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Vice President J.D. Vance has been in the Middle East to push Israel and the other parties to follow through on Phase Two of the Trump peace plan to end the war Hamas started with Israel. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that the snag in full implementation of the plan lies with Hamas, and the states that support it, not the government of Israel.
As Khaled Abu Toameh, writing for our friends at the Gatestone Institute explained, “Anyone who believes that Hamas will voluntarily give up its weapons is living in a dream world. For the terror group, this would be tantamount to suicide. The terms "demilitarization" and "deradicalization" do not exist in Hamas's lexicon.”
According to President Donald Trump's plan for ending the war in the Gaza Strip, "all military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt. There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning."
Since the announcement of the plan, however, Hamas officials have repeatedly emphasized that their Iran-backed terror group, which started the war by attacking Israel on October 7, 2023, has no intention of laying down its weapons. Hamas evidently wants to hold onto its weapons so that it can continue its Jihad (holy war) against Israel and ensure its own continued control of the Gaza Strip.
The Times of Israel reported that on October 12th, Hamas political bureau member, Hossam Badran, told AFP that disarmament is totally ruled out and not negotiable:
“It is important to note that Hamas’s weapons are not the only ones. Today we are talking about weapons that are the weapons of the entire Palestinian people, and weapons in the Palestinian case are a natural thing and a part of history, the present, and the future.”
Badran also said that Hamas is ready to resume the fighting if needed:
“We hope that we will not return to (war), but our Palestinian people and the resistance force will undoubtedly confront and use all their capabilities to repel this aggression if this battle is imposed.”
Worse, said Mr. Toameh, “anyone who believes that Qatar and Turkey will force Hamas to dismantle its military infrastructure is also living in fantasy land.”
And Mr. Toameh is right, the involvement of Qatar and Turkey in the Gaza Strip is problematic because the two countries have always been supportive of Hamas. Both countries continue to provide shelter to several Hamas leaders and act as if they are its attorneys by constantly defending the terror group while condemning Israel.
However, the close ties between President Trump’s principal Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff and the ruling family of Qatar seems to have caused such obvious warnings to fall on deaf ears.
In the meantime, Israel released 1,968 terrorists who were being held in the prisons of Ketziot and Ofer, belonging not only to Hamas but also to Fatah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
These terrorists will most likely take up arms again and kill more Israelis, just like in previous agreements with numbers disproportionately favorable to terrorists, such as the 2011 deal that led to the release of 1,027 in exchange for the soldier Gilad Shalit. Among the released prisoners was Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind the massacre of October 7, 2023.
It is therefore unclear how the release of nearly two thousand terrorists can contribute to a “peace plan”, especially considering the bloodshed caused by previous exchanges.
President Trump’s urge to create a peaceful world is laudable, and we support it. However, as Giovanni Giacalone, a senior analyst in Islamist extremism and terrorism at the Italian Team for Security, Terroristic Issues and Managing Emergencies at the Catholic University of Milan, observed, “…anyone who knows Hamas is well aware that its goal is the destruction of Israel, and it will never give up fighting because the foundation of its creed is suicidal fanaticism.”
Hamas leaders said they will repeat an October 7-style massacre, and they mean it. Hamas is not a political actor; it is a terrorist organization, and as such, it can’t be negotiated out of existence, it will eventually have to be eliminated.
- American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)
- Cenk Uygur
- Hostage release
- President Donald Trump
- Rabab Abdulhadi
- Oct 7 Hamas Terror Attack
- Trump foreign policy
- Rebuilding Gaza
- Ceasefire
- Knesset
- Gaza peace plan
- Trump diplomacy
- Sharm el-Sheikh summit
- Inbar Hayman
- Hamas terrorists
- Disarming Hamas
- Hamas mobilization
- Israel existence
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