“Establishing a Palestinian state today is establishing a Hamas state, a jihadist state,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar declared Monday. “It ain’t gonna happen,” he added.
Of course, Israel will not accept a Hamas-run state. Whatever chance of that happening ended on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded Israel and slaughtered 1,200 innocents in the most gruesome pogrom we have seen since the gates of the concentration camps were opened by the Allies as Europe was liberated in 1944-1945. (Majdanek, located in Lublin, Poland, was liberated in the summer of 1944 as Soviet forces advanced westward. U.S. forces liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany, on April 11, 1945.)
The Israelis will never allow a Hamas-dominated state to be established on their borders. Never. Any attempt to impose one by the Security Council of the United Nations would be vetoed by the United States. The lame duck president of France, Emmanuel Macron, can strut and declare and could even stand alongside others such as Keir Starmer, whose Labour government was elected with 34% of the overall vote, and the U.N. absurdist General Secretary Antonio Guterres and demand such a Hamasistan, but it will not happen.
Hamas has ruled Gaza since it took over the strip in 2007 in a bloody purge of the Fatah party from June 10 to June 15 of that year. Hamas spent its 18 years in power and billions in foreign aid building the elaborate tunnel network in which 20 surviving hostages are believed to be still held today.
Gaza is in ruins because of Hamas. The people of Gaza are suffering because of the war Hamas began. The “international leaders” who call for a “two-state solution” ignore the realities of Oct. 7 and indeed of the entire history of Hamas in Gaza. Until the terrorists are obliged to lay down their arms, there will be no peace in Gaza, much less a Palestinian state there.
The countries of the world could assist the situation by demanding the release of the living hostages and of the bodies of those who died in captivity, and by accepting refugees from Gaza on a yearslong basis until order and reconstruction in Gaza are far advanced. They could condemn Hamas’s continued interception of aid for the civilians in the strip and the torture or execution of Palestinians seeking the food their families need. Hamas is on the ropes, its patron Iran humbled and its ally Hezbollah crippled. Israel would do the same to Hamas and “finish the job,” as President Donald Trump puts it, but for the hostages.
The “leaders” of the world, such as Macron, are making the restoration of peace and food security infinitely more difficult to achieve by feeding the fever dream of the remnants of Hamas “leadership” plotting in the tunnels. Fanatics do not grasp reality, and nowhere is “confirmation bias” likely to be more pronounced than in the cellars of a terrorist group on the edge of destruction. Whenever some foolish statement passes the lips of anyone in authority anywhere, expect the terrorists to seize on it as an excuse to refuse to negotiate their release of the hostages.
The deal for the release of another 10 hostages and a ceasefire of at least 60 days was blown up by Hamas on the heels of Macron’s declaration of an intent to declare France’s recognition of a Palestinian state. Those 10 hostages are likely still captive, and aid to civilians is still difficult to deliver because of Macron. He may never accept responsibility for that huge error, but the world knows he is the embodiment of the Peter Principle.
There is no famine in Gaza, though the suffering there is real. If there were a famine, Hamas’s propaganda machine would not have been obliged to circulate the picture of the child suffering from cystic fibrosis and claim it was an example of famine. Much of the world’s media fell for that ruse. Or they knew it was a ruse and ran with it anyway because of their deeply embedded antisemitism.
In the U.S., there is a growing antisemitic fringe that declares itself to be “anti-Zionist,” and it looks to soon have its own leader in the next mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, who refuses to condemn the call for the murder of Jews that is the meaning of “globalize the intifada.”
That fringe in the U.S. is usually long on ignorance of the Middle East generally and of the history of Israel specifically. Most don’t even know that Gaza was part of Egypt until the Six-Day War of 1967, and that Egypt wants nothing to do with the Palestinians of Gaza.
UK WILL RECOGNIZE PALESTINIAN STATE IF ISRAEL DOES NOT TAKE STEPS TO END GAZA CONFLICT
The Gulf States would like to see a modernized and rebuilt Gaza, but not one run by Hamas. They would like a “two-state” solution as well, but behind closed doors, they are realists. They are, for the most part, done with extremist Islamist ideologies and would prefer to return to the path laid out in the Abraham Accords.
That path requires the end of Hamas. Every single statement by useful idiots such as Macron that impedes the release of the hostages and the surrender of Hamas and their exile to Iran or Turkey puts peace another day away.
Hugh Hewitt is a longtime conservative commentator and author. He hosts the Hugh Hewitt Show on Salem Radio every weekday from 3–6 p.m.