According to the minutes of a meeting of high-level Hamas leaders, discovered in the course of a recent IDF operation in Gaza, the terrorist group launched their Oct. 7, 2023 savage attack in order to derail peace negotiations between Israel and Saudi Arabia that were threatening to marginalize the Palestinian pursuit of an independent state.
In fact, the report merely confirms what many of us had assumed to be the case all along. But there can now no longer be any doubt that recognition of a Palestinian state would be to reward unspeakable depravity and therefore unthinkable. Yet the breathless American courting of Arab states who were previously largely unconcerned about the Palestinian future, has empowered them to now insist on the establishment of a Palestinian state. And why wouldn’t they, if only to avoid being criticized for indifference to Israel’s serious response to Oct. 7 which has fueled Arab anger, however unjustified that anger is.
As reported exclusively by the Wall Street Journal, days before the Oct. 7 assault that left nearly 1,200 dead, Yahya Sinwar, then Gaza’s chief, told top Hamas leaders that an “extraordinary act” was required to derail the normalization talks that he said risked the eclipsing of the Palestinian cause.
The goal, Sinwar said, was “to bring about a major move or a strategic shift in the paths and balances of the region with regard to the Palestinian cause.”
The minutes – from an Oct. 2, 2023 meeting – also quote Sinwar as saying, “There is no doubt that the Saudi-Zionist normalization agreement is progressing significantly,” and that a deal would “open the door for the majority of Arab and Islamic countries to follow the same path.”
Nor is the issue solely a matter of disgust with Hamas’s wanton killing and maiming. They continue to engage in human trafficking, making demands for the release of people they kidnapped. Is this the sort of thing a civilized world can accept, much less incentivize?
And then there is the experience with the 2005 Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip, turning it over to the Palestinian Authority. Hamas overwhelmed the P.A. and made Gaza a hub of terrorism against Israel. No matter the rhetoric, does anyone really doubt that it will reprise that role and takeover of any established Palestinian state no matter how many promises it makes not to?
Can the knowing establishment of a center for terrorism ever be morally correct? We think not, and are confident that President Trump will continue to agree, notwithstanding the mounting billions – perhaps trillions – of reasons the Saudis and other Gulf states are giving him to change his mind.
