|
In-Depth Issues:
Will Hamas Agree to Trump's Gaza Peace Plan? - Danny Zaken ( Israel Hayom)
American officials have expressed optimism following discussions with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his team on a Gaza peace plan.
However, Hamas, which is not formally participating in the talks, is expected to reject the plan.
An Israeli official reiterated that regardless of what is achieved in Washington, "I don't see a realistic chance that Hamas would agree to release all the hostages from the outset and hand over full control of Gaza, including security control, to other actors."
See also Now, It's All Up to Hamas - Herb Keinon ( Jerusalem Post)
The U.S. and Israel have come to an agreement on a plan to end the war in Gaza - but what about Hamas?
The assumption is that Qatar, Turkey, and the other Arab and Islamic states can deliver Hamas. That will now be tested.
If they can't - if Hamas rejects the plan, which essentially calls for its surrender by giving up its arms and any power of governance - then Trump said Israel will have his full backing to "finish the job."
Former Israeli Navy Chief: Hamas Will Kill Those Who Replace It to Regain Power ( Walla-Jerusalem Post)
Maj.-Gen. (res.) Eliezer Marom, former commander of the Israel Navy, warned Sunday that President Trump's plan to end the war in Gaza could enable Hamas to simply seize power again.
"We're looking at a scenario where Gaza would be governed by technocrats. It's essentially a disguise for reinstating the Palestinian Authority."
"Hamas is pretending to step back, but in a few months they'll start shooting their replacements in the knees and throw them off the tallest remaining buildings in Gaza."
"They haven't changed. They're Muslim, Arab, and carry a strong sense of revenge. We will return to a confrontation in Gaza. Hamas will not allow itself to be disarmed."
See also Expert: Talk about Hamas Disappearing Is Disconnected from Reality ( 103FM-Jerusalem Post)
Eyal Ofer, an expert on Hamas's economy, said Sunday: "Hamas has said it clearly. It understands that formally, it will not remain in power in Gaza."
"In the short term, Hamas will agree to expert committees. They will say, 'We will not act against the Arab forces that will enter,' but Hamas always thinks in the long term."
"They actually plan to take over within five to ten years. All the talk about Hamas disappearing is disconnected from reality."
Hamas Switches Fighting Tactics in Gaza - Neta Bar ( Israel Hayom)
IDF forces operating in Gaza have noted Hamas's revised tactics. No more street-by-street battles and entrenchment in facilities such as schools and hospitals, but rather swift-moving guerrilla warfare frantically attempting to harass the IDF.
Arab world bloggers have posted numerous surprised social media entries recently, revealing disappointment regarding terror organizations' minimal resistance against advancing IDF units.
"Resistance forces...[are] attempting to optimize enemy casualties after elements stay behind enemy positions, attacking via 'hit and run' techniques."
"This approach doesn't appear especially effective to me, given Israel's intelligence advantage, enhanced firepower capability, and capacity to flatten complete neighborhoods using heavy machinery, thereby sealing assault tunnels," concedes a Hamas-supporting blogger.
Moreover, numerous terrorists are escaping, exiting combat areas alongside civilian populations.
PA Still Paying Salaries to Palestinian Prisoners ( MEMRI)
The Palestinian Authority is still paying salaries to Palestinian prisoners, contrary to Western media reports that these payments have been stopped.
While a PA presidential decree on Feb. 10, 2025, technically changed how the funds are paid,
numerous social media posts indicate that most of the prisoners continue to receive their salaries at PA post offices.
After his decree, PA President Mahmoud Abbas told Fatah's Revolutionary Council on Feb. 20,
"I will not allow [anyone]...to remove any commitment, interest or penny that is given to them [the prisoners].
They must receive everything they did in the past."
Iran: Fear of Running Short of Water - Amir Taheri ( Gatestone Institute)
Iran today is running short of water. Most of the 80 dams across the country contain only 36% of their water-holding capacity.
Only two of the nation's 31 provinces have maintained the balance between water use and renewal of water resources.
In the "water year" that ended Sep. 1, 2025, Iran recorded rainfall of only 150 millimeters, while it
needs a minimum of 251 millimeters to avoid rapid desertification.
Over 40% of the country's 300 lakes and wetlands have either dried up or are on the way to becoming patches of desert within a decade.
Lake Urmia, once the 18th-largest in the world, seems to have disappeared for good, as has Lake Hamun in the east.
