Who won the recent war or, as some would call it, mini-war between Hamas and Israel that lasted for eleven days this past May? It depends whom you ask. Both sides declared victory. Israeli leaders said that they killed over 200 Hamas militants, destroyed miles of underground tunnels, and intercepted over 90 per cent of Hamas’s missiles that were fired into civilian territory. Hamas leaders said that they won political and psychological victories by winning sympathy abroad with footage of destruction and civilian deaths in Gaza, by stirring up violent riots by Israeli Arabs, and by outdoing their rivals in the Palestinian Authority as carriers of the torch of resistance against Israel.
What to do with such dueling narratives? The answer is to accept them as standard practice. When it comes to war, “spin” is nothing new. History is full of examples of the side that suffered more material losses nonetheless declaring victory. That’s because war is as much psychological as it is material. In the last analysis, a war isn’t over until one side has broken the other side’s will to fight. Many a loser of the round in question knows that there is still a chance to regroup, fight again, and win. When one side hasn’t destroyed the other side’s will to resist, then we shouldn’t expect an admission of defeat.
The practice dates back to ancient times. In 433 B.C., for example, the two rival Greek city-states of Corinth and Corcyra each claimed victory after a bruising naval battle off the northwest coast of Greece. Corinth destroyed 70 enemy ships and Corcyra only 30, but Corcyra had strategic reinforcements: a flotilla from Athens, Greece’s largest sea power. Once they saw the Athenians, the discouraged Corinthians asked for a truce and sailed home. Corinth and Corcyra each erected a trophy, the symbol of victory in that era. Had they but known it, they would have realized that both had lost, because Sybota turned out to be a major precipitant of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 B.C.), the conflict that devastated all Greece.
Another and even more striking example comes from Roman history. At the end of the Roman Republic, Julius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompey were locked in battle in a civil war. July 48 B.C. saw the two sides’ armies pitted against each other for control of the city of Dyrrachium (today, Dürres, Albania), a fortified seaport with a strategic position on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea.
Caesar laid siege to Pompey at Dyrrachium, whom he cut off by land by building a wall. But Pompey had control of the sea and after three months of siege, he broke through in early July. He inflicted heavy casualties on Caesar’s forces and put Caesar’s life at risk. Yet Pompey declined to follow up, as he didn’t want to endanger his forces in the maze of abandoned walls and ditches. It was a big mistake.
Caesar said to his friends, “Today the enemy would have won, if they had a commander who was a winner.” He knew that Pompey had left the job unfinished, thereby giving Caesar a chance to recover. Engaging in his trademark speed, Caesar withdrew his army over the mountains into central Greece. Pompey followed him slowly. By the time he caught Caesar, the enemy had recuperated. At Pharsalus in Thessaly on August 9, Caesar’s veterans smashed Pompey’s less-experienced troops and won a decisive victory. Caesar proved that, by refusing to admit defeat at Dyrrachium, he was right.
Coming back to the competing victory claims of Hamas and Israel, we might ask, along with Caesar, which side had the commander who was a winner? Did Israel win because it avoided the trap of invading Gaza while destroying a substantial part of Hamas’s military infrastructure and leadership? Or did Hamas win because it still has a significant number of missiles and rocket launchers for future attacks? And what of the political fallout, from the installation of a new Israeli government to the rise of Hamas in status in the eyes of many Palestinians? And what of the various reactions and recalculations in foreign capitals? Neither side has lost the will to fight. All the more reason to offer an indecisive answer to these questions: it’s too soon to tell.
Barry Strauss is a military historian and classicist at Cornell University and the Corliss Page Dean Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
