United States President Joe Biden seemed deeply sincere in condemning Hamas’s atrocities and supporting Israel’s goal of eradicating the terrorist group. So why hasn’t the ground war proceeded [at the time this article was written]? Maybe because Israel and its allies are worried that, once it starts, nobody can be sure how and where it ends.
The president probably means it more than he realizes when he says the world is at an “inflection point.” Israel and the Jewish people are serving humanity on the front line of what could become a global reckoning for organizations of Islamist terror.
Israel has been wise to deliberate carefully before starting door-to-door urban warfare in a dense city where hundreds of Western hostages are being held in a labyrinth of underground tunnels, especially facing Hamas soldiers literally dying for the perverse “honor” of murdering Jews and other Westerners.
Many lives are in the balance. Hamas’ top leadership may be “dead men walking” as Israel vows, but right now they’re luxuriating in fine hotels elsewhere in the region. Israel might soon have almost everything practicably possible with precision air strikes – at least enough to recalibrate the human cost-benefit analysis.
Hamas is only the leading edge of the monstrous threat facing civilization
Behind them stands Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the terror-sponsoring Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank. Widen the aperture and see that those Islamist terror groups are proxy components of a crescent of Islamists tracking from Lebanon and Syria through Iraq – where American forces have already been attacked in recent days – back to the source regional puppet master in Iran. ISIS may be gone, but Islamist terror is still a multi-headed global hydra stretching from the Taliban in Afghanistan through Northern Africa and the Middle East.
The most immediate threat is from Hezbollah, which is far more dangerous and capable than Hamas. That group has spent two decades embedding some 200,000 sophisticated missiles in Syrian and Lebanese villages across Israel’s Northern border. Iran thought that would deter Israel from attacking its nuclear program.
Ten days ago, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iran’s foreign minister, traveled to Beirut for a meeting with Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general. Is there any doubt that Iran has green-lighted Hezbollah to attack, which it transparently promises to do when Israel causes enough damage in Gaza? People like this usually do what they say.
It would be logical for Israel to preempt Hezbollah by impairing its capabilities in Southern Lebanon. That too would cause unfortunate loss of life, which explains why Israel has apparently agreed to stand down, and instead rely on US naval deterrence. The US Navy carrier group already intercepted longer-range missiles launched toward Israel by Iranian proxy Houthis in Yemen last week.
But ceding the first escalation initiative to Hezbollah might endanger many civilian lives in Northern Israel, and Israel has good reason to worry that the US might hesitate to engage Hezbollah: That would be a big step closer to direct conflict with Iran – maybe too big a shift to expect in the Obama/Biden Iran policy.
Vanquishing Hamas itself is not about the Israel-Palestinian “conflict.” It’s about dealing with terrorists who starve their youth of purpose and economic opportunity in the hope of enticing them to martyrdom, citing archaic Koranic interpretations of jihad. Israel and Jews are history’s favorite targets, but they are coming for Christians and others too.
Western democracies are finally waking up to the threat and preparing to deport hateful Jihadists that were mixed in with victimized refugees of the past decade’s Middle East turmoil.
Protesters in Western streets need to realize that the Palestinian people are on the same side as Israel here. The Palestinians are being “occupied” by their own violent, corrupt masters. End the self-occupation of the Palestinians so that the civilized world can help to improve peoples’ lives and prospects.
President Biden says that Hamas does not represent the residents of Gaza – although they elected the terror group in 2006 – but that the Palestinian Authority (PA) does. Except that Hamas is in control of a significant part of the PA-run West Bank.
A public opinion poll conducted last month by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research reveals that if there were new presidential elections today, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would win 58% of the vote, while the PA leader Mahmoud Abbas would receive 37%.
At least the PA sometimes pretends to be interested in peace. It might be the “least bad” alternative for eventual Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and Gaza, but not as it is currently oriented. Abbas is almost 90 years old, in the 15th year of his four-year election term, and appropriately despised by most Palestinians.
ABBAS MIGHT be more likely to launch a new West Bank intifada, competing with Hamas for Jew-killing “honor,” than to renounce “resistance” of Israel’s existence and stop sponsoring terror: Just last week he committed to supporting the families of the murderous Hamas October 7 terrorists.
The PA, also this month, guided its mosque preachers in its weekly services to declare war on Israel and call to annihilate the Jewish state and people: “Our Palestinian people... cannot raise a white flag until the occupation [Israel] is removed and the independent Palestinian state is established with Jerusalem as its capital.”
While the Jewish nation is busy serving as the civilized world’s proxy in this latest round of the global war on Islamist terror, the United States might exercise its diplomatic muscle by looking for a Palestinian leader who is ready to accept and make peace with Israel instead of sending his people to kill the Jews and erase Israel from the map.
There are plenty of young Palestinians waiting to enjoy a normalized life in Israel – their experience of “occupation” is the daily frustration of military security checks limiting their mobility and work. A new generation of Palestinian leadership could allow them to benefit from the new infrastructure and industry available to them in the West Bank. Israel might in due course be safe enough to suspend military law and start easing travel and work restrictions as Palestinians demonstrate in action their willingness to live with Israel and abide by Israeli law.
First, stop the terror.
The writer is CEO of Xerion Investments and an investment strategist for the Judea and Samaria Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which promotes cross-cultural business in the West Bank.