Almost 40% of the nation's 200 rivers have either totally dried up or are reduced to seasonal streams.
One immediate effect is a steady drop in food production.
The writer was executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979.
Why Standing with Israel Is Defending Civilization's Future - Rene Garcia ( Miami Herald)
Last week, I stood on ground soaked with unspeakable evil.
I walked the quiet kibbutz where families were massacred in their homes. I stood at the site of the Nova music festival, once a place of joy, now a graveyard of innocence.
Seeing the aftermath in person was a sobering reminder of the brutality Israel endured on Oct. 7, 2023, and why the world must never forget.
What I witnessed was not war. It was not resistance. It was barbarism. Children butchered. Women brutalized. Families burned alive.
Parents shot in front of their children and children slaughtered in front of their parents. Hostages remain in captivity to this day.
This is not just Israel's fight. It is humanity's. It is ours.
Hamas is not merely targeting Jews or Israelis. Their hatred is aimed at all of us, the Free World, the West, Judeo-Christian civilization itself.
Their goal is not coexistence but eradication. Israel is protecting not only its right to exist but the very values that underpin our way of life: freedom of speech, freedom of religion and equality before the law.
When we defend Israel, we defend ourselves.
The writer is a Miami-Dade County commissioner.
I Refuse to Apologize for Being Jewish - Galit Solomon ( National Post-Canada)
I'm fed up. Fed up with being reduced to a political symbol every time I open my mouth. Fed up with being expected to apologize for my existence.
Fed up with smart, progressive, educated people deciding that my grief, my culture, and my holidays are conditional. That my identity is only palatable if I denounce it first.
Being Jewish right now means walking into rooms and wondering if your very presence will be treated as a provocation.
It means watching people you once admired parrot slogans that erase your history.
It means being expected to condemn Israel loudly and publicly before you're allowed to mourn the Oct. 7 massacre.
I am exhausted by the ease with which antisemitism now dresses itself up in the language of justice.
I'm angry that so many Jews are being made to feel like strangers in spaces they once called home: universities, activist circles, dinner tables.
I'm writing it because I want you to feel what it's like to sit at a table where everyone's talking about human rights, and somehow, you're the only one who doesn't get any.
Being Jewish in this moment is to constantly navigate suspicion, scrutiny, and erasure.
May this year bring more truth. More courage. And a lot less silence.
The writer is a former news journalist who currently works as the National Director of Ben-Gurion University Canada.
|
|
Daily Alert will not appear on Yom Kippur
Thursday, October 2
News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
- Text: The U.S. Plan to End the War in Gaza
Gaza will be a deradicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors. If both sides agree to this proposal, the war will immediately end. Within 72 hours of Israel publicly accepting this agreement, all hostages, alive and deceased, will be returned. Once all hostages are released, Israel will release 250 life sentence prisoners plus 1,700 Gazans who were detained after October 7, 2023.
Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee. No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt. The IDF will progressively withdraw from Gaza, except for a security perimeter presence that will remain until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat.
(AP-PBS)
See also The Trump Deal for Gaza Rests on a Hopeful Fiction - Editorial
When will the Gaza war end? The answer remains: As soon as Hamas releases the hostages, lays down its arms and gives up power. Those are the core demands of the deal President Trump put on the table and Israel agreed to on Monday.
The Trump deal is better understood as a way to move the region past the Gaza war and shift pressure onto Hamas. But there's ample reason for skepticism. Hamas needs the hostages to manipulate Israelis. It needs weapons to stay relevant. Even under Qatari pressure, which U.S. officials believe was generated at last by Israel's Sept. 9 strike in Doha, Hamas is unlikely to surrender all of its leverage up front. The deal, then, rests on a hopeful fiction.
Mr. Trump has offered Israel a potential end to its war, a plan embraced by regional Arab powers. Mr. Netanyahu said he now has his "day after" plan for Gaza, with Israel's war aims satisfied.
(Wall Street Journal)
- Eight Muslim States Back Trump's Gaza Peace Plan
"The foreign ministers of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, the Republic of Indonesia, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Republic of Turkiye, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the State of Qatar, and the Arab Republic of Egypt welcome President Donald J. Trump's...efforts to end the war in Gaza, and assert their confidence in his ability to find a path to peace," a joint statement from all the countries said on Monday.
