Last week, France held the second round of elections for its National Assembly. Thanks to an uncomfortable alliance between the hard left (led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Fance Unbowed) and centrists (led by the current president Emmanuel Macron), the hard-right National Rally won a relatively small number of seats. The latter party, founded by the anti-Semite and Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen, has in the past decade considerably softened its attitude towards Jews.

Michel Gurfinkiel explains why French Jews have much to fear from the cooperation between the Macronists and the far left, which together

were able to engage in ubiquitous if unnatural crossed alliances so as to reinforce each other and split the spoils between themselves. At Avignon, the Macronists did not interfere in the election of Raphael Arnault, a left-winger on police records for organized violence and anti-Semitic aggression.

To much of French Jewry, Mélenchon’s party, which Gurfinkiel has elsewhere described as “Islamo-Marxist,” seems far more threatening than National Rally:

France Unbowed’s strident “anti-Zionist” hysteria is thought to be related to the rampant exclusion of Jews from higher-learning institutions, the “cancellation” of “Zionist” artists or intellectuals and a 1,000-percent rise in anti-Jewish violence (from the beating of senior citizens or teenagers to the sordid rape of a twelve-year-old Jewish girl in the name of Palestine).

Moreover, the National Rally, who garnered 10.1 million votes on July 7, is currently the most pro-Israel party in France. Even more awkwardly, discarding both Mélenchon and the younger Le Pen would mean voting and supporting President Emmanuel Macron. But French Jews wonder whether he is really a friend.

He shocked them last autumn, when he declined, unlike almost everybody in his cabinet, to take part in a march against anti-Semitism. He shocked them again, one month ago, when he banned 74 Israeli firms from EuroSatory, France’s World Armament Fair. A move seen as BDS’s biggest victory so far in a democratic country.

Why, ask many Israelis, can’t we just end the war, let our children, siblings, and spouses finally come home, and get out the hostages? Azar Gat seeks to answer this question by looking at the possible costs of concluding hostilities precipitously, and breaking down some of the more specific arguments put forward by those who have despaired of continuing military operations in Gaza. He points to the case of the second intifada, in which the IDF not only ended the epidemic of suicide bombing, but effectively convinced—through application of military force—Fatah and other Palestinian factions to cease their terror war.

“What we haven’t achieved militarily in Gaza after a year-and-a-half probably can’t be achieved.” Two years passed from the outbreak of the second intifada until the launch of Operation Defensive Shield, [whose aim was] to reoccupy the West Bank, and another two years until the intifada was fully suppressed. And all of that, then as now, was conducted against the background of a mostly hostile international community and with significant American constraints (together with critical assistance) on Israeli action. The Israeli chief of staff recently estimated that the intensified Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip would take about two months. Let’s hope that is the case.

The results of the [current] operation in [Gaza] and the breaking of Hamas’s grip on the supply routes may indeed pave the way for the entry of a non-Hamas Palestinian administration into the Strip—an arrangement that would necessarily need to be backed by Israeli bayonets, as in the West Bank. Any other end to the war will lead to Hamas’s recovery and its return to control of Gaza.

It is unclear how much Hamas was or would be willing to compromise on these figures in negotiations. But since the hostages are its primary bargaining chip, it has no incentive to compromise. On the contrary—it is interested in dragging out negotiations indefinitely, insisting on the full evacuation of the Gaza Strip and an internationally guaranteed cease-fire, to ensure its survival as Gaza’s de-facto ruler—a position that would also guarantee access to the flood of international aid destined for the Gaza Strip.

Once the hostages become the exclusive focus of discussion, Hamas dictates the rules. And since not only 251 or twenty hostages, but any number is considered worth “any price,” there is a real concern that Hamas will retain a certain number of captives as a long-term reserve.