The headlines say Israel controls 70 percent of Gaza. The reality on the ground is far more complicated — and understanding it changes the entire conversation.
There has been one and the same possible solution since Golda Meir said this decades ago:
"Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us."
Sadly, we're as close to that day today as we were back then. The Palestinians have to be masters of their own fate and not rely on the UN or on Israeli apologies and concessions, they have to want to join the civilized world and build a healthy society, not one rooted in Jew hate.
Until then we'll just keep recycling through wars, terrorist attacks and plans that evaporate on first contact with reality.
"The flotillas therefore function primarily as political theater. Their purpose is not logistical. Their purpose is symbolic."
Not quite symbolic. Agitprop more accurately defines the theatrics of it.
"Palestinians reject a future defined by permanent military control and displacement. "
A slight oversimplification. Palestinians were always very clear on their ultimate goal. It is clearly articulated in their charters, the statements of their representatives, in their media, and by the Arab street: it is the complete obliteration of Israel and the elimination of the Jews per religious dictates but not to establish a "Palestinian state. That already exists to the East of Israel. Their goal is to create a Caliphate. Thus "Hamas has shown [not little but no] indication that it has abandoned that objective" clarifies the enduring situation.
" International institutions issue statements but possess limited leverage."
Lurking under international institutions positions on the issue may - demonstrably may - be colluding interests to see Israel gone, especially considering that no country in the world would allow the establishment of a terror state on its borders dedicated to its annihilation. For no trivial reason were "Palestinians" ejected from Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. For no trivial reason has Egypt built a higher wall between Gaza and Sinai that has Israel. Whatever country they have gone to, these people have been a destabilizing force. And today we are witnessing this phenomenon in Europe, the Americas, and Australia.
"dignity for Palestinians"
This may be a bit of Western ethnocentrism where we presume to define for them what they see as their "dignity." Judging from their own statements, they will only have recovered their dignity when they reverse the nakba, that is, the defeat of the five Arab armies that attacked Israel the day after it became a state under their rallying cry "Drive the Jews into the sea."No
"Gaza will remain trapped between war and peace, between military occupation and sovereignty, between survival and reconstruction, and between the competing narratives that have defined this conflict for generations."
Some internal contradictions in the above statemen,t such as the idea of Gaza being trapped between war and peace. The only time there has ever been peace in that territory was when Israel controlled it. Sovereignty brought Hamas. "Competing narratives" echoes Critical Race Theory that one narrative is a valid as another. There is history, archeological evidence, facts, law, and legal precedent that indicate the accuracy of a narrative and separate willful propaganda from verifiable account. Tragically, what we are dealing with here are inconvenient truths to be summarily dismissed both by the local Arabs and the West. And how is that going for them?
As if this witches brew were not toxic enough, from the Arab point of view this conflict is fundamentally and demonstrably a religious war. And the role of religion and ethnicity in this struggle is something the West cannot allow itself to entertain for a moment. And so the cycle continues greased by blood with no end in sight mostly because one party refuses to (yet again) bare its neck on the chopping block while its sworn adversaries aided and abetted by their allies declare that the party of the first part must submit to the will of the party of the second part. :)
There is only one solution. Allow every gazan to leave and go to all those countries that support them, in name only. France, Spain, Norway, Ireland, UK and Russia for a start. Then eliminate the hamas. Israel will reclaim gaza and return it to the thriving, peaceful and viable economy it was before the disastrous decision to give it to hamas in exchange for "peace"
Iran and Hamas play the same game: survival is victory, since there will always be Jihadi Islam adherents to carry on their War. This is the Forever War strategy which is Islam. Islam’s defeat in The West , which is now coming, will roll this game up. This is now starting.
The end of the war is supposed to be the disarming, dismantlement of hamas. now we have political theater...the racist mayor of NYC, the grandstanding of A list Brit celebrities, the boycott of Eurovision by insignificant nations struggling for national survival from Muslim immigrants, ....all is political theater. So rather than denounce Israel, the EU can DEMAND and ACT to disarm hamas. So should the UN,....neither has the will, power or desire to do so. Now Israel is back in Gaza, it cannot withdraw without dire consequences....so the denunciations of 'genocide," removal of Sabra hummus from woke co op shelves will just continue, boycotting Eurovision, too Expect all countries to withdraw, except Hungary, Albania, Bulgaria and Israel maybe Taiwan and Somiland. Balkens Plus song festival. So will murderous attacks on Jews continue, world wide.
