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Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/20/the-west-is-about-to-hand-victory-to-hamas/
Is the West About to Hand Victory to Hamas?
(Telegraph-UK) Col. Richard Kemp - Just a few short months ago, the West claimed to stand united with Israel as it launched a war of self-defense after the atrocities of Oct. 7. Now even Jerusalem's closest allies seem to want to stop the conflict in Gaza before the Israel Defense Forces have achieved their objective of the destruction of Hamas. The West has developed a defeatist tendency in recent years of pursuing negotiated settlements that never really lead to peace, only to running sores that inevitably flare up again and again, or indeed to the victory of our enemies. The new U.S. draft UN Security Council resolution on the war in Gaza calls for a "temporary" ceasefire "as soon as practicable." The danger is that it really wants to impose a "peace" deal that would leave Hamas partially intact and end up solving nothing. What the U.S. seems incapable of recognizing is that the Israeli people can accept no solution to the current conflict that leaves the country in a weaker position than it occupied on Oct. 6. Israel did not want the conflict. It was the necessary response to the shocking crimes of Oct. 7, the slaughter of civilians, and the taking of hostages - evil terrorist acts that Israel rightly wants to ensure can never happen again. If the IDF does not move forward with its plans, Israel knows that it will only be a matter of time before we see another conflict in Gaza, as well as emboldened terrorists in the West Bank and on its northern border. Worse, the terrorists would know that the U.S. would never allow Israel to truly defeat them. The writer, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, was chairman of the UK's national crisis management committee, COBRA.