"All wars must end," said Fred Ikle, the late undersecretary of defense of the administration of United States president Ronald Reagan. While he was not known by many, compared to the likes of George Kennan or Paul Nitze, let alone Henry Kissinger, Ikle is one of most lucid thinkers ever to have received the Pulitzer Prize for the clarity of his writings on arms control and, invariably, war.

Just as countries can get themselves into a conflict, they must know how to get themselves out of one. Otherwise, being caught in an endemic conflict is meaningless.

Ikle's advice is timely, given the gravity of the situation in the Gaza Strip, where sheer emotion has taken over decent thinking and strategic sense.

Otherwise, countries and sub-state actors could indeed find themselves enmeshed in a senseless state of warfare. Be it Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), they could find themselves trapped in the fast-evolving conflict in Gaza one after the other, not excluding Syria, whose Aleppo and Damascus runways were bombed on Oct. 10.

The specter of an ever-enlarging conflict is therefore more than real. Even the residents in the West Bank are becoming restive against the settlers and the people of Israel.

Since the imbroglio that commenced with Hamas’s incursion into Israel on Oct. 7, the administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, prior to the formation of his war cabinet, all but stopped food, water and electricity supplies in the Gaza Strip, which is now a gargantuan human catastrophe. Half of the 2.2 million people there are children below 15.

Moreover, collective punishment is illegal under international humanitarian law, nor can civilians be targeted in any act of war, whether by Hamas, the PIJ, Hezbollah or Israel.