Working for decades in the counterterrorism field, I found it surpassingly difficult to get the average American government official to believe that Islamists simply hate us, not transactionally, but absolutely. No one could wrap their heads around the notion that they didn’t want to deal with us, but instead simply wanted to destroy us. Nothing could convince the policymakers I advised that, with Islamism, we faced a threat that might morph over time, but which would never go away, an implacable hostility that made nonsense of every prospect of compromise.

Over at National Review, Andrew McCarthy identifies this as a fatal flaw in Donald Trump’s proposal to clear out and then rebuild Gaza. Our own Jed Babbin makes a similar point, observing, trenchantly, that “Trump’s plan will never work.” Both McCarthy and Babbin are wholly convincing in identifying Palestinian intransigence as the rock upon which Trump’s proposal will inevitably founder. (READ MORE: Nobody Wants the Palestinians)
This should scarcely be surprising. For all his worldly wisdom, Trump is subject to the same American, indeed Western, tendency to assume that somehow, with enough effort, understandings can be reached, even between enemies. This is evident in his conviction that, despite three years of bitter conflict, a deal can bring an end to the war in Ukraine. The Gaza proposal partakes of a similar attitude, albeit one confounded by a hatred spanning centuries. But this is a man who believes in his bones in “the art of the deal.” (RELATED: Profile in Courage: Trump’s Gaza Proposal)
However, I can’t follow McCarthy in simply dismissing the Gaza proposal for its failure to comprehend “Sharia Supremacism.” Whether accidently or by design, Trump’s proposal has served three extremely useful purposes. First, the reaction on the part of Hamas, specifically the insistence that Gaza is a Palestinian “homeland,” should once and for all disabuse the world of the absurd notion that these are “refugees” huddl...