Set a century in the future, the Egyptian miniseries The End imagines a future where Israel has been destroyed, its Jews “have returned to their countries of origin,” and the U.S. has fractured into several smaller states. A characteristic response to the show’s critics, writes Nervana Mahmoud, is “Don’t we have the right to dream?” Indulging them, Mahmoud tries to imagine the realities this dream would entail:

None of [The End’s fans and defenders] will ever address the tough questions about their future beloved Palestine. How will they reconcile their conflicting views on the future Palestinian state? How will post-Israel Palestine avoid the fate of post-Saddam Iraq or post-Arab Spring Syria? Will the allies of the various Palestinian factions leave the Palestinian people to decide their fate, or will they try to impose their vision in exchange for financial and political support?

Will Hamas, Fatah, and the other Palestinian factions that failed to unite under occupation reconcile their differences after “liberation”? Will prominent [figures] of the Palestinian diaspora, including Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and the activist Linda Sarsour, leave their prestigious careers in the U.S. and “return” to campaign relentlessly for the “right to return to Palestine” and to serve their beloved new state?

I once asked a hardcore pro-Palestinian Islamist those questions. He was angrily dismissive. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is that we destroy the Zionist state first, then think of the day after.”

[A]lthough all the factions within the pro-Palestinian camp are united in their contempt for Israel, the demise of the Zionist state is the last thing they want. Without Israel, . . . Hizballah will have no excuse for maintaining its military empire in Lebanon. . . . And without Israel, the identity-politics chorus in America will run out of slogans and excuses for their emotional outbursts, . . . and [Middle Eastern] drama producers will run out of fancy populist ideas for their fancy movies and soap operas. It may come as a shock to many, but Israel is a golden asset for every faction within the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian camp.

Ron Ben-Yishai, reporting from a visit to IDF forces in the Gaza Strip, analyzes the state of the fighting, and “the persistent challenge of eradicating an entrenched enemy in a complex urban terrain.”

Hamas, sensing the war’s end, is mounting a final effort to inflict casualties. The IDF now controls 65 percent of Gaza’s territory operationally, with observation, fire dominance, and relative freedom of movement, alongside systematic tunnel destruction. . . . Major P, a reserve company commander, says, “It’s frustrating to hear at home that we’re stagnating. The public doesn’t get that if we stop, Hamas will recover.”

Senior IDF officers cite two reasons for the slow progress: meticulous care to protect hostages, requiring cautious movement and constant intelligence gathering, and avoiding heavy losses, with 22 soldiers killed since June.

Two-and-a-half of Hamas’s five brigades have been dismantled, yet a new hostage deal and IDF withdrawal could allow Hamas to regroup. . . . Hamas is at its lowest military and governing point since its founding, reduced to a fragmented guerrilla force. Yet, without complete disarmament and infrastructure destruction, it could resurge as a threat in years.

At the same time, Ben-Yishai observes, not everything hangs on the IDF:

According to the Southern Command chief Major General Yaron Finkelman, the IDF is close to completing its objectives. In classical military terms, “defeat” means the enemy surrenders—but with a jihadist organization, the benchmark is its ability to operate against Israel.

Despite [the IDF’s] battlefield successes, the broader strategic outcome—especially regarding the hostages—now hinges on decisions from the political leadership. “We’ve done our part,” said a senior officer. “We’ve reached a crossroads where the government must decide where it wants to go—both on the hostage issue and on Gaza’s future.”