As always, follow the money.....billions of $ given to bastions of higher education who TEACH hatred of Jews, Zionism and Israel. Religious Studies departments need to do a deep dive into Vatican 2 published in 1965 where Islam is held in esteem, tracing their faith to Abraham yet Jews are still held in contempt. According to Nostra Aetate, Jesus nullified the need for Jews. Catholicism remains the same organization that allowed The Holocaust to happen in Europe and the same organization that states that their scriptures cannot be used to justify the "Occupation of Israel of Palestinian lands." (CatholicCulture.org)
We cannot underestimate the propaganda, masked as "teachings" by American colleges corrupted by Arab money and the largest organized religious body of 1.4 billion "baptized" Catholics who remain hostile to Jews.
I have come to believe that hatred of Jews is the virus in the human hard drive. It defies logic, it defies facts, it defies rationality, it defies reality. Teaching of its injustice has not eradicated it. The lessons of history are ignored, denied or subverted.
I have also come to believe that our job as Jews is to survive, to support Israel and to live Jewish lives, and less about convincing others that we have a right to exist and have our own state. The only way the rest of the world MAY come to see the error of their ways is when Jihad hits them personally. Yet, 9/11 was Jihad and its lessons are lost. The students who built their tent cities after 10/7 were not alive in 2001. I often wonder if they were, would it have made a difference? Al Qaeda is Hamas is Boko Haram is Hezbollah. The kidnapping of young girls in Africa, the murder of THOUSANDS of Christians in Nigeria receive zero fucks by college students, who believe running across their graduation stage with the Palestinian flag is appropriate (Berkley.)
We have a lost generation, corrupted beyond the ability to support Jews and Israel. It's wrong, it shouldn't be, yet it is. Fighting it seems to be a zero sum game. We simply end up exhausted.
Thank you for this summary of the current situation in Gaza.
May I add a bit of background for the readers here:
The 1947 UN Partition Plan of the Land of Israel would have made Gaza part of the proposed Arab state west of the Jordan River. However, the Arabs rejected the partition plan, launching the 1948 War of Independence.
At the conclusion of the war Gaza was occupied by Egypt, which refused to annex it or offer its residents Egyptian citizenship, i.e. Gaza was part of no country. That was the situation until 1967.
Thus, from 1948 to 1967, conditions in the Gaza Strip were harsh. Egypt essentially isolated itself, refusing to integrate either the locals or the 200,000 refugees, leading to severe economic conditions.
In 1955, a member of the United Nations Secretariat, James Baster, wrote in the Middle East Journal that “For all practical purposes it would be true to say that for the last six years in Gaza over 300,000 poverty-stricken people have been physically confined to an area the size of a large city park.”
Israel decisively prevailed in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Furthermore, thousands upon thousands of Arab refugees were now setting up camp along Israel's porous borders. The refugees were placed under martial law by Egypt and forced to live in filth. Seeing the unhappiness of the refugees, Arab regimes, took advantage of the situation to incite resentful Palestinians to take up arms against Israel.
Initially, the border violations and infiltrations manifested as small-scale theft and banditry. But by 1954, Egyptian military intelligence was actively supporting Palestinian fedayeen activities in several ways.
In the village of Rehovot, on February 25, 1955, an Israeli citizen was killed by Arab infiltrators. Documents connecting one of the terrorists to Egyptian military intelligence were discovered to be in the custody of the terrorists who were hunted down and terminated by Israeli soldiers.
In 1967, as a result of the Six-Day War that was thrust upon Israel, the Gaza Strip came under Israeli jurisdiction and Jewish Israelis settled in it alongside the Arabs who were there. As one example of a goodwill gesture, Israel helped Gazans plant approximately 618,000 trees.
