In recent days, Hamas suddenly released the last living American hostage held in Gaza. What’s more, they did so without any kind of grotesque propaganda show (which is an actual war crime, Pallywankers). What spurred this apparent outburst of generosity?
It’s not the only sudden change of heart from Hamas.
Negotiations are also on track between Hamas and Israel for a pause in fighting that would see the release of additional hostages and allow humanitarian aid to resume entering Gaza after a two-month blockade, according to Arab officials. Israel will send a team to Doha, Qatar, on Tuesday as part of efforts to clinch a deal, the Israeli prime minister’s office said.
Take another note, Pallywankers: Israel is not ‘starving’ Gaza. A simple glance at a photo of porcine captured Hamas fighters is enough to dispel that ludicrous notion. But, in case you don’t believe your lyin’ eyes: the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification group of ‘experts’ concedes that Gaza isn’t headed for famine in the coming months.
Hamas know they’re on the ropes – and worse (for them) is coming.
Israel’s security cabinet last week approved a plan for a transition from the punitive operations and raids that have characterised Israel’s efforts in Gaza to date, to the taking and holding of territory.
The problem with the strategy to date is that it has failed to root out an ideology that is as deeply-rooted in Gaza as metastatic cancer. Like mosquitos, swat one Hamas fighter and two more pop out of a tunnel to take his place. Hamas has had decades to root itself in (and under) Gaza.
Contrary to the Pallywankers’ shrieking about ‘genocide’, the population of Gaza is increasing exponentially. Half the population is under 18 and Gazan mothers assiduously squeeze out new baby ‘martyrs’.
The screaming, hateful faces of the hordes of Gazans lined up to abuse and jeer at freed hostages only underscores the point: this is a population completely deranged by hate. Cleaning up this cesspit is going to make the decade-long de-Nazification of Germany look like a cakewalk.
Israel is girding its loins for the long haul of occupation.
The intention of the renewed operation, if started, will be to secure destruction of the Islamist authority that a complacent Israel allowed to emerge in Gaza in 2007-23 and that launched the massacres of October 7, 2023 […]
A key part of the new plan will be to relocate the Gazan population to an area below the corridor that Israeli forces have established between the Gazan cities of Rafah and Khan Younis. Israel envisages the establishment of an area between the Morag Corridor and Gaza’s border with Egypt, where the population will receive humanitarian aid.
The area will be secured by Israeli forces. This is intended to allow the IDF operational freedom of action in the remainder of Gaza.
Hamas, meanwhile, is finding itself progressively isolated. Its regional friends are either dead or desperate not to end up that way.
Israel scored considerable military achievements against Iran and its proxy militias in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. It succeeded also in preventing the outbreak of a major insurgency in the West Bank.
As a result, Iran’s proxies in Lebanon and Iraq have withdrawn from the fight.
Iran has been silent since Israeli retaliatory action on October 26, 2024. Syria’s Assad regime, a longstanding enemy of Israel, was toppled as an unexpected by-product of Israel’s successes against Lebanese Hezbollah.
The Houthis, as seen in the past week, are determined to continue the fight though their capacity to inflict harm on Israel is outweighed by Israel’s ability to respond.
Israel currently control about 30 per cent of Gaza. In the rest, Hamas remains brutally supreme. Those few Gazans even inclined to dispute Hamas’ rule are savagely dealt with.
The problem with [Israel’s] approach is it isn’t really possible to try to destroy a political authority and seek to negotiate with it at the same time. In the end, reality requires you will have to prioritise one goal or the other. During the past 18 months Israel has prioritised the issue of hostage releases while maintaining a level of military pressure. This approach has brought about the release of most of the hostages (while also freeing a large number of Palestinian terrorists from Israeli jails).
But it has failed to secure the demise of Hamas, which predictably has declined Israel’s invitation to dissolve itself by continuing to insist any agreement to end the fighting and secure the release of remaining hostages include an Israeli commitment to withdrawal and a long-term ceasefire. This would enable Hamas to proclaim victory. Israel rejects any such possibility.
The Nazis weren’t defeated by pleading with them to be a bit nicer. The brutal reality was that Nazism had to be crushed: if that meant bombing Germany to rubble, then occupying the ashes until Nazism had been thoroughly quashed, so be it.
Israel has no other realistic choice in Gaza. Anything else is, like Versailles, only guaranteeing worse calamity in the future.
