The Reported Ceasefire Deal: A Complete Disaster in the Making
We know who stands a chance to benefit from the much-talked about "permanent ceasefire" deal between Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah — and it sure as heck ain't Israel.
Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Share this essay using the link: https://www.futureofjewish.com/p/next-ceasefire-deal-complete-disaster
A senior U.S. official told The Washington Post in a Wednesday article that a framework has reportedly been agreed upon for a ceasefire-hostage release deal in Gaza.
The piece notes that in the second phase of the ceasefire agreement, both the Hamas terrorist organization and Israel have accepted an “interim governance” plan that would be utilized, in which neither Israel nor Hamas will control Gaza.
The last time that Israel relinquished “control” of Gaza in 2005 — “control” is a strong word, a presence in Gaza is more accurate — Hamas violently overtook the territory. This included throwing Palestinian political rivals off the top of buildings, assassinating them, and dragging their bodies through main streets to make sure that every Gazan understood what it means to oppose the terror group.
Hamas also hijacked the United Nations agency exclusively for Palestinian “refugees” and other humanitarian organizations, manipulating them to fund their Islamist vision for the Middle East, such as but not limited to the complete destruction of the Jewish state, Israel, which has 10 million inhabitants.
Hamas also commandeers virtually every school, hospital, and mosque to store weapons, hide military infrastructure, and line the ground beneath them with hundreds of kilometers of tunnels. Take note that they did not build a single bomb shelter for the people of Gaza while they conspired to launch genocidal wars against Israel, fully knowing that the worser the attacks, the harsher the Jewish state will retaliate (like any other country).
Unsurprisingly, Hamas implemented an overtly antisemitic and anti-Israel curricula in schools and mosques to brainwash the next generations, recruit more jihadist terrorists, glorify hatred, and nurture violence. In “summer camps,” they regularly teach children how to fire automatic weapons and kidnap Israelis — to the tune of some 250 abductions on October 7th.
Hamas also uses (and loses) hundreds of Palestinian children each year digging its tunnels. In addition to taking a big cut of all the goods entering Gaza, Hamas limits their flow to keep the population angry and dependent. To make a point, Hamas blows up the pipes that bring fuel into Gaza and bombs the border crossings through which aid and aid workers pass.
If you want to know why some Gazans lack access to good water, a Hamas propaganda video shows the terror group bragging about their “ingenuity” by literally cutting water pipes, donated by Europe, out of the ground. Why? You know, to manufacture more rockets.
Yet, despite all of the misery Hamas has inflicted on the population of Gaza, it has “remained exceedingly popular among the people,” according to Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States. “Unlike the corrupt and ‘collaborationist’ Palestinian Authority, Hamas championed the armed struggle against Israel and upheld Islamic law.”1
Speaking of the Palestinian Authority, The Washington Post article notes that, as part of the ceasefire deal, there will be U.S.-provided security backed by moderate Arab allies, which would comprise of a “core group of about 2,500 supporters of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza who have already been vetted by Israel.”
Don’t even get me started about the “U.S.-provided” part of this piece. The same Americans who are incessantly wailing and screaming about a ceasefire thousands of miles away in the continental U.S. — a ceasefire that has zero bearing on 99.99 percent of American citizens and residents — have been calling for the U.S. to “get out of the Middle East” for many years.
So, of course, the Americans’ answer to this unsubstantiated pressure is to shove a ceasefire down the throat of one of its greatest allies (Israel) and then put Americans on the ground in Gaza. The hypocrisy is pungent.
And yet, that is not what really should be cause for concern. The significantly more pressing issue is that the Palestinian Authority is one of the most incompetent, corrupt organizations on this planet. They were excommunicated by Hamas from Gaza, where they had a strong presence for years, after Hamas rose to power in 2006.
To add insult to injury, in the Palestinian West Bank (which the Palestinian Authority has been tasked with controlling since the 1990s) a recent poll by Bir Zeit University found that more than 75 percent of Palestinians support Hamas and what they perpetrated on October 7th.