Between 1967 and 1982, the economic growth in Gaza averaged a staggering 9.7% per annum, bringing an era of economic prosperity. But rather than continue to prosper economically under Israeli rule, the Arabs launched the bloody first intifada in 1987, resulting in hundreds of Jewish and Arab deaths.
In 1994, following the signing of the Oslo Accords, civilian control of most of Gaza was given to the corrupt and murderous Yasser Arafat and his PLO, henceforth known as the Palestinian Authority (PA).
In 1998 there was even an International Airport in Gaza.
due to the Intifada, neither Israel nor Egypt allowed unfettered passage into or out of the Gaza Strip, with Egypt keen to isolate its problematic Sinai Islamist insurgents from the Gazan terrorists.
In an unprecedented and – with hindsight – disastrous move, in 2005 Israel unilaterally fully withdrew from the Gaza Strip, forcibly expelling over 9000 Jews from 21 towns.
Even more surprising, Israel withdrew from the southern edge of the Strip known as the Philadelphi Route, handing over full border control to Egypt. Thus, began a new era – and since 2005, Gaza has been fully self-governing. European and Arab aid money flowed in and the stage for a flourishing Middle East Singapore was laid.
"U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Israel to vacate the vital security strip separating Egyptian Sinai from the Gaza Strip as a “peaceful gesture” to the Palestinian Arabs. This proved to be another land for peace disaster in which the Arabs received the land but the Israelis."
"Permitting Hamas to run in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections without the terrorist organization disarming first was “a mistake,” former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged this week."
In early 2006, elections were held in Gaza, and Hamas won a plurality. For the next year and a half there was internecine fighting resulting in over 600 Gazans killed by their own, and by mid-2007 Hamas had full control over the Strip.
The “innocent” residents should have known what they were getting – Hamas never hid their terrorist nature and their charter calls for the complete destruction of Israel.
Since taking power, Hamas has refused to recognize any prior agreements signed between Palestinians and Israel and they have ruled over the inhabitants of Gaza with a reign of terror.
It has been downhill – under the rule of Hamas, unemployment increased, civil rights were eliminated, and missiles and terror attacks on Israel increased, leading to repeated mini-wars with Israel.
The ragged border crossing that could become Gaza's Lifeline
"A haven for smugglers
The border crossing splits the town of Rafah in two, with part on the Gaza side, and part on the Egyptian side. Many on one side have relatives on the other. When the crossing is open, Gazans go to Egypt for vacation, to study or to receive medical care.
Yet more often, the border has been closed or tightly restricted.
Rafah has long been a magnet for smugglers, who dug tunnels under the border, with some of entrance and exit points emerging inside homes on both sides of the border.
In quiet times, smugglers have brought in cigarettes and other goods to avoid taxes. In more recent years, Hamas used the tunnels to amass an arsenal of weapons, including some of those used in the surprise Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that killed more than 1,400 Israelis. More than 2,600 Palestinians have also died in the fighting.
The original tunnels in Rafah have expanded into the elaborate subterranean network Hamas has established under Gaza today. Many Hamas members are now believed to be hiding in the tunnels as the territory braces for what's expected to be a major Israeli ground incursion."
At this point, the idea that there is some realistic two-state solution waiting around the corner while Hamas remains armed strikes me as pure fantasy. October 7 changed the equation. The entire premise of "containment" collapsed that day.
The same applies to Hamas itself. I don't see how any lasting solution is possible if Hamas remains intact. An organization whose stated purpose is the destruction of Israel is not suddenly going to become a peaceful governing authority. Hamas has to be destroyed as a military and political force. Anything less simply postpones the next war.
I look at Iran the same way. If the current regime remains in power, any agreement is ultimately temporary. If the world manages to get a 10-year or 20-year moratorium on nuclear weapons development, that's certainly better than nothing. But it is not a permanent solution. The underlying problem remains.
The uncomfortable reality is that some ideologies cannot simply be negotiated away. Whether we are talking about Hamas in Gaza or the Iranian regime in Tehran, the long-term threat survives as long as the ideology and the people enforcing it remain in power.
That's why I think your central question about the endgame is so important. Everyone talks about what Israel should stop doing. Very few people explain what happens the day after if Hamas is still standing.