(Arab News-Saudi Arabia)
- Six Countries Have Volunteered Troops for Gaza Stabilization Force - David Ignatius
The "New Gaza" proclaimed by President Trump would ease the agony of Palestinian civilians ravaged by the war while marking an end to the suffering Israel has endured since the brutal Hamas terrorist attack of Oct. 7, 2023.
Hamas must still agree to the ceasefire plan, which amounts to an unconditional surrender and the permanent loss of its military and political power in Gaza. In effect, the plan would ratify the "total victory" Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been seeking, while also saving the 20 Israeli hostages who remain alive.
The Palestinian Authority wouldn't have a direct role in administering postwar Gaza until the organization was fully "reformed." Israeli troops would occupy a buffer in Gaza indefinitely.
Two senior Arab officials told me Friday that a half-dozen countries - including Italy, Indonesia and Azerbaijan - have volunteered troops for the stabilization force. An informal Arab oversight group would include Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Individual countries have committed to oversee various aspects of Palestinian reform, such as education and finance.
The Trump administration has been aided by two private citizens with extensive Palestinian and Arab business contacts: Jared Kushner, an architect of the Abraham Accords, and Tony Blair, the former British prime minister. Trump might end up chairman of the Peace Board, but it's Blair who's likely to be chief executive.
(Washington Post)
News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
- Netanyahu: U.S. Plan to End War in Gaza Is Consistent with Israeli Government Policy
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday at the White House:
"I believe that today we're taking a critical step towards both ending the war in Gaza and setting the stage for dramatically advancing peace in the Middle East....I support your plan to end the war in Gaza, which achieves our war aims. It will bring back to Israel all our hostages, dismantle Hamas's military capabilities, end its political rule, and ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel."
"Your plan is consistent with the five principles my government set for the end of the war and the day after Hamas....All our hostages, both those who are alive and those who died, all of them will return home immediately. Hamas will be disarmed. Gaza will be demilitarized. Israel will retain security responsibility, including a security perimeter for the foreseeable future. And lastly, Gaza will have a peaceful civilian administration that is run neither by Hamas nor by the Palestinian Authority."
"If Hamas agrees to your plan, Mr. President, the first step will be a modest withdrawal, followed by the release of all our hostages within 72 hours....But if Hamas rejects your plan, Mr. President, or if they supposedly accept it and then basically do everything to counter it, then Israel will finish the job by itself. This can be done the easy way or it can be done the hard way, but it will be done...because we didn't fight this horrible fight, sacrifice the finest of our young men, to have Hamas stay in Gaza and threaten us again and again and again with these horrific massacres." (Prime Minister's Office)
See also Arab Diplomat: Hamas Will Likely Seek to Amend Gaza Peace Deal - Jacob Magid
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday after leaving the White House, "Now the whole world, including the Arab and Muslim world, is pressuring Hamas to accept the terms that we created together with Trump, to bring back all the hostages - the living and the dead - while the IDF stays in the majority of the Strip. Who would have believed it?!"
Netanyahu managed to secure significant, last minute changes to the proposal regarding the scope and nature of the IDF's withdrawal from Gaza, along with the disarmament of Hamas.
An Arab diplomat from one of the mediating countries said it will be difficult for Qatar to convince Hamas to accept the U.S. proposal as is, given that it would force the terror group to give up all of its leverage by releasing all remaining hostages in the first 72 hours of the deal. The diplomat said it will likely take at least several days for Hamas to respond, at which point it will likely have amendments of its own that it will try to submit.
(Times of Israel)
- Plans to Restore Civilian Governance in Gaza without Hamas Are Underway - Danny Zaken
President Trump's plan to end the war in Gaza is by far the most comprehensive to date, offering solutions to all the major sticking points. It also lays the groundwork for Trump's larger Middle East vision to end the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hamas was always the main spoiler of earlier ceasefire proposals. Today, its forces on the ground are depleted, with the IDF eliminating dozens of terrorists daily. While Hamas fighters try to harass IDF units and score occasional successes, they have no impact on the military's advance in Gaza City.
According to the plan, if Hamas refuses or delays its response, implementation will begin in areas controlled either by the IDF or by other Gazan actors not affiliated with Hamas. Lists of hundreds of Gazans - most of them former officials of Palestinian government ministries, some ex-UN staff, and others with professional expertise - have been submitted to Israel for vetting to build a civilian public service that will assume responsibility for governance in Gaza. The overwhelming majority have already been approved. (Israel Hayom)
- The Costs of the Gaza Deal - Shirit Avitan Cohen
If Hamas accepts the Gaza deal, Israel will regain its hostages quickly, but at the heavy price of releasing hundreds of convicted murderers serving life sentences, along with hundreds of other terrorists who would return to the field. Hamas would gain a major boost, both from its fighters and from those indebted to it for their freedom. As Israeli security officials have warned, releasing them into the West Bank and Jerusalem could ignite violence.
