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Hamas Must Be Destroyed Before Any Peace Talks Take Place

(Gatestone Institute) Con Coughlin - The announcement by Ireland, Norway and Spain that they are to recognize a Palestinian state only highlights a breathtaking naivety about the fundamental reality of the long-standing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Their decision pre-emptively recognizes a Palestinian state before the direct negotiations that the Israelis and Palestinians agreed upon to resolve the conflict have even begun. In fact, the announcement is likely to extend the violent conflict currently taking place in Gaza: it sends a clear message to terrorist groups such as Hamas that carrying out brutal attacks against innocent Israeli civilians will be rewarded by supporting their demand for statehood. Do these countries not see how appeasing terrorists anywhere only emboldens the militants in Europe? Last month, in Germany, more than 1,000 demonstrators took to the streets demanding that Germany become a Caliphate with sharia law. Is Spain ready to grant the Catalans, who for years have been fighting for their independence, a State of Catalonia? In Ireland, even at its most violent, there were never calls to take over Scotland, England and Wales to displace the British. The willingness of Western governments and international institutions to indulge in such dangerous virtue-signaling also reveals a deliberate misinterpretation of the root causes of the conflict, in which the constant refusal of successive generations of Palestinian leaders to renounce terrorism as the primary means of achieving their political objectives has made the concept of a lasting peace impossible. Any future attempt to reach a peace settlement with the Palestinians is doomed to failure so long as Hamas, the Islamist terrorist movement which helped destroy the Oslo Accords, remains in power. Israel's declared ambition of removing Hamas is entirely justified, especially if there is to be any realistic prospect of lasting peace in the region. The writer is defense and foreign affairs editor of the Telegraph-UK.
2024-05-30 00:00:00
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