Destroying Hamas was the original goal of the war. It was happening albeit much more slowly and with difficulty thanks to the forced slowdown of the Biden administration and the constant false attacks on Israel for its legitimate acts of self defense. But it was still moving forward. Then Trump suddenly forced a ceasefire and set up a bizarre thing he calls a "board of peace" which has frozen things for six months. Everyone knows there will be no peace. And there will be no enforcement of anything by the "Board of Peace". But Netanyahu, who remains very dependent on Trump's good will, has lost the freedom to act.
1. Move the civilian population, (I.e all children 14 and under, all females and everyone over 60) to concentration camps at.the edges of the gaza strip.
2. Establish a cordon sanitaire around the rest of the territory beyond the camps sealing it off completely ( excluding zones run by allied arab tribes )
3. Cut off all food, electricity, internet and water to the rest of the strip not under israeli control.
Simple yet effective. Eventually hamas will emerge like rats from their tunnels, either to fight and die or surrender. Those who surrender will be promptly executed by hanging after conviction for genocide by a military tribunal.
This is the only way to solve the existential threat facing Israel in the Gaza strip.
The islamo nazis kept screaming genocide..well, a quasi genocide may be the only way to prevent a real one.
I fear the only solution is to gradually move gaza's civilian population, i.e all children under 15, all women and everyone over age 60 into displacement camps placed at the edges of the gaza strip and seal off the rest of the territory by a cordon sanitaire (excluding any allied arab tribes susceptible to peace). After this stage is complete, cut off all food, water and electricity to the hostile territory and wait. Sooner or later hamas will emerge..either to fight and die or surrender..at which point theyll all be executed by military tribunals. There's no other way.
I think this is the plan: To begin moving non-violent Gazans into the Israeli-occupied part of the strip, where they can also begin to rebuild the strip and their lives, as well as start re-educating the population to de-radicalize them. This will isolate Hamas and make it easier to eliminate them. It will take a generation to re-educate and de-radicalize the Gazans, but that is necessary--as stated in Trump's peace plan as a prerequisite to a future "Palestinian" state. My guess is this: Once Gaza is rebuilt and de-radicalized and the Gaza strip is a new jewel of the Middle East (20-25 years), the Gazans will be living well with plenty of jobs and peace and co-existence and they will not want to be independent of Israel (just as two million Muslim citizens already living in Israel do not want to live under any Muslim country because they have much better lives in Israel than they would have elsewhere).
When Hamas started firing rockets in to Israel some 15 or so years ago, any other NORMAL country would have invaded Gaza and expunged the terrorist network.
Israel, realising it’s got too many people in Gaza develops Iron Dome, in conjunction with USA, to protect Israeli citizens from rocket fire.
Israel should have acted like any other NORMAL western country, and have destroyed Gaza and Hamas.
Israel should also turn all water, food and electricity OFF to the people of Gaza, after all, Gaza has a border with Egypt. Let their fellow Arabs take care of the gazans.
Once you control the land, you have more ways to deal with Hamas. First, you can start building new cities and, even more importantly, new communities, including bringing in parts of Gaza’s population that are not connected to Hamas to help form the core of those communities. Second, fighting Hamas becomes much easier when civilians have somewhere safe to go...
The fight is not against rock and stone but flesh and bone. If you cant identify your target you will keep hitting your head against the rock and stone.
There has been one and the same possible solution since Golda Meir said this decades ago:
"Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us."
Sadly, we're as close to that day today as we were back then. The Palestinians have to be masters of their own fate and not rely on the UN or on Israeli apologies and concessions, they have to want to join the civilized world and build a healthy society, not one rooted in Jew hate.
Until then we'll just keep recycling through wars, terrorist attacks and plans that evaporate on first contact with reality.
"The flotillas therefore function primarily as political theater. Their purpose is not logistical. Their purpose is symbolic."
Not quite symbolic. Agitprop more accurately defines the theatrics of it.