The new formula recalls the late Shimon Peres' visions of a "Singapore of the Middle East." Will Palestinians truly change course for a better future? Optimism cannot be a policy plan. (Israel Hayom)
Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
The Gaza War
- Hamas, Not Israel, Has Kept This War Going - Col. (ret.) Richard Kemp
The Trump plan for ending the war in Gaza has completely turned the tables on Hamas. With Israel and Arab countries on board, the ball is now entirely in Hamas's court and their response will show the world that it is not Israel that has kept this war going but Hamas. War or peace is in their hands, as it has been from the start.
Now is the time not just for Arab countries but for Western nations to step up. Those that are in a position to do so need to pile the pressure on to Hamas. We need to hear no more encouragement of Hamas, no more rewarding them by recognizing a Palestinian state, and no more unjust lashing out against Israel. Instead, Hamas need to be forced to understand they are isolated and no longer have any friends. Even if they do go along with it, we can also expect Hamas to procrastinate and renege on whatever they do agree to.
The writer, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, was chairman of the UK's national crisis management committee, COBRA.
(Telegraph-UK)
- Hostages, Rival Clans, and Empty Promises: The Next Middle East Flashpoint - Oded Ailam
For Israel, on the surface, the U.S. Gaza plan looks like a peak of achievements. An American administration that largely adopts Israel's wording and promises full backing is not to be taken for granted in an age of hostile public opinion and diplomatic pressure from every side. Israel has seemingly reached the optimal combination: a political-security plan tied to the declared war aims of Israel, with the White House providing a rubber stamp. Whether this will really take shape on the ground is far less clear.
Hamas holds its cards tightly: the hostages. Demanding their sweeping release within 72 hours without leaving Hamas a single bargaining tool is almost fantasy. Even if Trump and Netanyahu believe they hold a binding document, Gaza's leaders will always find a way to avoid it. A hostage is held by a rogue clan. They need more time to locate certain captives. Delay will be built into the strategy.
The issue of Hamas laying down its weapons may be the central landmine in a future agreement. Israel can insist, the U.S. can commit, but for Hamas this is about survival. Its greatest fear is local clans that will try to settle personal scores and perhaps also to seize Hamas's swollen cash reserves.
Everyone hopes that the agreement will take form and be implemented, and that the hostages will come home. Yet there is a temptation to embrace an illusion: that a well-publicized ceremony and a detailed text can change complex political and social realities. In truth, deeper dynamics are stronger and more consistent than any piece of paper.
The writer, former head of the Counterterrorism Division in the Mossad, is a researcher at the Jerusalem Center. (Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs)
- I Visited Gaza. The Food Aid Surprised Me. - Ken Isaacs
I recently returned from Gaza, where I witnessed the humanitarian catastrophe that has resulted from Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The main provider of food assistance in Gaza today arguably is the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an organization backed by the U.S. and Israel. GHF has faced harsh criticism for its work in Gaza. I arrived in Gaza a skeptic of GHF but left an advocate. Simply put, the common portrayal of this organization radically distorts reality.
I observed GHF's relief operations firsthand. While no textbook exists for a war zone such as Gaza, where terrorist combatants hide among civilians, I saw GHF using unconventional means to successfully deliver food to civilians on a staggering scale under nearly impossible circumstances. It wasn't perfect, but it was good.
Many of GHF's staff are former military personnel. They travel in armored vehicles, maintain security protocols and are provided needed access by the Israel Defense Forces. I see this as realistic.
Relative to most other aid distributions around the world, GHF's job is especially dangerous, requiring tenacity and elaborate planning from people who know how to conduct themselves calmly in a volatile setting. I watched GHF teams, along with their Palestinian staffs, manage huge crowds with total professionalism.
There is no way to revert, as the UN has suggested, to the distribution systems used for humanitarian aid in Gaza before the Oct. 7 slaughter. UNRWA is no longer allowed to operate in Gaza after Israel found that many of its staff were members of Hamas and/or participants in the Oct. 7 attack. GHF is putting food into the hands of hungry people and has distributed more than 167 million meals to date. The people of Gaza would be better served by the UN coordinating with GHF to expand the delivery of humanitarian assistance effectively.
