The peace plan assumes that sharia supremacism is suddenly no longer a problem.
Big announcement today. Yawn.
Don’t get me wrong. It is vital that Israel achieve unambiguous victory over its existential jihadist enemies. Toward that end, Israel is far better off with the support and policies of President Trump than with a Democratic administration. The left-wing base favors the Palestinians; it pulled the Biden administration, and continues to pull other elected Democrats, into what at times is unconcealed hostility toward Israel.
Still, to repeat what I’ve said a few times now (see, e.g., here, here, and here), President Trump is hard-wired to believe that a deal can always be struck; it’s just a question of finding the right accommodations and terms. Movements waging ideological wars or patriotic wars for their own survival, and who will fight to the death for their objectives, do not seem to compute.
There is no deal with sharia-supremacist Islam. Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, is conducting a jihad to destroy Israel — not to reach a more favorable arrangement with Israel, to destroy Israel — based on sharia-supremacist principles, which are 14 centuries old and steeped in Jew hatred that goes back to Muhammad’s wars of conquest. What’s more, while Hamas has been hollowed out by Israel’s combat operations, the problem in the region is sharia supremacism, not Hamas; if what is today called Hamas disappeared tomorrow, a new jihadist entity would rise quickly to take its place, and the objective would not change.
The premise of the president’s 21-point plan is that Hamas will stop being Hamas, and that will end the jihadist threat. What basis is there to believe that?
During the first intifada, from which Hamas emerged, there were a few dozen suicide attacks. In the second intifada, by which time Hamas was firmly established, there were around 150. The jihadists who carried them out were celebrated and their families paid bonuses — and that includes being celebrated by the Palestinian Authority, which Muslim nations want to give a role in what they envision as a post-Hamas regime in Gaza.
Like the jihadists who carried out the October 7 atrocities, the suicide attackers were not looking for a better deal with Israel. They were looking to eradicate Israel. The 21-point proposal assumes that the culture and population that produced these people are now going to lay down their arms and commit to peaceful coexistence or, in the alternative, voluntarily leave the territory that their fundamentalist tenets — as mediated by the region’s most influential scholars — tell them is Allah’s land over which they are obliged to wage jihad until Israel is no more.
What has happened in the last two years to make anyone think that’s a possibility? We now have European nations and Canada claiming to recognize “Palestine” (its lack of borders or a real government notwithstanding). Why would Hamas and its sharia-supremacist support network surrender now when they have reason to believe the barbaric October 7 attack, far from turning them into pariahs, has advanced their cause?
There isn’t always an ideal solution available just because we’d like there to be one. There is no deal with people who will be satisfied with nothing less than one’s annihilation. The fact that there may be many rational Palestinians who would be willing to live in peace does not mean they are anywhere close to being able to force their will against the region’s dominant, entrenched sharia-supremacist adherents.
Unless and until Israel’s mortal enemies (and ours) are conclusively defeated, any peace negotiations are just a strategic pause that allows the jihadists to regroup and rearm.