Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders said Sunday he doesn’t know that a ceasefire is possible in the Israel-Hamas war with “an organization like Hamas” involved.
“I don’t know how you can have a ceasefire, (a) permanent ceasefire, with an organization like Hamas, which is dedicated to turmoil and chaos and destroying the state of Israel,” Sanders told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” Sunday.
I mean, at this point, just stopping the bombing isn’t going to stop giving Hamas recruits, because people will remember the bombings and other things already done, and will remember for a long time, and Hamas is certainly going to milk them for all they can get. Continuing the bombing makes things much worse of course, but just stopping by itself isn’t all that’s needed for peace, just the start. Which is what I suspect he’s getting at based on some of the context other people have replied, a cease-fire that just returns things to how they were before the current elevated level of conflict isn’t viable, because the same conditions would exist that led to what is going on now, and so it would just happen again sometime later.