Hamas Will Lay Down Arms If Palestinian State Is Formed

Create Palestine and Hamas Lays Down Arms

I’ve been saying this for a long time about Hamas and a Palestinian state. It is being reported today that Hamas—the governing authority of the Gaza Strip, where only Palestinian live—says it will lay down arms if a Palestinian state is created. From what I know, Hamas is not demanding it be located in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, thereby requiring Israel to pull back to 1967 borders.

G7 Recognizing Palestine Will Create Momentum to Solve this Conflict

This Hamas announcement comes at a strategic time since the G7—seven democratic nations that are among the wealthiest in the world—will soon meet to seriously discuss announcing support of the creation of a Palestinian state, something neither they nor any of their individual member states have ever done even though 147 nations out of 193 UN member states have announced recognition of the State of Palestine, some of these announcements reaching back into the last century. G7 members France, UK, and Canada are now saying they will recognize the State of Palestine—even though Palestinians do not have their own land in which to have a state—in September at the meeting of the UN General Assembly.

However, G7 member the U.S. has announced it will not participate in this G7 meeting since it is opposed to recognition of a Palestinian state, with which I strenuously disagree. The U.S. should have recognized a Palestinian state decades ago. And it should have punished Israel, its ally, for allowing unlawful Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which is along with the Gaza Strip “occupied territory” according the UN and thus according to international law. But we have a lot of foolish Americans who have no respect for the UN or international. Without them, this world would be worse. Is the UN perfect? Of course not. Are all those fools perfect in living their lives? I don’t throw out the baby with with the bathwater, but they do.

The Trump administration is heavily involved in a program of eliminating anti-Semitism in U.S. institutions. I am very much against anti-Semitism. However, I believe that due to this U.S. history of failing to recognize a Palestinian state, the U.S. has for many years been anti-Palestinian. But our nation does not discuss that.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump argue that recognizing the State of Palestine now would reward Hamas’s terrorism. Baloney! See my post on this argument a few days ago.

Hamas Is a Terrorist Organization Needing to Go

The U.S. has for a long time identified Hamas as a terrorist organization, with which I agree. Hamas is an armed, radical Islamic organization that advocates in its charter the annihilation of the State of Israel. As a Christian, I wholeheartedly support the existence of the State of Israel.

However, I am a strong critic against Israel in its prolonged intransigence in solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I insist that Palestinians are just as entitled to their own nation in The Levant as Jews are. That is loving your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19.18; cf. Matthew 5.44; Mark 12.31).

Hamas has been governing the Gaza Strip ever since 2007. Hamas I have been saying various things since 1993 about laying down its arms against Israel if certain conditions were met. It then said it would do so if Israel returned to the 1967 borders, in which pretty much only Palestinians lived in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. It is these two separated territories where Palestinians have wanted to create a Palestinian state.

The State of Palestine Will Be in the Coastal Plain

I wrote a book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, published in 1990, entitled Palestine Is Coming: The Revival of Ancient Philistia. In this book, I argue that a Palestinian state in the two separated territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has always been a non-starter for solving this conflict. I strongly support the concept of a two-state solution as the only way this conflict will ever be solved. But I argue that Palestinians have always been misguided in where they want their state to be. Why?

First, it leaves Israel too vulnerable to defend itself.

Second, religious Israeli Jews are adamant about their nation being located in “Judea and Samaria,” which surprisingly is where the West Bank is located. Thus, they will not relent from advocating for the complete annexation of the West Bank to Israel. Many of them live in Jewish settlements in the West Bank for this very reason. They feel that in doing so, they are obeying a biblical, divine commandment to secure possession of Eretz Yisrael.

Third, this proposed Palestinian state is based solely on demographics, meaning that is where Palestinians have lived. I don’t believe that is a good reason, though it would be the least costly initially. However, with this arrangement both nations would be most vulnerable security-wise and therefore in the long run it would prove the worst.

Fourth, when Jews declared their nation in 1947, they did so in a two-page document that became their Proclamation of Independence. In it they argue their right to their “ancestral land,” which is defined therein as Eretz Yisrael. Their ancestral land is not the so-called Promised Land, which many Bible believers are confused about. Rather, the Jews ancestral land is where their nation existed in antiquity. And that was alongside the nation of “the Philistines,” from whom Palestinians derive their name.

Israel Will Annex the West Bank and the State of Palestine Will Be a Very Expanded Gaza Strip

Finally, I believe there is now a good chance for momentum, spurred on by Israel’s devastating war in Gaza that has resulted in over 60,000 Palestinian deaths, to snowball in support of the creation of a Palestinian state. But I maintain that there needs to be serious discussion on its location being somewhat other than the traditional two-state solution being in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. I propose that nations recognizing a Palestinian state put on the table for negotiation that it be the Gaza Strip and a proposal for a land swap in which Israel will annex all of the West Bank in exchange for the Palestinian state becoming a very expanded Gaza Strip.