If an election was held today, Western-backed 88-year-old Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would lose to Hamas in a landslide. Hence why he is in the 18th year of a four-year term, refusing to hold elections. It is also why Abbas was given the condescending nickname, “The Mayor of Ramallah,” since that’s the only city he really controls in the Palestinian West Bank (and there are many cities there).
The U.S. has been preaching for months that the Palestinian Authority is the answer to Palestinian governance, yet the Palestinian Authority has done nothing in the way of making peace with Israel or in improving the lives of Palestinians since its creation in the 1990s.
Abbas, who succeeded the world-renowned terrorist Yasser Arafat as the head of the Palestinian Authority, outwardly seemed like a “better partner for peace” when he assumed leadership in the early 2000s, but leaked records from a Panamanian law firm showed that he and his two sons went on to use power and influence to control the two major Palestinian economic boards and built a West Bank economic empire worth more than $300 million.
All this while the Palestinian Authority refuses to use its considerable international aid to relocate more than 100,000 Palestinians from Palestinian-controlled refugee camps to residential locations in the territories, preferring to leave them confined under extremely unpleasant conditions — because the idea of “poor Palestinians” drives a heck of a lot more international aid and support, which often comes in the form of cold hard cash, much of which is siphoned off by the Palestinian Authority.
The international community’s refusal to hold Arafat and then Abbas and their Palestinian Authority accountable for nepotism and corruption drove Gazan Palestinians into the open arms of Hamas, an offshoot of the anti-West Muslim Brotherhood, because the terror group promised them reform (which it did not end up providing in the end, surprise surprise).
Thus, it is nothing short of ridiculously foolish and obnoxiously absurd to think that the Palestinian Authority can successfully come waltzing into Gaza and manage the Strip, where it is terribly unpopular, while Hamas sits back and says: “You know what, I think we are suddenly going to change our ways and do the complete opposite of everything we have been unapologetically doing and saying since our founding in 1988.”
These Arabs (not all Arabs) are primitive, but they are not stupid. They play the long game, knowing that the West and Western-backed partners have short-lived patience and will buckle in the face of more conflict, terrorism, et cetera. Hence the term “interim governance” in The Washington Post piece.
Hamas is basically saying to themselves, “If we do not reach a ceasefire soon, we will lose this war to Israel, which means we will have no or minimal presence in Gaza, and our leaders will be targets of Israeli assassinations anywhere in the world.”
Indeed, The Washington Post piece indicated that Hamas is said to be “low on ammunition and supplies,” as well as receiving growing pressure and criticism from Palestinian civilians who also demand a ceasefire deal.
But Hamas is also saying to themselves, “So, after we get a break (a ceasefire) to catch our breath and regroup, we will return to a position of strength and retake the Gaza Strip. Because not only did we win this battle (by virtue of remaining alive and present in Gaza), but we also will win this war in the long-run (because the West, led by America, has demonstrated a pattern of allowing Israel to fight wars to a draw, but no longer to outright victory).”
We know that Arabs, particularly but not only the Islamist types, play these one-step-back-three-steps-forward games all the time — precisely because they have plenty of reasons to believe they can, no less because they know that the impatient, flimsy, non-ideological West does not stand a chance against hegemonic Muslims who have extraordinary fortunes, resources, and numbers of people across the world. This is nothing new, even if it is new information to you.
Take, for example, the Oslo Accords, a pair of agreements signed in 1993 and 1995 between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (which preceded the Palestinian Authority). Instead of delivering what each side had expected from this superficial quasi-peace plan, it led to a series of claims and counter-claims about breaches of the accords, and perpetuated a downward spiral of mistrust and hostilities.
Benzion Netanyahu, the late historian, said the Oslo Accords were “a trap that the Arabs and our enemies among the Europeans set for us on purpose.” However, his complaints were not against the other sides, but against “those who entered the trap. After all, the blame lies with the mouse, not the trap. Israeli leftist politicians entered completely blindly and were trapped. And they pulled us all into this trap with them. Did they not know about Arafat’s phased plan?”
Benzion Netanyahu was referring to then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s decision to enter into the Oslo Accords as part of a longer-term strategy comparable to the notorious Treaty of al-Hudaybiya between the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and the Quraish Tribe of Mecca in the year 628, which Muhammad broke two years later when he attacked them and conquered Mecca.
