#WTH Two years after October 7, there is no path to peace

That is what Donald Trump is missing

Tomorrow is October 7, and I would like to use the occasion to discuss the problem of peace. Right now, there is a sense of cautious optimism because Hamas has “accepted” the Trump plan that envisions the return of all hostages, dead and alive, and provides for the disarming of Hamas, its exile from Palestinian politics, and more. You can find excellent analyses of the plan, its weaknesses, and its strengths elsewhere. I like Andrew Fox’s take here.

The sad truth, however, is that this is not a step forward on the road to peace. It is not a step forward to a “solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whether two-state or otherwise. There is only one solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Total defeat for the Palestinians currently in power. And that defeat isn’t on the cards.

Let me explain.

The creation of the State of Israel was the culmination of a long process that resulted in the division of the historic British mandate in Palestine that itself dated after the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World War I. There was never a state of Palestine. And there had not been, at least not since Roman times, a Jewish state in the homeland of the indigenous Jews of the Holy Land. But with the post-World War II race to end the colonial era, the UK was ready (with substantial violent encouragement) to bail on its mandate. And the UN took up the case, dividing the land between two states, Israel and “Palestine.”

From the moment of the United Nations’ partition plan’s adoption, November 29, 1947, those who would live in “Palestine” and their compatriots in the Arab world rejected the state’s creation. Why? Because the key was not the creation of “Palestine;” it was the rejection of the creation of the State of Israel. Remember, when the Palestine National Charter was adopted in 1964, it specifically renounced claims to the West Bank and Gaza. The aim of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which released the charter, was the destruction of the State of Israel.

Little has changed.

Before we turn to the Palestinian cause and its adherents, some more history. 1964 was before Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, before Jordan’s loss of the West Bank and Egypt’s loss of Gaza. In the years between the declaration of the State of Israel and that war, what was the status of those territories? They were under Jordanian and Egyptian sovereignty. What were “Palestinian” claims on them? None.

These territories only became important because of the Jews that suddenly ruled. And with the advent of Jewish dominion over the Egyptian and Jordanian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, the Palestinian cause suddenly found a platform that would resonate more deeply. Give us, they and their allies demanded, the West Bank, Gaza, and some part of Jerusalem, and we will make peace with the Jews.

This was always a lie. A palatable and necessary lie, but a lie nonetheless. The PLO leadership and its western front men, some well-intentioned and others less so, recognized that an incremental approach was tactically shrewd, and they embraced it. But as Bill Clinton said last year, again, “All [young people in America] know that a lot more Palestinians have been killed than Israelis. And I tell them what Arafat walked away from, and they, like, can’t believe it. [Arafat] walked away from a Palestinian state, with a capital in East Jerusalem, 96% of the West Bank, 4% of Israel to make up for the 4% [of the West Bank to be annexed for Israeli settlements].” And all of Gaza.

But Yasser Arafat was never meant to be the leader of a free, sovereign “Palestine.” He was a rebel leader, a terrorist, and later a terrorist fetishist who preferred cash to hijackings and war. He helped fashion the Palestinian Authority into what it now is in Ramallah — a kleptocratic, authoritarian rump uninterested in much beyond rhetoric and lucre. And killing Jews, of course. But not first and foremost.

It was the PA’s own corruption and dishonesty that fueled Hamas’s rise. The Israelis helped too, believing a little bit of competition would weaken the PA. This was insanity, playing with fire, and Hamas grew into a political force more respected and better liked than the original PLO gang. But Hamas had no intention of accepting Israel’s “right to exist within secure and defined borders” as the PLO had. Hamas, unlike the PLO, is part of something much larger. Where Arafat and his cohort were a stepped up street gang with questionable “Palestinian” bona fides, Hamas is a part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928. The ideology is at the heart of what animates al Qaeda and ISIS… and Hamas. These are what we once called Muslim fundamentalists. Are some of them grifters and thieves, afraid of death and willing to do business? Sure. They live in Qatar. In Gaza, there are more true believers. These true believers are not motivated by the prospect of a Palestinian state. That is merely a proximate, temporal goal. Their true motivation is the revival of Islamic domination. Their interim goal is the destruction of the Jewish state.

If you have two sides in a conflict, and the goal of one party requires the total destruction of the other, there can be no deal. They will not give up. They will wait. Hamas will melt into the background and reemerge at a time of its choosing, its goal the same as it has been for decades.

Does that mean a Palestinian state can never be?

Not now. Not soon. Hamas is not ended. Its ideology has not been tossed to the ash heap of history. Its supporters remain, in the West Bank and Gaza, and in the West. They will sustain Hamas, as it waits to fight another day.

What real estate moguls like Donald Trump and Steve Witkoff fail to grasp is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not about land. It is about ideas. And for as long as the Palestinian idea is built upon the destruction of the Jewish state, there will be no peace. It’s as simple as that.