The writer is vice president of programs and government relations for the humanitarian organization Samaritan's Purse.
(Washington Post)
- Ending the War in Gaza Will Not End Hamas's Dream of Wiping Israel Off the Map - Khaled Abu Toameh
The Iranian regime and its Palestinian terror proxies are working to move the fighting to the West Bank. Recently, armed cells belonging to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) have escalated their terrorist attacks in the West Bank against Israeli soldiers and civilians.
Israeli security sources said, "Intelligence assessments indicate that armed groups in the West Bank are seeking to manufacture rockets locally to target Israeli cities in central and northern Israel, such as Kfar Saba, Ra'anana, Netanya, Hadera, Afula, and Beit She'an....Iran has also reportedly recently supplied mortar shells and ammunition to armed [Palestinian] factions in the West Bank cities of Jenin and Tulkarem."
Even if the war in Gaza ends, Hamas and PIJ will never give up the fight to destroy Israel and replace it with a radical Islamist state. The attempt to transform the West Bank into a second base for jihad highlights that ending the war in Gaza will not end the dream of wiping Israel off the map.
The writer, a veteran Israeli journalist, is a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. (Gatestone Institute)
Recognition of a Palestinian State
- The Folly of "Palestinian" Statehood - Josh Hammer
Four of America's nominally closest allies - Britain, Australia, France and Canada - disgraced themselves by recognizing a so-called Palestinian state. In so doing, these nations rewarded terrorism and strengthened the genocidal ambitions of the global jihad.
They also sent a chilling message: The path to international legitimacy runs not through the difficult work of building up a nation-state but through mass murder, the weaponization of transnational institutions, and the erasure of historical truth. Such a recognition is an abdication not only of basic human decency but of national interest and strategic sanity.
Many pretend that the radical jihadists of Hamas do not represent the broader Palestinian-Arab population, but that is a lie. Polls consistently show - and anecdotal videos of large street crowds consistently demonstrate - that Hamas and likeminded jihadist groups maintain overwhelming popularity in both Gaza and Judea and Samaria. This is a radicalized population that deserves scorn and diplomatic rebuke - not fawning sympathy and UN red carpets.
The "government" in Gaza is a theocratic, Iranian-backed terror entity whose founding charter drips with unrepentant Jew-hatred and whose leaders routinely celebrate the slaughter of innocent Israelis as triumphs. There is no meaningful "peace partner," and no "two-state" vision to be realized, amidst this horrible reality.
For decades, Western leaders maintained that there can be no recognition of a "Palestinian" state outside of direct negotiations with Israel, full demilitarization, and the unqualified acceptance of Israel's right to exist in secure borders. The move to recognize a "Palestinian" state at the UN torches that policy.
Undermining America's strongest ally in the Middle East while simultaneously carving out yet another new terror-friendly Islamist state directly harms the American national interest. As long as the Jewish state stands on the front lines of civilization, the United States must remain at its side, unwavering, unbowed and unashamed. (RealClearPolitics)
- Emmanuel Macron is Clueless on the Palestinians - Bassam Tawil
French President Emmanuel Macron justified his decision to recognize a Palestinian state by arguing that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas had promised "a thorough overhaul of Palestinian governance." Abbas, unfortunately, has been promising sweeping government and security reforms ever since he assumed power in 2005. Palestinians have yet to see even the slightest change.
Abbas has had two entire decades to reform the PA. A poll published by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in May showed that 81% of Palestinians want Abbas to resign. Macron is apparently unaware that the Palestinian Authority has had no functioning parliament for the past 18 years. Abbas has avoided holding presidential and parliamentary elections out of justified fear that Hamas would win. In the absence of a parliament, Abbas has been running the PA through "presidential decrees."
Macron is overly optimistic, if not pathetically naive, regarding the prospects of democracy in a future Palestinian state. Since its establishment 30 years ago, the PA has been cracking down on political opponents or anyone who dares to speak out against Palestinian leaders. Countless journalists and human rights and political activists have been intimidated, arrested, beaten, or killed by PA security forces. Even if a Palestinian state is created, it will be ruled either by Abbas's corrupt Fatah faction or Hamas. (Gatestone Institute)
- The Palestinians Have Sadly Turned Down the Two-State Solution Many Times - Jake Wallis Simons
The Palestinians have sadly turned down the two-state solution in favor of bloodshed many times.