Arafat even went as far as to tell a Palestinian journalist:
“I am entering Palestine through the door of Oslo, despite all my reservations, in order to return the Palestine Liberation Organization and the resistance to it, and I promise you that you will see the Jews fleeing from Palestine like mice fleeing from a sinking ship. This will not happen in my lifetime, but it will happen in your lifetime.”2
Still, Israel adhered to the Oslo Accords. The Palestinian Authority was promptly created to administer self-rule over 98 percent of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza, while receiving an estimated $25 billion in financial aid from the U.S. and other Western countries, the highest-per-capita assistance in the world. But the money ended up going to places not named peace and prosperity for the Palestinian people.
“Instead of creating the independent and robust civil institutions necessary for good governance, promoting peace with Israel, and improving the lives of its people, the billions of dollars of international aid were used to create a corrupt dictatorship focusing on enriching its elites, inciting its people against Israel, advocating terrorism, and waging a massive international campaign to demonize, delegitimize, and destroy the Jewish state,” according to Ziva Dahl, a Senior Fellow with the Haym Salomon Center.3
Frankly, does this ceasefire deal reported by The Washington Post sound any different?
Some will say that the alternative to reaching a ceasefire deal is only more war, death, and destruction — which nobody wants. I am not a warmonger and would always prefer (true, lasting, genuine) peace over war, but I also prefer to be realistic and practical, not naive and ignorant.
And the reality is that the Americans — really, Biden’s administration and his Democratic Party — are shoving this ceasefire down Israel’s throat because they are beyond desperate to show the American people, as the presidential election nears, that they did something “positive” to end the Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah war (which they otherwise grossly mismanaged).
I did not write this as implicit support for Donald Trump and his Republican Party; I wrote it as an Israeli citizen who can confidently tell you that the majority of Israelis feel that the Biden administration is rushing to end this war for domestic political points in America.
And for those who feel that they know better than Israelis while sitting far, far away from this war, I can share something else that the majority of Israelis would say to these people: Stay in your lane. We did not choose this war, but if you (like us) do not want more wars, we need to end this one with a true victory over Hamas (which means removing them from military and governing power in the Strip, not eliminating the “idea” of Hamas which we all agree is impossible).
Naturally, this takes time, given how physically and psychologically entrenched Hamas is in Gaza. But removing them from military and governing power in the Strip is doable with the right support, a realistic timeline, and an appropriate strategy (which, among other things, minimizes civilian deaths on all sides). Wars are tiring and draining, but if we want to prevent more of them in the future, we have to develop mental and emotional stamina to truly finish the job.
We are nine months into this war, which might feel and sound like a lot, but Israel has made a lot of progress. What is the point of going 70 percent of the way and then being told that time is up? It might take 14-to-18-to-24 months to truly finish the job, but however long it takes, so be it.
Rushing to end a war for domestic political points that have nothing to do with Israel — as Biden and his Democrats are so obviously doing — will not really stop this war and prevent more death and destruction. Quite the contrary, it will lead to more wars and more death and destruction, and each war will be worse than the previous one, just as they have been leading up to this point.
There is a word for this: It’s called foresight.
Oren, Michael. “Why the Body Cams?” Clarity with Michael Oren. October 31, 2023. Substack.
“The Oslo deception: New evidence.” JNS.
“Palestinian kleptocracy: West accepts corruption, people suffer the consequences.” The Hill.
I agree with you. This is not in the interests of Israel. Every time I hear that there might be a way to get the hostages back my heart leaps, but a moment later sanity returns and I remind myself what I have always known is true - the only way to do this is to defeat Hamas as fully and completely as possible, understanding some realistic limitations on this plan. Hamas is evil. The PA is evil and the belief that they are an alternative is delusional. The current US administration is desperate to show a “win” and they don’t care what happens to Israel long term. Israel needs to be cynical and hard nosed to survive. Weakness is not the answer. Am Ysrael Chai.
Biden’s two -state solution is Minnesota & Michigan where all the Arabs live. I’m a life long democrat in US and find Biden admin repugnant I am sorry