Wars must stop. Two of the most notable wars of the moment seem hopeless. The war between Ukraine and Russia and the war between Hamas and Israel.
The leader of Russia has been summoned to the ICC. An action that will not bring peace closer, for the leader of a country can only be prosecuted if his country is attacked and defeated. And it is clear that attacking a nuclear power is suicide, you can only defend yourself against a nuclear power because in defense there is no choice. So the only people who can indict Putin are the Russians themselves.
For Ukraine, the battle is a struggle for self-preservation. There is no choice. It is a battle that costs lives and raises the question of what is more precious, land or life. An almost impossible question to answer, because without land there is no life.
But if the fighting could be frozen and the people from occupied territories would be given the chance to come to the unoccupied part and free Ukraine could become a member of NATO, only part of the country would be given up and many lives would be spared. This could be an alternative chosen by the Ukranians if pursueing a complete liberation seems impossible and NATO-membership is possible. Such a membership requires a willingness on the part of NATO countries to regard the free part as a country that must be defended just as well as the country of any other NATO member from the moment the ceasefire takes effect.
Russia can't win against the West, the West can't win against Russia. Powers like these, when united, cannot win against each other without risking the total destruction of all life on Earth. It is therefore necessary not to give the impression that you want to overcome such power, and on the other hand not to leave any ambiguity about the extent to which you are prepared to defend your own land.
In the war between Hamas and Israel, it is less clear who is the aggressor. What is clear, however, is that the act of terrorism that triggered the war was immense and what's also clear is that on a smaller scale, but over a much longer period of time, terror by settlers in the West Bank deprived Palestinians of their habitat and increased their desperation.
Hamas has turned Gaza into a fortress, with its citizens as human shields. This fortress made the terror possible last October. Israel's massive counterattack that followed not only cost tens of thousands of men, women and children their lives, but also almost completely destroyed their homes.At the same time, settlers are building luxury homes in places where they are still expelling the Palestinians to this day.
To put an end to both the fortress and the settler aggression, Gaza must be annexed to Israel and all settlers must leave their homes in the West Bank so that the West Bank becomes Palestinian territory where also the people from Gaza can find a new home. An international peacekeeping force, not Israeli soldiers, must then guard the West Bank, so that lasting peace has a chance.