Last week, the Jewish community celebrated the end of a weeklong festival during which we constructed and spent time in sukkot — temporary outdoor booths meant to evoke the fragility and vulnerability of our ancestors’ sojourn in the wilderness. At the close of this holiday, we disassembled our sukkot and came back to the comfort and stability inside our homes. This year, the process of returning home carried an additional poignant and powerful resonance as we witnessed the last of the living Hamas-held hostages being returned to their families.
At last, the long nightmare that began with Hamas’ attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, seems to be coming to an end. For me, and for many other Houstonians with friends, relatives and other deep ties to Israel, the images of these reunions have been filled simultaneously with joy and grief. We celebrate for those who came home, and we mourn for the lives that cannot be rebuilt.
The return of these last living hostages has brought sunlight back into many homes, but the days ahead will remain heavy as the remains of the dead are recovered and laid to rest.
This suffering was not inevitable. The war that Hamas launched was part of a deliberate campaign of terror aimed at destroying Israel and upending normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Regional peace, after all, is an existential threat to Hamas; wherever compromise and stability grow, its power and leverage slacken.
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For Israel, this war was about rescuing kidnapped civilians, but also about ending the cycle of violence. After Oct. 7, Hamas pledged to repeat the attacks, and Israel had ample reason to believe it. Since violently eliminating its political rivals in the Fatah Party in 2007, Hamas has caused repeated destruction by instigating wars in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, and 2023. Each time, Gaza has been left in ruins, and each time the Palestinian people have paid the price. There is no viable future for Gaza so long as Hamas or similarly minded groups remain in power, focusing obstinately on the destruction of Israel over humane and sustainable governance.
Now, as we begin to close this terribly painful chapter, we face a moral responsibility and a political opportunity. Millions of people have had their lives shattered by Hamas’ steadfast rejection of coexistence and reconciliation. The only viable future for Gaza will be one in which its politics are governed by compromise and dignity rather than annihilation.
This future will require a stony resolve on all sides. Israel’s leaders must simultaneously secure its citizens and seek long-term peace. Palestinian leaders must strive to enhance the welfare of their people while rejecting violence. And the other nations of the world must incentivize the construction of a modern civic infrastructure in Gaza rather than the appeasement of its most destructive and radical elements.
Western supporters of Israel have long worked for a future of peaceful coexistence; now we must insist that those who support the Palestinian cause do the same. Rejecting the extremists’ homicidal fantasies about Israel’s destruction is the most important precondition for achieving the full slate of human and civil rights that the Palestinian people so desperately deserve. Only by recognizing the dignity and humanity of both peoples can we establish the conditions for a comprehensive and durable peace.
Oren J. Hayon is the senior rabbi of Congregation Emanu El in Houston.