"Palestinians reject a future defined by permanent military control and displacement. "
A slight oversimplification. Palestinians were always very clear on their ultimate goal. It is clearly articulated in their charters, the statements of their representatives, in their media, and by the Arab street: it is the complete obliteration of Israel and the elimination of the Jews per religious dictates but not to establish a "Palestinian state. That already exists to the East of Israel. Their goal is to create a Caliphate. Thus "Hamas has shown [not little but no] indication that it has abandoned that objective" clarifies the enduring situation.
" International institutions issue statements but possess limited leverage."
Lurking under international institutions positions on the issue may - demonstrably may - be colluding interests to see Israel gone, especially considering that no country in the world would allow the establishment of a terror state on its borders dedicated to its annihilation. For no trivial reason were "Palestinians" ejected from Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. For no trivial reason has Egypt built a higher wall between Gaza and Sinai that has Israel. Whatever country they have gone to, these people have been a destabilizing force. And today we are witnessing this phenomenon in Europe, the Americas, and Australia.
"dignity for Palestinians"
This may be a bit of Western ethnocentrism where we presume to define for them what they see as their "dignity." Judging from their own statements, they will only have recovered their dignity when they reverse the nakba, that is, the defeat of the five Arab armies that attacked Israel the day after it became a state under their rallying cry "Drive the Jews into the sea."No
"Gaza will remain trapped between war and peace, between military occupation and sovereignty, between survival and reconstruction, and between the competing narratives that have defined this conflict for generations."
Some internal contradictions in the above statemen,t such as the idea of Gaza being trapped between war and peace. The only time there has ever been peace in that territory was when Israel controlled it. Sovereignty brought Hamas. "Competing narratives" echoes Critical Race Theory that one narrative is a valid as another. There is history, archeological evidence, facts, law, and legal precedent that indicate the accuracy of a narrative and separate willful propaganda from verifiable account. Tragically, what we are dealing with here are inconvenient truths to be summarily dismissed both by the local Arabs and the West. And how is that going for them?
As if this witches brew were not toxic enough, from the Arab point of view this conflict is fundamentally and demonstrably a religious war. And the role of religion and ethnicity in this struggle is something the West cannot allow itself to entertain for a moment. And so the cycle continues greased by blood with no end in sight mostly because one party refuses to (yet again) bare its neck on the chopping block while its sworn adversaries aided and abetted by their allies declare that the party of the first part must submit to the will of the party of the second part. :)
There is only one solution. Allow every gazan to leave and go to all those countries that support them, in name only. France, Spain, Norway, Ireland, UK and Russia for a start. Then eliminate the hamas. Israel will reclaim gaza and return it to the thriving, peaceful and viable economy it was before the disastrous decision to give it to hamas in exchange for "peace"
That is the only way but it is a non starter for the world and even for the relatively friendly Trump administration.
The world doesn't live next door to savages who want to murder us. We do. So we have the right to solve this problem.
I agree with you. But that isn't the way things work. Until Israel no longer needs to rely on American support.
Brilliant Solution!!!
the Gazans need go no further than the wealthy , empty Arab lands around them. But no one ever wants them, except as a stick to beat israel with.
Iran and Hamas play the same game: survival is victory, since there will always be Jihadi Islam adherents to carry on their War. This is the Forever War strategy which is Islam. Islam’s defeat in The West , which is now coming, will roll this game up. This is now starting.
The end of the war is supposed to be the disarming, dismantlement of hamas. now we have political theater...the racist mayor of NYC, the grandstanding of A list Brit celebrities, the boycott of Eurovision by insignificant nations struggling for national survival from Muslim immigrants, ....all is political theater. So rather than denounce Israel, the EU can DEMAND and ACT to disarm hamas. So should the UN,....neither has the will, power or desire to do so. Now Israel is back in Gaza, it cannot withdraw without dire consequences....so the denunciations of 'genocide," removal of Sabra hummus from woke co op shelves will just continue, boycotting Eurovision, too Expect all countries to withdraw, except Hungary, Albania, Bulgaria and Israel maybe Taiwan and Somiland. Balkens Plus song festival. So will murderous attacks on Jews continue, world wide.
