Total military victory is rare

Binyamin Netanyahu wants and expects total victory over Hamas in Gaza. Vladmir Putin wants and expects total victory over Ukraine. Neither is going to fulfil this dream. Hamas has already shown it can survive the Israeli onslaught and despite all efforts to stop the arms flow into Gaza, clearly the Iran-supplied weapons are still getting through and the Israelis have not managed to destroy all the shell and missile production lines underground in Gaza. Some, probably several thousand Hamas fighters, are going to survive to fight on and cause Israel a headache for the forseeable future. Likewise, while Russian troops have made a few inroads recently, especially close to the city of Kharkiv, Putin will never conquer Ukraine in the true meaning of the word. Once all the billions of dollars worth of weapons arrive from the US, Ukrainian forces should be able to regroup and push the Russians back. So if there is to be no total victory for anyone, the only solution is for-ever war or a settlement. The tragedy at present is that neither Moscow nor Tel Aviv is interested in any form of lasting settlement because each believes that the impossible is still possible.