People all over the world are trying to generate solutions to the war in Gaza, but they are using incorrect assumptions. They assume they understand the mentality of Hamas. They assume they understand the thinking of the Arab Palestinians. They are certain that Israel is committing genocide.
It’s time for people to look at the facts, without any embellishment or wishful thinking:
And these factors are just for starters.
The latest atrocity by the terrorists is starving Israeli hostages intentionally. (Of course, the world thinks that Israel is intentionally starving the Palestinians.) The willingness of Hamas to publicize their obscene, cruel, and intentional punishment of the Israelis is one more tactic to convince Israel to stop short of totally annihilating Hamas. That’s right, Israel will have to act as if they have surrendered to Hamas.
What do we misunderstand about the Hamas mentality? For one, they do not value life—any life. They worship death, and anticipate that they will be rewarded for being martyrs in the afterlife. Their lives revolve around destroying Israel; receiving their own state is secondary to achieving that objective. Although the Palestinians are protesting against Hamas, that is not a rejection of Hamas, but only a rejection of continuing the war (at this time). Once the fighting stops, the Palestinians will once again accept terrorist leadership.
The latest proposals coming from Israel still show a naïve understanding of Hamas’s motives. Just read this absurd exchange between the Israelis and Hamas, following the release of the grotesque videos of the two starving Israeli hostages:
Following a meeting between Netanyahu and U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff on Thursday, Israeli officials said they are now considering negotiating a single comprehensive deal to end the war in Gaza, disarm Hamas, demilitarize Gaza and free all hostages, according to an Israeli official. This would represent a turnaround from Israel’s previous negotiating stance that insisted on only temporary deals because it wasn’t ready to end the war.
Hamas on Saturday said that it would reject Israel’s demand to disarm until the establishment of a Palestinian state.
‘We will never relinquish this right until all our national rights are restored, foremost among them the establishment of an independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,’ the group said.
The Israeli positions will never be accepted by Hamas: Hamas will not consent to being disarmed or being demilitarized. The likelihood of their releasing all the hostages is also slim. Although Hamas is demanding a “fully sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital,” it is well aware that those proposals are non-starters for Israel.
For all of these reasons, there is probably only one way this is going to go: Israel will accept a ceasefire, and Hamas will live to fight another day.
Image: Free image, Pixabay license.