Steve Kramer – The West’s Fantasy about Peace with Jihadists
In 2020 the Trump administration decoupled the Palestinian Authority (PA) from the process of achieving peace elsewhere in the Middle East. It happened when Trump emissary Jared Kushner promulgated the proposal that resulted in the Abraham Accords. The Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco have all signed on to this breakthrough in Middle East diplomacy. This bottom-up approach, through non-aggression and enhanced trade, R&D, and tourism, has withstood the latest warfare between jihadist Hamas forces in Gaza and Israel, which “ended” with a pause in hostilities on May 21.
In the Middle East, the Biden administration, Qatar, and other Western/Middle Eastern countries seem intent on “rebuilding” Gaza, seemingly oblivious to the fact that nothing will change while Hamas continues to rule the territory, bleeding it dry to spend aid money on “guns not butter.” How many times will the West restore Gaza (after they start a war against Israel), supporting Hamas’ bellicose program by “rebuilding” wrecked homes and institutions? Many buildings and dwellings were destroyed because Hamas transforms their civilian status to military targets: rocket workshops, ammunition dumps, and rocket launching pads.
Very early in President Biden’s term, his State Department acknowledged the worth of the Abraham Accords. It implicitly recognized the value of Middle Eastern nations banding together for their mutual commercial and security interests, to present a united front against Iran, the world’s foremost producer and exporter of terror. But now, it’s back to the same old failed “Land for peace/two states” paradigm: two states living side by side in peace with secure borders.
There have been decades of failed peace attempts, beginning in earnest with the Madrid Conference in 1991. After Israel left Gaza totally in 2005, leaving behind a lucrative agricultural enterprise which the Gazans promptly trashed, one would expect that the two-state “solution” would have been discarded. The reason: immediately following Israel’s withdrawal of soldiers and 8,000 civilians, the first of THOUSANDS of mortars, rockets, and missiles were fired into Israel. This outrage has mostly been covered up by the EU, UN, the Obama administration, and it appears that the Biden administration hasn’t learned the lesson either. Seemingly forgotten is that the missile barrage on Jerusalem, the Jews’ Holy City, was an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation’s capital.
Here’s the recent diplomatic timeline:
January 27, 2021 The new Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said: “We very much support the Abraham Accords, we think that Israel normalizing relations with its neighbors and other countries in the region is a very positive development, and so we applauded them. We hope that there may be an opportunity to build on them in the coming months and years ahead.” The Abraham Accords, normalized relations among Israel and several Gulf states and Muslim nations.
(https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/295738)
May 17, 2021 In the midst of hostilities, Hamas deputy political chief Musa Abu Marzouk gives an interview to Russia Today in which he clarifies what Hamas believes the war was about. The current war, he said, “is not the final war” with Israel. There will be more. “It’s not like it was in Vietnam and elsewhere, where things ended up with negotiations. This is just one of a [series] of wars, and a war will come when we negotiate with them [the Jews] about the end of their occupation and their leaving of Palestine,” said Abu Marzouk, according to a translation by MEMRI.
There would be no compromises allowing Israel to continue existing or the Jews to remain in the land, Marzouk assured. “Israel will come to an end just like it began, and our Palestinian people will return to their homes because injustice cannot last and people must get what is rightly theirs.” https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamass-forever-war-against-israel-has-a-glitch-and-it-isnt-iron-dome/
May 18, 2021 MSN.com news: “White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that the Trump administration didn’t do ‘anything constructive’ to bring peace to the Middle East [erasing the State Department’s previous appreciation for the Abraham Accords]. Aside from putting forward a peace proposal that was dead on arrival, we don’t think they [Trump administration] did anything constructive, really, to bring an end to the longstanding conflict in the Middle East,’ Psaki told reporters onboard Air Force One.”
Fact:
May 21, 2021 After the ceasefire. President Biden said: “There is no shift in my commitment to the security of Israel. No shift. Period. What we still need is a two-state solution. It is the only answer.”
The two-state solution is not an answer, most certainly not the only answer, to warfare between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. Hamas will never sign a peace treaty with Israel. That would be against its very reason for existence. “There would be no compromises allowing Israel to continue existing or the Jews to remain in the land,” Musa Abu Marzouk confirmed. If a durable treaty with the Palestinian Authority were signed, it’s unlikely that it would ever be adhered to. Anything like a treaty with Hamas is an absolute non-starter because Hamas is an ethnoreligious terrorist force.
From the Hamas covenant/charter 1988:
The terrorist organization Hamas explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel in its group covenant, which also says that “peace initiatives … are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.”
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it,” The Covenant of Hamas preamble states, according to Yale Law School’s Lillian Goldman Law Library.
“There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility,” the covenant states.
The Hamas Covenant goes on to say that Muslims must “fight Jews and kill them,” and that, “Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Muslim. In the face of the Jews’ usurpation, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.”
[Note that it’s “Jews” that are pointed out for destruction, along with the State of Israel.]
Through the serial “rebuilding” of Gaza, Hamas siphons both money and building materials (concrete, pipes, etc.) to construct tunnels and manufacture rockets, in addition to erect fancy villas and malls for Hamas bigwigs and business elites. Interdicting materials that can be used for weapons and more is partially prevented at the Israeli border crossing into Gaza, but not as much at the Egyptian crossing. (Both countries guard their borders with Gaza and impose import restrictions to minimize weapons transfers.) Prohibited materials are also smuggled in through tunnels from Gaza or from the sea.
The vast majority of Gazans live in poor conditions, which results from Hamas choosing the destruction of Israel and the Jews as its primary objective. The physical and social conditions of Gaza’s citizens are low on Hamas’ priorities. The youth grow up to be cannon fodder for the jihadists. The education provided for Gazans comes from the UNWRA (the UN agency uniquely tasked to Palestinian Arab “refugees”) schools, whose curriculum teaches so much hatred of Jews and Israel, much more than anything constructive to uplift Gazan youth.
The Trump administration overturned the accepted wisdom of how to bring peace to the Middle East and partially succeeded with the Abraham Accords. While Hamas rules Gaza there is no chance of peace because Hamas exists to destroy Israel and its citizens. Until Western nations wise up to the jihadist creed of Hamas, the Palestinian Arabs will not achieve peace with Israel – they won’t even try to. The “two-state” solution just continues the conflagration and will never extinguish it. Let’s hope the Democrat Party will face this reality and sideline its anti-Israel constituents, especially those in Congress.
