and compelling pretext to launch and sustain its disproportionate, ruinous war on Gaza and the wider region under the guise of “self-defense” and the rescue of its abducted citizens. This helped to consolidate domestic support, rally soldiers at the front, and secure diplomatic cover abroad.
The smokescreen remained effective over time, legitimizing Israel’s military action at least until the last hostage would have been recovered and Hamas exterminated. While cynics might argue that Israel could – and would – have manufactured another pretext, none would probably have resonated as powerfully or endured as long as the living memory of beloved hostages and the nation’s longing for their return.
Israeli PR-savvy opinion leaders in civil society sustained public compassion by renaming a plaza “Hostages Square,” holding weekly rallies with vigils, and displaying thumbnail images of all hostages across virtually every platform.
The government escalated the narrative, framing the 2023 Hamas incursion as “Holocaust 2.0,” as it were, a resonant label reinforcing Israel’s self-image as a perpetual victim. True to form, it institutionalized a state cult of death, staging lavish son-et-lumière commemorations, relayed to the world through continuous coverage.
Grief is natural and understandable, but exploiting it for political gain is profoundly troubling. By inflicting collective punishment on innocent Palestinians in one of the most densely populated areas in the world – while claiming that it was Hamas that brought the calamity upon them – a self-styled victim was transformed into a perpetrator of UN-confirmed war crimes. This, of course, does not exonerate Hamas.
Astonishingly, the resistance compounded its errors. Its victory ceremony and parade of abductees on 25 January 2025 were cruel and needless, sparking global condemnation and intensifying sympathy for Israel. Hamas’ triumphal return shortly after the 10 October ceasefire further inflamed Israeli nationalists, while pro-Israeli media stoked narratives of Hamas “mobilization” to justify renewed military action.
These events reveal that Hamas learned little, even as Israel’s relentless collective punishment inflicted unabated suffering on Palestinians. Israel’s response, grim yet unmistakably forceful, reinforced national identity and values, solidifying its stature as a formidable adversary. The harm to Palestinians, however, goes even further.
The prospect of ultranationalist escalation
For ultranationalists in Netanyahu’s cabinet, the 10 October 2025 Gaza ceasefire is intolerable. They crave total victory, notably, the annihilation of Hamas and the conquest of Palestine. The million-dollar question, then, is why these hardliners did not resign in protest, toppling Netanyahu.
Before tackling this pressing question, it is crucial to recognize that Netanyahu, himself, is an ultranationalist hardliner, viewing the world strictly in binary terms of victory and defeat within a zero-sum game. Yet he employs a good-cop/bad-cop strategy, framing his extreme actions as concessions to pressure from cabinet ultranationalists.
On 10 October 2025, he ominously reiterated that Hamas would be disarmed, whether the easy way or by force, vowing that all war aims would be achieved. Preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state is his lifelong mission, and he is unlikely to relent.
Given this constellation, and the high probability that Hamas will not disarm voluntarily, Netanyahu has likely assured his hardliners that he will rekindle the war after the hostages’ return, and that released Palestinian prisoners will be marked for destruction. This is likely facilitated by the fact that public opinion will be largely indifferent to continued Palestinian casualties once the hostages have been freed. Israel is unlikely to relent until the masterminds of the 7 October attacks and other combatants are eliminated – even if the chase takes decades.
Yet this strategy is ultimately futile, quite literally, a grim game of whack-a-mole on a powder keg: For every Palestinian resistance fighter – always a terrorist in Israel’s eyes – killed, a host of new, more determined combatants will emerge, striking Jews and their supporters in Israel and abroad, perpetuating a seemingly endless cycle of violence.
Breaking this spiral requires a new, enlightened Israeli mindset, self-concept, and ethical framework – one grounded in prudent restraint and restorative justice toward external enemies.
Moreover, Israel must pay full reparations for all the human and material devastation it has inflicted on Gaza and the wider region – it is neither fair nor just to expect other countries to foot the bill.
At the home front, all Israeli leaders must be held accountable; those responsible for war crimes – already confirmed by the UN – must face stern punishment. Only then can a durable vision of peaceful coexistence with Israel’s neighbors, founded on shared security and prosperity, become feasible.
