The release of kidnapped Israelis and jailed Palestinian terrorists tells the world everything it needs to know about the state of affairs in the Middle East.
As I wrote previously, Israel is in the throes of hostage release. The local coverage is as ridiculous and over the top as a live feed from a British royal wedding. Whereas in the latter, we hear lots of dumb commentary about the exact texture of the dress or why a certain low level royal is wearing some colorful pin, here in Israel the breathless commentators simply have nothing to discuss during the hours of programming when the hostages are not moving:
“Moshe, that white van apparently is holding the hostages. What do you think the tire pressure is on it?”
“Well Shmuel, I don’t know. But I wonder why the Hamas terrorist standing in front of that vehicle did not have his pants pressed before the transfer.”
And on and on.
And while the banality of the commentary would fit in well with a pre-Super Bowl broadcast, there are some important points to glean from the transfer mechanism in place. The first thing one would note in all of the releases of Israelis/Jews to date, there has been a hysterical crowd of Hamas operatives and supporters present from start to finish. Watching the macabre scene, one might conclude that the terrorists with stolen Israeli weapons who are closest to the released hostages are actually functioning as bodyguards for their prisoners. It would appear that, if allowed, those in the crowd would behave no differently than they did on October 7th and would beat and probably kill the hostages before they ever made it to the Red Cross vehicles. Hamas only prevents such an outcome so as to get its part of the deal, namely released terrorists from Israeli jails.
And that brings us to the next point. Have you ever seen foaming mouths, crazed crowds outside of Israeli prisons as known murderers are released? Even if there was coverage, the most you would see would be bland Prison Services armored white buses leaving in a convoy with some minimal police detail. There would be no bloodthirsty crowd, there would be no need for extra protection. And this difference tells you everything you need to know about why there will never be peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
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The Palestinians’ demonic hatred of Jews knows no bounds and predates the demolition of Gaza. There are absolutely no conditions in which Palestinians would agree to live side-by-side with a Jewish state of Israel. They have been very clear at home and in the West: they want a country “from the river to the sea” that is completely Judenrein. They don’t want any Jews around and they don’t want any state of Israel, however small or potentially vulnerable. Their hatred is so intense, so white-hot that you have Hamas murderers serving as bodyguards to get people who have been starved, raped, and tortured safely out of Gaza. Meanwhile, when the real murderers leave Israeli jails, there is nothing more than possibly a quiet protest next to the prison entrance. There is no attempt to get at the terrorists or threats to kill them. Most Israelis, when polled, say that they would like to find some solution that leads to a prosperous Israel and a successful Palestine. Since the Palestinians do not buy into this formula, there is no solution for two states. The UN, Russia, Arab states and until last week the U.S. all talk about a “two-state solution.” Send them video of the bedlam that surrounded the exiting hostages. There is no place to start building such an outcome.
The only option for Israel is management, and by that I mean that Israel needs to create conditions both in Gaza and in the West Bank that simply makes it impossible for Palestinians to harm the Jews they hate. People talk about getting rid of Hamas, but the entire population of Gaza hates Israel and the Jews, so even if one could magically make Hamas go away, the raw hatred of the population—which is expressed in interviews with Gazans—will guarantee that there will be no peace agreement between Israel and any representative body of Palestinians. Israel needs to defang Gaza and also the West Bank, where a lot of Iranian weaponry flows via the open frontier between Israel and Jordan. Israel needs to protect its citizens and interests from Palestinian terror and nihilism. There is nobody to talk to, so just hang up the phone and make sure that you have plenty of weapons and strategic advantages to deal with the Palestinians.
As the Palestinians have been brainwashed for generations that Israel stole a nonexistent country of Palestine, they cannot back down from their position that Israel must be destroyed. Have you seen during the past 15 months a single protest in the West that demanded two states? I haven’t. Everything has been “from the river to the sea.” There is no middle ground for these people, so Israel should either choose to shut shop or fight for its right to exist safely alongside the other nations of the world. This is a zero-sum game. Any strengthening of the Palestinians is a direct threat to Israel and its 10 million inhabitants. Anything Israel can do to make future Palestinian rocket fire or terror attacks impossible means that the Palestinians will remain in a permanently weakened condition. There is no middle ground, and with the Palestinians, there is nobody with whom to negotiate. The Palestinian Authority (PA) is the same as Hamas except that it lies and says that it wants peace.
The transfer of people between Hamas and Israel tells you all you need to know about the region. The Palestinians would kill the long-suffering captives if certain Hamas terrorists did not protect them. The scenes of hostage release are chaotic and terrifying. It only takes one lunatic to kill someone waiting nearly 500 days to go home. In Israel, the release of actual criminals occurs quietly, with zero violence. There are no blood-curdling calls for death and revenge. The Palestinians do not want peace; they only bray for more Jewish blood. Israel needs to protect itself, even if it means periodic drone attacks and army incursions into dense Palestinian areas. Israel has the right to exist in peace; weakening the Palestinians for years to come will have to be an active part of the program to achieve it.
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