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.