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We all know that, to start a war, you need an enemy, while ending a war needs the two enemies to reach an agreement to stop fighting. The difficulty then is in implementing the agreement. There is always an “enemy within” that will oppose it. This becomes an internal debate that can even be more complicated to handle than the one with the enemy itself. The story of Japan in the Second World War helps us understand that it is this internal dimension that is blocking the negotiating mechanisms that aim to end the wars in Lebanon and Gaza.

Eighty years ago, after the US dropped the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan did not “capitulate” or “surrender” to the Americans. There was a difficult discussion that was mainly internal within Japan that led to a formulation that was palatable internally and took Japanese sensitivities into account. The historian Richard Overy explains this in his book “Rain of Ruin.” It was crucial to avoid the word “capitulation” in order to reconcile Japan’s surrender with the country’s cultural ethos of honor and loyalty to the emperor, meaning the wording was everything.

Overy describes an intense debate between different factions within Japan, such as the military and those calling for resistance and addressing public sentiment. The final decision was shaped as much by internal politics as by external pressure. It was moderates arguing against hard-liners, who resisted any form of surrender, and the different interpretations of loss, dignity and survival. The surrender had to be framed in such a way as to allow Japan to accept the terms without feeling annihilated. Emperor Hirohito broke the deadlock by using abstract and indirect language. Instead of using triggering words like “surrender” or “defeat,” he spoke of “enduring the unendurable” to restore peace.

We cannot reach a desirable agreement without taking the internal dynamics of each context into account

Nadim Shehadi

There are many lessons from this story for the ongoing negotiations between Israel and both Lebanon and Gaza. The main one being that we cannot reach a desirable agreement without taking the internal dynamics of each context into account. In parallel with the negotiations with Israel, there are internal conversations that have to run their course. It is now more than obvious that the problems of Hamas and Hezbollah cannot be resolved by force.

In retrospect, the failure of the Oslo peace process can be reduced to the fact that there was no successful internal conversation among the Palestinians to accept the agreement. Negotiations were held in secret between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, which does not include Hamas or Islamic Jihad, the main opposition.

The history of the 32 years since the signing of the Declaration of Principles in 1993 can be reduced to that. The PLO was the interlocutor and it failed to sell the deal internally. The opposition, various factions of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, successfully acted as spoilers at every step. The same can be said about Israel’s internal dynamics.

This can be easily illustrated by a chronology of the regularly recurring crises that have hindered any advance toward peace. The March 27, 2002, suicide attack, also known as the Passover massacre, overshadowed the announcement of the Arab Peace Initiative by ������Ƶ a few days later. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier, was captured on June 25, 2006, just in time to sabotage an agreement drafted by Fatah and Hamas prisoners in Israeli jails and which was about to be signed by Hamas and the PLO. The Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas was also a spoiler that hindered normalization talks between Israel and ������Ƶ.

Hezbollah is more likely to give up its arms in a discussion in which the objective is restoring Lebanese sovereignty

Nadim Shehadi

There is no clear end in sight to the current Gaza war because the mechanism of negotiations ignores the internal dimension. Mediators, among them Egypt and Qatar, are busy convincing Hamas to release hostages in order to reach a ceasefire deal with Israel, while the PLO is largely irrelevant in this effort. The deadlock in the long run is on the internal Palestinian side, but the current crisis effectively makes Hamas the official interlocutor. Instead of annihilating Hamas, the mechanism in fact annihilates the PLO. It is difficult to imagine that such a mechanism will eventually restore the Oslo agreement.

In Lebanon, the problem with the mechanism of negotiations is even clearer. The government is implementing a ceasefire in a war it did not participate in and is asking Hezbollah to disarm according to an agreement the group plausibly denies being part of.

For Hezbollah, the agreement looks very much like surrender and capitulation after a devastating and humiliating defeat in a still ongoing war with Israel. There is hardly any chance that it can accept it. Even worse is the fact that the government is being made to look weaker because it seems to be asking Hezbollah to disarm acting on behalf of Israel. This puts both the government and Hezbollah in an impossible situation.

Hezbollah is more likely to give up its arms in an internal Lebanese discussion, in which the objective is restoring Lebanese sovereignty, rebuilding the state and postwar reconstruction, with no mention of surrender or capitulation or of giving up its historic status as a resistance force. At the same time, it is understood that an agreement between the Lebanese government and Israel to end the border hostilities would include the state having a monopoly over arms, which it discusses as an internal matter. Hezbollah has been defeated militarily by Israel, but it must surrender to Lebanon.

Israel has its own problems too. It is difficult to imagine any peace with the current composition of its government or the even more painful existential discussions that will follow the Gaza war. It would be absurd if the Palestinians, Lebanese or other Arabs demanded a change in Israeli government, as this should be an internal Israeli matter. It is equally unrealistic for Israel to aim at disarming Hamas or Hezbollah to achieve peace — this should be an internal matter in both Lebanon and Palestine.

• Nadim Shehadi is an economist and political adviser. X: @Confusezeus