As always, follow the money.....billions of $ given to bastions of higher education who TEACH hatred of Jews, Zionism and Israel. Religious Studies departments need to do a deep dive into Vatican 2 published in 1965 where Islam is held in esteem, tracing their faith to Abraham yet Jews are still held in contempt. According to Nostra Aetate, Jesus nullified the need for Jews. Catholicism remains the same organization that allowed The Holocaust to happen in Europe and the same organization that states that their scriptures cannot be used to justify the "Occupation of Israel of Palestinian lands." (CatholicCulture.org)
We cannot underestimate the propaganda, masked as "teachings" by American colleges corrupted by Arab money and the largest organized religious body of 1.4 billion "baptized" Catholics who remain hostile to Jews.
I have come to believe that hatred of Jews is the virus in the human hard drive. It defies logic, it defies facts, it defies rationality, it defies reality. Teaching of its injustice has not eradicated it. The lessons of history are ignored, denied or subverted.
I have also come to believe that our job as Jews is to survive, to support Israel and to live Jewish lives, and less about convincing others that we have a right to exist and have our own state. The only way the rest of the world MAY come to see the error of their ways is when Jihad hits them personally. Yet, 9/11 was Jihad and its lessons are lost. The students who built their tent cities after 10/7 were not alive in 2001. I often wonder if they were, would it have made a difference? Al Qaeda is Hamas is Boko Haram is Hezbollah. The kidnapping of young girls in Africa, the murder of THOUSANDS of Christians in Nigeria receive zero fucks by college students, who believe running across their graduation stage with the Palestinian flag is appropriate (Berkley.)
We have a lost generation, corrupted beyond the ability to support Jews and Israel. It's wrong, it shouldn't be, yet it is. Fighting it seems to be a zero sum game. We simply end up exhausted.
Thank you for this summary of the current situation in Gaza.
May I add a bit of background for the readers here:
The 1947 UN Partition Plan of the Land of Israel would have made Gaza part of the proposed Arab state west of the Jordan River. However, the Arabs rejected the partition plan, launching the 1948 War of Independence.
At the conclusion of the war Gaza was occupied by Egypt, which refused to annex it or offer its residents Egyptian citizenship, i.e. Gaza was part of no country. That was the situation until 1967.
Thus, from 1948 to 1967, conditions in the Gaza Strip were harsh. Egypt essentially isolated itself, refusing to integrate either the locals or the 200,000 refugees, leading to severe economic conditions.
In 1955, a member of the United Nations Secretariat, James Baster, wrote in the Middle East Journal that “For all practical purposes it would be true to say that for the last six years in Gaza over 300,000 poverty-stricken people have been physically confined to an area the size of a large city park.”
Israel decisively prevailed in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Furthermore, thousands upon thousands of Arab refugees were now setting up camp along Israel's porous borders. The refugees were placed under martial law by Egypt and forced to live in filth. Seeing the unhappiness of the refugees, Arab regimes, took advantage of the situation to incite resentful Palestinians to take up arms against Israel.
Initially, the border violations and infiltrations manifested as small-scale theft and banditry. But by 1954, Egyptian military intelligence was actively supporting Palestinian fedayeen activities in several ways.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/egyptian-fedayeen-attacks-summer-1955
In the village of Rehovot, on February 25, 1955, an Israeli citizen was killed by Arab infiltrators. Documents connecting one of the terrorists to Egyptian military intelligence were discovered to be in the custody of the terrorists who were hunted down and terminated by Israeli soldiers.
In 1967, as a result of the Six-Day War that was thrust upon Israel, the Gaza Strip came under Israeli jurisdiction and Jewish Israelis settled in it alongside the Arabs who were there. As one example of a goodwill gesture, Israel helped Gazans plant approximately 618,000 trees.
Between 1967 and 1982, the economic growth in Gaza averaged a staggering 9.7% per annum, bringing an era of economic prosperity. But rather than continue to prosper economically under Israeli rule, the Arabs launched the bloody first intifada in 1987, resulting in hundreds of Jewish and Arab deaths.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/first-intifada
In 1994, following the signing of the Oslo Accords, civilian control of most of Gaza was given to the corrupt and murderous Yasser Arafat and his PLO, henceforth known as the Palestinian Authority (PA).
In 1998 there was even an International Airport in Gaza.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat_International_Airport
That's when all hell broke out.
