Over the weekend, a ceasefire
took effect, ending—for now—the three-day war between US-designated terrorist
group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Israel. It is a testament to how far
the fortunes of the Palestinian cause have fallen that a scroll through the New York Times app (top to bottom)
doesn’t touch the story. Here’s what this brief conflict teaches us:
- The fate of “Palestine” is in the hands of the
most extreme elements in Palestinian politics. Fatah, the party of Palestinian
president-for-life Mahmoud Abbas, has hewn the middle road—some terrorism, some
extremism, some corruption, some cooperation with Israel, lots of
grandstanding, not much governance. Hamas, the terror group that controls the
Gaza Strip, has been hard put to govern; its popularity has shrunk as the group
has failed to deliver any tangible improvements. Hamas blames the Jews; Hamas’
subjects are quietly unsure whether the Jews are to blame, or just Hamas. They
don’t dare say so. Terrorism is what Hamas is good at, but it has been outbid
by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. PIJ has been behind a continual stream of killings
in recent years, and its sponsors in Iran have been pleased. As a result, the
Israeli government decided to take out PIJ’s top two leaders. Short war,
several dozen deaths in Gaza, end of war. - Iran plays the United States for a fool. This is
not news, but Tehran’s efforts to elevate PIJ should not go unnoticed in
Washington. The leadership of the Islamic Republic is not interested in the
fate of Palestine; it is interested in the fate—the eradication—of Israel. As
the Biden administration prostrates itself before Iran’s nuclear negotiators in
Vienna, the Tehran regime ups the ante in Gaza, spending money, funneling arms,
and otherwise seeking to embroil the Middle East in war once again. PIJ is its
tool for the moment, but it has many others. That’s why concentrating only on
nuclear Iran, and not on terrorist Iran, missile-proliferating Iran, human
rights–denying Iran, is a mistake. - Land for peace is not a serious option. There
are any number of excuses to explain away why Israel’s wholesale withdrawal
from Gaza in 2005 did not earn Jerusalem peace. It didn’t solve the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Israel still controls Gaza’s borders; the West
Bank is still regularly subjected to Israeli writ; the question of Jerusalem is
unsolved, etc., etc., etc. Israelis have their parallel complaints about
Palestinian governance, terrorism, extremism, subjugation to Iran, etc., etc.,
etc. But here’s the bottom line: It won’t matter how much land Israel gives up,
because Palestinian maximalists own the decision-making, and they and their
sponsors’ goal is the destruction of the State of Israel.
None of these conclusions are Earth shattering—perhaps why the New York Times is more concerned with Caroline Kennedy’s visit to Guadalcanal. But they underscore a painful reality: The issue of a free, sovereign Palestine will not be solved, and the fate of the Palestinian people is increasingly a matter of indifference to everyone.
The post A Short War in Gaza appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.