Tel-Chai Nation

Ben Weingarten brings up the serious issue the Trump administration appears to be ignoring:

The Trump administration’s “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict” aims to consolidate these gains — securing and stabilizing the region through Israeli and Arab burden-sharing — consistent with Trump’s broader Middle East approach. But the president’s ultimate ambitions could be threatened by the many challenges inherent to the conflict.

The first and perhaps seminal point of the plan is that “Gaza will be a deradicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors.” Subsequently, the plan speaks to an end to the war, the surging of aid, demilitarization, governance plans, economic development, and security considerations — suggesting that all of these factors will prevent Gaza from once again becoming a terror enclave.

But the blueprint is largely silent on the animating ideology that made Gaza a jihadi haven in the first place. As President Trump noted in his press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealing the pact, the current war’s origins can be found in the Palestinian Arabs’ election of Hamas to rule Gaza after the Jewish state had turned the strip over to them. Hamas’ aims and means were of course well-known to the Gazans, who chose to be represented by the Muslim Brotherhood arm, promising genocidal Jew-hatred and jihadism rooted in Islamic supremacist ideology.

Despite the fact Hamas’ rule led to two decades of violence, repression, corruption, and ultimately Gaza’s destruction during the war that Hamas provoked, there is little to suggest the population that put the jihadis into power and that in large part collaborated with them on and after Oct. 7 has suddenly recanted its views. Opinion polls conducted among Palestinian Arabs since have shown overwhelming support for the barbaric attack and violence to achieve geopolitical goals generally, a preference for Hamas’ leaders over alternatives, and opposition to disarming Hamas and expelling its leaders to stop the war.

The Gaza plan is silent on how it would address this problem, suggesting a belief that changes in material conditions, new political leadership, and the disarming of jihadists will suffice. President Trump may simply be presenting a choice to the Palestinian Arab population and those who will be governing it: Between peace and prosperity rooted in rational self-interest, or perpetual war rooted in religious fanaticism and the imperative to conquer, dominate, and make all infidels submit. The latter position’s historical prevalence could threaten the president’s best-laid plans.

Well see, this is precisely why adherents to the Religion of Peace don't belong in such regions, period. The same "community" of Muslims also celebrated 9-11 a quarter century ago, and we're literally supposed to overlook that? To do so is hugely ill-advised and dangerous. Read the whole item to see why what's being managed now is not going to ensure peace in the region at all.

All that aside, it should be noted that Trump's opposition to Israel fully annexing Judea/Samaria is offensive and embarrassingly bad:

President Trump has warned Israel it could lose all U.S. support if it moves forward on efforts to annex territory in the West Bank, as the Israeli government advances legislation aiming to formalize its sovereignty over settlements in the region.

Trump, in an interview with Time magazine conducted Oct. 15 and published Thursday, said he could cut off U.S. assistance to Israel if it moves forward with annexation.

“Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened,” he said.

“It won’t happen. It won’t happen. It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries. And you can’t do that now,” the president continued. “We’ve had great Arab support. It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries. It will not happen.”

Echoing Trump’s warning, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said before he traveled to Israel that annexation would threaten the U.S.-mediated ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that was put in place earlier this month.

Seriously, this is very disturbing, and no more appropriate than if a Democrat politician made the same statements. And let's not forget Trump's administration granted validity to Ahmed al-Sharaa as a despot in Syria, and removed him from the list of wanted terrorists. What's horrific about this is that it assumes that what's wrong for a Democrat-led administration to do is literally okay for a Republican-led administration to do. Seriously, is that acceptable? It should also be noted that, if Saudi Arabia, even now, hinges a peace treaty upon establishment of a palestinian state, that too is reprehensible and demeaning to Israel, so I'm not bothered that Bezalel Smotrich had something to say about it:

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Thursday that he wouldn’t agree to a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia if it meant the establishment of a Palestinian state, disparagingly saying the Saudis could “keep riding camels.”

“If Saudi Arabia tells us ‘normalization in exchange for a Palestinian state,’ friends — no thank you. Keep riding camels in the desert in Saudi Arabia, and we will continue to develop with the economy, society and state and the great things that we know how to do,” Smotrich said, speaking at a conference called “Halacha in the Technological Era” organized by the Zomet Institute and the Makor Rishon newspaper.

Smotrich was denounced by several opposition leaders, who accused him of ignorance and causing harm, said he did not represent Israel, and demanded he apologize.

The far-right Religious Zionism party leader apologized a few hours later, with a caveat: “My comment about Saudi Arabia was absolutely inappropriate, and I apologize for the insult it caused,” he said. At the same time, he added, “I expect from the Saudis not to do us harm and not to deny our heritage, our tradition and the rights of the Jewish people to its historic homelands in Judea and Samaria, and to establish true peace with us.” [...]

Riyadh has long insisted that it will only normalize ties with Israel if Jerusalem agrees to establish a time-bound, irreversible pathway to a future Palestinian state — a condition Smotrich and other members of Netanyahu’s right-wing government vehemently oppose.

Saudi Arabia immediately denounced the Knesset’s Wednesday vote in favor of the annexation bills, saying they were aimed at “legitimizing Israeli sovereignty over illegal colonial settlement.”

Well if this is how the Saudi government's going to go about, that's exactly why an annexation needs to be done. They're taking a position that denies Israel's history, and delcares it illegal for Israelis to live in said areas. In other words, they're saying that making a peace treaty with Israel hinges entirely upon their demands, not ours. And Trump's okay with that? I'm sorry, this is very disturbing. The following is also extremely disturbing:

US President Donald Trump will “f**k” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if the Israeli leader jeopardizes the Gaza ceasefire deal, a US official said, according to a Channel 12 report.

Correspondent Barak Ravid, speaking in Hebrew on the network, says that a US official told him, “Netanyahu is walking a fine line with President Trump. If he keeps going, he’ll f**k up the Gaza deal. And if he f**ks up the deal, Donald Trump will f**k him.”

“In English, it sounds even cruder,” news anchor Yonit Levi noted at the end of Ravid’s report.

If even half of this is factual, that's vulgar and inappropriate, no matter what the political standings of the government official who said it, and it doesn't reflect well on the conduct of the Trump administration. Disagreement is one thing, but profanity is another. And even if envoy Steve Witkoff didn't make the same mistakes, that he would demand Israel's government release dangerous jihadists in exchange for hostages, as Weingarten also discusses in his op-ed, is equally troubling and sad.

Here's Fiamma Nierenstein's commentary on the subject.

Update: Daniel Greenfield warned a short time ago that what the Trump administration may be planning would suggest we've learned nothing from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Labels: anti-americanism, anti-semitism, dhimmitude, House of Saud, islam, Israel, jihad, Knesset, military, misogyny, Moonbattery, political corruption, racism, sexual violence, terrorism, United States, war on terror, White House