In 2000 the Arabs launched the bloody second intifada.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/background-and-overview-of-al-aqsa-intifada
Terrorism prevented passage
due to the Intifada, neither Israel nor Egypt allowed unfettered passage into or out of the Gaza Strip, with Egypt keen to isolate its problematic Sinai Islamist insurgents from the Gazan terrorists.
In an unprecedented and – with hindsight – disastrous move, in 2005 Israel unilaterally fully withdrew from the Gaza Strip, forcibly expelling over 9000 Jews from 21 towns.
Even more surprising, Israel withdrew from the southern edge of the Strip known as the Philadelphi Route, handing over full border control to Egypt. Thus, began a new era – and since 2005, Gaza has been fully self-governing. European and Arab aid money flowed in and the stage for a flourishing Middle East Singapore was laid.
"U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Israel to vacate the vital security strip separating Egyptian Sinai from the Gaza Strip as a “peaceful gesture” to the Palestinian Arabs. This proved to be another land for peace disaster in which the Arabs received the land but the Israelis."
https://www.jns.org/why-israel-must-repossess-the-philadelphi-corridor/
"Permitting Hamas to run in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections without the terrorist organization disarming first was “a mistake,” former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged this week."
https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/05/16/former-us-secretary-of-state-condoleeza-rice-it-was-a-mistake-to-let-hamas-run-in-palestinian-elections-before-disarming/
In early 2006, elections were held in Gaza, and Hamas won a plurality. For the next year and a half there was internecine fighting resulting in over 600 Gazans killed by their own, and by mid-2007 Hamas had full control over the Strip.
The “innocent” residents should have known what they were getting – Hamas never hid their terrorist nature and their charter calls for the complete destruction of Israel.
https://www.israelhayom.com/2023/10/15/912423/
Since taking power, Hamas has refused to recognize any prior agreements signed between Palestinians and Israel and they have ruled over the inhabitants of Gaza with a reign of terror.
It has been downhill – under the rule of Hamas, unemployment increased, civil rights were eliminated, and missiles and terror attacks on Israel increased, leading to repeated mini-wars with Israel.
The ragged border crossing that could become Gaza's Lifeline
"A haven for smugglers
The border crossing splits the town of Rafah in two, with part on the Gaza side, and part on the Egyptian side. Many on one side have relatives on the other. When the crossing is open, Gazans go to Egypt for vacation, to study or to receive medical care.
Yet more often, the border has been closed or tightly restricted.
Rafah has long been a magnet for smugglers, who dug tunnels under the border, with some of entrance and exit points emerging inside homes on both sides of the border.
In quiet times, smugglers have brought in cigarettes and other goods to avoid taxes. In more recent years, Hamas used the tunnels to amass an arsenal of weapons, including some of those used in the surprise Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that killed more than 1,400 Israelis. More than 2,600 Palestinians have also died in the fighting.
The original tunnels in Rafah have expanded into the elaborate subterranean network Hamas has established under Gaza today. Many Hamas members are now believed to be hiding in the tunnels as the territory braces for what's expected to be a major Israeli ground incursion."
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/16/1206107279/the-ragged-border-crossing-that-could-become-gazas-lifeline
There are more than ample reports about the crimes against humanity conducted by Hamas ISIS on 7th October 2023.
Martin, I think you're 100% right.
At this point, the idea that there is some realistic two-state solution waiting around the corner while Hamas remains armed strikes me as pure fantasy. October 7 changed the equation. The entire premise of "containment" collapsed that day.
The same applies to Hamas itself. I don't see how any lasting solution is possible if Hamas remains intact. An organization whose stated purpose is the destruction of Israel is not suddenly going to become a peaceful governing authority. Hamas has to be destroyed as a military and political force. Anything less simply postpones the next war.
I look at Iran the same way. If the current regime remains in power, any agreement is ultimately temporary. If the world manages to get a 10-year or 20-year moratorium on nuclear weapons development, that's certainly better than nothing. But it is not a permanent solution. The underlying problem remains.
