POLITICS: Gaza must reject terror of Hamas for war to end

How do wars end?

There is a modern belief that they end around a negotiating table.

In fact, historically, most wars end by one side winning and the other side losing.

Critical to this is that the side that has won knows that it has won, but that the side that has lost knows that it has lost.

Which brings me to the Middle East.

Over the past 15 months, since Hamas invaded Israel and Hezbollah attacked from the north, Israel and its enemies have been in a full-on conflict. The Revolutionary Islamic Government in Iran has been funding and organizing a multi-pronged attack to destroy the Jewish State. And they have failed.

Now, as some Israeli hostages are being returned and an uneasy pause in hostilities continues, some people think that the war might be over.

But it is not — and it should not be.

Not just because the hostages — including the American hostages — ALL need to be returned home. And not just because Hamas still has an active presence in Gaza. As demonstrated by their sick publicity stunts while releasing some female hostages.

No — the reason why the war shouldn’t be over is because it cannot be over until the people who started the war have lost. And are forced to realize that they have lost.

That is why I was so encouraged this past week by comments from President Trump where he talked about clearing people from the Gaza strip.

His comments have caused howls from around parts of the Arab world and some of the oh-so-progressive countries in Europe and elsewhere. Some of these people have pretended that Trump’s comments are somehow “genocidal.” As though saying that a population should move is somehow “ethnic cleansing” and much more.

But it is no such thing. Recommending that a population might move from where they are living is not the same thing as killing them. That should be obvious to anyone. More important is that his comments change the possible terms of the post-war landscape.

Hamas has ruled Gaza pretty much ever since Israel withdrew from it in 2005. Within living memory the strip was ruled by Egypt. But strangely enough today the Egyptians do not want the Arabs in Gaza to be part of Egypt. Just as the Jordanians seem never to have wanted to welcome the Arabs who live in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).

It is almost as though they know something that we do not. Which is that these are highly radical populations. Every country that has taken in the Palestinians — including their leadership — has always had terror come in their wake. That has been the case for Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon among others. The Arab and Muslim world that claims to support the Palestinians does not in fact care for them. They mostly distrust them.

And you can understand why.

Look at the way in which the Palestinians in Gaza voted for a known genocidal terrorist group to govern them. Look at the way in which they celebrated the attacks of October 7th just as they celebrated the 9/11 attacks on this country.

Look at the way that even now mobs of Gazans and Hamas terrorists surround the terrified female hostages as they are released.

Is there a chance that this lovely population that so enjoys terrorizing Jewish girls could suddenly become a lovely, pluralistic group of people? I’d say not.

Still the best post-war plans that anyone has been able to come up with seems to include the Palestinians being allowed to start all over again in Gaza. Which means the same thing happening again and again.

It will take many years to rebuild Gaza, whoever is there. It will take years not just because of the devastation — which I have seen with my own eyes. But because to even start to rebuild the Gaza strip you would have to strip out and fill in the hundreds of miles of tunnels that Hamas used Western taxpayer money to construct all these years. There isn’t an area in Gaza that hasn’t got a tunnel system underneath it, built by Hamas to move around in and store weapons in.

How long will it take to remove all the bombs and boobytraps that Hamas has stockpiled in Gaza? How long will it be before anyone could be persuaded to put money into the area?

And in the meantime where should the population go?

President Trump has floated the idea that the Gazans could go to Egypt or Jordan. But I would like to extend that offer. Why not offer them to Ireland, Canada, Pakistan, and all those other countries that profess to care so much for the Palestinians? If they want these terrorist-supporters so much why shouldn’t Dublin, Toronto and Islamabad benefit from their presence? I´m sure the Palestinians will help these countries boom. In their own traditional ways.

Perhaps at some point they could return to Gaza when they have learned how to govern themselves or be governed by someone else.

But here is the thing. The citizens of Gaza mainly supported Hamas when Hamas started a war to annihilate Israel. And while Hamas has mostly lost — it has not yet lost completely.

Yet they must lose — completely. And if that means that they are no longer allowed to live in their enclave of terror then so be it. There is no law of war that says you are allowed to keep waging wars, keep losing them, and then be allowed to do it all over again.

In fact, if you start a war that you then lose, you usually also lose all or most of the territory you started it from. That is not only right, but the only language that these terrorists and their masters understand.

And isn´t it just the best possible rider that all those losers on American college campuses who supported Hamas might now have their student visas withdrawn and so see the consequences of their actions first-hand, perhaps for the first time in their lives.

It’ll be a learning curve and a life lesson.

The lesson being that there are consequences to backing the losers. And for being them.