It doesn’t look like it to me. The main reason may be international public opinion. Hamas started this war by invading Israel and killing 1,400 Jews–mostly civilians and some soldiers. Then they captured about 230 hostages and took them back to Gaza. These hostages supposedly are being kept in the massive, underground, tunnel network that Hamas has created, mostly in northern Gaza. These combined tunnels are about 300 miles in length.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel yesterday to try to convince its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “pause” Israel’s assault in upon Gaza to allow for humanitarian aid into Gaza and efforts to free the hostages. But Netanyahu claims such a pause would benefit Hamas’ war effort.
Israel has announced it will completely destroy Hamas so it can never govern the Gaza Strip anymore. Israel says to do so it will destroy Hamas’ tunnel system. But that’s where the hostages likely are being kept. How’s that for PR, that Israel will kill the hostages in order to destroy the tunnels? Israel claims it is trying to reduce Gaza casualties. Israel also needs to be careful about fueling increasing antisemitism worldwide because of these increasing Gaza casualties. The whole situation looks terrible for Israel.
Last week, senior Hamas leader Ali Baraka, based in Beirut, Lebanon, said Hamas has a fighting force of 40,000. And he added it has 20,000 fighting forces from other factions. That might include Islamic Jihad fighters who are very active in Egypt’s northern Sinai. Baraka said “the fighters are underground, waiting for the battle.” I don’t see how Israel can win this unless it can get all Gaza civilians to leave northern Gaza. Already, Israel reportedly has killed about 8,000 Gaza civilians since October 7th.
The IDF reportedly is trying to create a demarcation line separating northern Gaza from southern Gaza. It is bombing northern Gaza, destroying the place. That is why it had warned northern Gaza citizens to flee to southern Gaza.
At the same time, this Israel-Hamas War in Gaza has emboldened Jewish settlers in the West Bank, which total nearly half a million, to increase their aggression toward Palestinians living there, who number about 2.7 million. The Israel Defense Forces control the West Bank, which the UN designates as “occupied territory.” But Israel does so in a cooperative agreement with the Palestinian Authority, which governs West Bank Palestinians. The IDF allows Jewish settlers to have armaments, such as guns and rifles, but it does not allow the same for Palestinians. That is why Palestinians in the West Bank can be more worried about their safety than Jewish settlers are.
This Israel-Hamas War in Gaza is making my alternative two-state proposal for a Palestinian state look more and more plausible. As the map on the front cover of my book reveals, it is a Palestinian state located only in the coastal plain as a very expanded Gaza Strip and Israel annexing all of the West Bank.
Yet, Hamas must go away! It is a terrorist organization, as the U.S. designates, that is committed to the extermination of the State of Israel. No way Hosea! It’s Hamas that is more likely to be exterminated, and possibly in the near future, than that the State of Israel must go away.
[Get Kermit’s book, Palestine Is Coming: The Revival of Ancient Philistia, at amazon.com. Learn more about it at kermitzarley.com by clicking here.]
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