The uncomfortable reality is that some ideologies cannot simply be negotiated away. Whether we are talking about Hamas in Gaza or the Iranian regime in Tehran, the long-term threat survives as long as the ideology and the people enforcing it remain in power.
That's why I think your central question about the endgame is so important. Everyone talks about what Israel should stop doing. Very few people explain what happens the day after if Hamas is still standing.
"The humanitarian consequences of this dynamic are profound"
The Muslims in Gaza voted for Hamas. The Muslims in Ayosh want Israel gone. No Arab Muslim country wants "Palestinians" in their nation.
Whatever "humanitarian" issues there are can be laid at the feet of Muslims - 100%. The Arabs know this also - 100%
Destroying Hamas was the original goal of the war. It was happening albeit much more slowly and with difficulty thanks to the forced slowdown of the Biden administration and the constant false attacks on Israel for its legitimate acts of self defense. But it was still moving forward. Then Trump suddenly forced a ceasefire and set up a bizarre thing he calls a "board of peace" which has frozen things for six months. Everyone knows there will be no peace. And there will be no enforcement of anything by the "Board of Peace". But Netanyahu, who remains very dependent on Trump's good will, has lost the freedom to act.
There is a solution to resolving the gaza issue.
1. Move the civilian population, (I.e all children 14 and under, all females and everyone over 60) to concentration camps at.the edges of the gaza strip.
2. Establish a cordon sanitaire around the rest of the territory beyond the camps sealing it off completely ( excluding zones run by allied arab tribes )
3. Cut off all food, electricity, internet and water to the rest of the strip not under israeli control.
Simple yet effective. Eventually hamas will emerge like rats from their tunnels, either to fight and die or surrender. Those who surrender will be promptly executed by hanging after conviction for genocide by a military tribunal.
This is the only way to solve the existential threat facing Israel in the Gaza strip.
The islamo nazis kept screaming genocide..well, a quasi genocide may be the only way to prevent a real one.
I fear the only solution is to gradually move gaza's civilian population, i.e all children under 15, all women and everyone over age 60 into displacement camps placed at the edges of the gaza strip and seal off the rest of the territory by a cordon sanitaire (excluding any allied arab tribes susceptible to peace). After this stage is complete, cut off all food, water and electricity to the hostile territory and wait. Sooner or later hamas will emerge..either to fight and die or surrender..at which point theyll all be executed by military tribunals. There's no other way.
I think this is the plan: To begin moving non-violent Gazans into the Israeli-occupied part of the strip, where they can also begin to rebuild the strip and their lives, as well as start re-educating the population to de-radicalize them. This will isolate Hamas and make it easier to eliminate them. It will take a generation to re-educate and de-radicalize the Gazans, but that is necessary--as stated in Trump's peace plan as a prerequisite to a future "Palestinian" state. My guess is this: Once Gaza is rebuilt and de-radicalized and the Gaza strip is a new jewel of the Middle East (20-25 years), the Gazans will be living well with plenty of jobs and peace and co-existence and they will not want to be independent of Israel (just as two million Muslim citizens already living in Israel do not want to live under any Muslim country because they have much better lives in Israel than they would have elsewhere).
When Hamas started firing rockets in to Israel some 15 or so years ago, any other NORMAL country would have invaded Gaza and expunged the terrorist network.
Israel, realising it’s got too many people in Gaza develops Iron Dome, in conjunction with USA, to protect Israeli citizens from rocket fire.
Israel should have acted like any other NORMAL western country, and have destroyed Gaza and Hamas.
Israel should also turn all water, food and electricity OFF to the people of Gaza, after all, Gaza has a border with Egypt. Let their fellow Arabs take care of the gazans.
Once you control the land, you have more ways to deal with Hamas. First, you can start building new cities and, even more importantly, new communities, including bringing in parts of Gaza’s population that are not connected to Hamas to help form the core of those communities. Second, fighting Hamas becomes much easier when civilians have somewhere safe to go...
Thank you for this X I really needed to read this. This is the definitive article to know the reality on the ground in Gaza right now. 👏👏👏👏💪🇮🇱💙🙏
The fight is not against rock and stone but flesh and bone. If you cant identify your target you will keep hitting your head against the rock and stone.