Wouldn't life be easier if the Palestinians hadn't sided with the Nazis during the war; if they hadn't rejected a state of their own in favor of war with Israel in 1948; if they hadn't blown up the Oslo Accords in the Nineties; if they hadn't walked away from the Clinton deal at Camp David in 2000; if they hadn't snubbed the Ehud Olmert plan, which accommodated their demands, in 2008; if they hadn't turned Gaza into a terror enclave after Israel pulled out in 2005; if they hadn't embarked upon an orgy of butchery, rape, mutilation and kidnap on Oct. 7?
The Arabs do not reject the State of Israel because of a dispute over borders or "occupation." They snubbed a state of their own before a single Israeli boot trod upon "occupied land." As a matter of honor, they cannot accept a state alongside Israel; they can only accept one that replaces it. Israel has already tried the two-state solution to destruction. Now it is supposed to try it again? Israel has only one option: to dig in and show that its enemies will never win. Without such deterrence, it is done for. (Telegraph-UK)
Israel's Rights under International Law
- Israel's Legal Right to Judea and Samaria - Lt.-Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch
Israel's legal and historical rights to Judea and Samaria are grounded in international decisions made after World War I. The 1920 San Remo Conference and the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine recognized the Jewish people's historical connection to the land and charged Britain with facilitating the establishment of a Jewish national home west of the Jordan River. Under the legal principle of uti possidetis juris, Israel inherited these Mandate borders at independence in 1948, which included Gaza, Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem.
The 1947 UN Partition Plan was a nonbinding recommendation rejected by Arab states, and subsequent armistice lines drawn in 1949 were explicitly not intended to serve as borders. Egypt controlled Gaza and Jordan controlled Judea, Samaria, and east Jerusalem until 1967, but these occupations did not alter sovereignty. Article 80 of the UN Charter further preserved the validity of Mandate-based rights.
Israel has already extended its domestic law to territories such as Jerusalem (1967) and the Golan Heights (1981), establishing precedents for applying law to additional areas. While political and diplomatic considerations are significant, the legal foundation for extending Israeli law to Judea and Samaria rests on longstanding international recognition of Jewish sovereignty in the region.
The writer, former director of the Military Prosecution in Judea and Samaria, is director of the Palestinian Authority Accountability Initiative at the Jerusalem Center. (Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs)
Observations:
- There is no deal with sharia-supremacist Islam. Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, is conducting a jihad to destroy Israel - not to reach a more favorable arrangement with Israel - based on sharia-supremacist principles, which are 14 centuries old and steeped in Jew-hatred that goes back to Muhammad's wars of conquest.
- While Hamas has been hollowed out by Israel's combat operations, the problem in the region is sharia supremacism, not Hamas; if what is today called Hamas disappeared tomorrow, a new jihadist entity would rise quickly to take its place, and the objective would not change.
- The premise of the president's plan is that Hamas will stop being Hamas, and that will end the jihadist threat. What basis is there to believe that?
During the second intifada, when Hamas was firmly established, there were around 150 suicide attacks. The jihadists who carried them out were celebrated and their families paid bonuses - and that includes being celebrated by the Palestinian Authority. Like the jihadists who carried out the October 7 atrocities, the suicide attackers were not looking for a better deal with Israel. They were looking to eradicate Israel.
- The proposal assumes that the culture and population that produced these people are now going to lay down their arms and commit to peaceful coexistence or, in the alternative, voluntarily leave the territory that their fundamentalist tenets - as mediated by the region's most influential scholars - tell them is Allah's land over which they are obliged to wage jihad until Israel is no more.
- What has happened in the last two years to make anyone think that's a possibility? We now have European nations and Canada claiming to recognize "Palestine" (its lack of borders or a real government notwithstanding). Why would Hamas and its sharia-supremacist support network surrender now when they have reason to believe the barbaric October 7 attack, far from turning them into pariahs, has advanced their cause?
- There isn't always an ideal solution available just because we'd like there to be one. There is no deal with people who will be satisfied with nothing less than one's annihilation. The fact that there may be many rational Palestinians who would be willing to live in peace does not mean they are anywhere close to being able to force their will against the region's dominant, entrenched sharia-supremacist adherents.
- Unless and until Israel's mortal enemies (and ours) are conclusively defeated, any peace negotiations are just a strategic pause that allows the jihadists to regroup and rearm.
|