OK. So let’s say Israel agrees to a full IDF withdrawal, permanent end to hostilities, and all other Hamas demands in return for a full Hamas return of all living Israeli hostages plus, let’s say, all dead hostages plus, let’s even say, the body of Hadar Goldin. (Does anyone remember him except for his family and me? I am sure they do, and IDF soldiers recovered the body of the other soldier’s body held since then, but in the wake of events, no Israeli government, nor even my favorite two cabinet ministers, ever mention him.)
Think of the Left’s favorite mantra: The leaders of the anti-Netanyahu Israeli Left — Naftali Bennett, Gadi Eisenkot, Yair Lapid, Yair Golan, and Benny Gantz (remember who he used to be?) — amplified by Israel’s legacy left-wing newspapers (Ha’aaretz, Maariv and Yediot Achronot), the three leftist mainstream TV channels, the Leftist Deep State (Shabak, Baharav-Miara, and the Supreme Court), and all the others who comprise the Israeli Left at Kaplan Square. The “B’khol M’chir” (“Give Up at Any Price, and Give the Destroyers Anything and Everything They Ask For”) crowd all love the mantra: “Bibi, What about ‘The Day After’?”
OK. What about “The Day After”?
Here is what will happen “The Day After” Israel gives in to France’s Macron, the UK’s Starmer and Lammy, Canada’s Carney, and the other Israel haters who run the Leftist “progressive’ governments of Europe. It is as certain as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. No exaggeration. No hyperbole. Simple reality:
1. The surviving Hamas leadership will gather in town squares, such as exist, throughout Gaza, celebrating and shooting rifles and rockets into the night. They will be mobbed by perfectly well-fed Arabs joining in the celebrations. They will celebrate that the Yahud (Jew) has left. They will celebrate that they survived the Yahud and his threats to destroy them or even to disarm them and force them to leave. The Yahud — gone. Hamas — still in full regalia and full dominance.
2. They will set up platforms and stages as they did when they conducted their public hostage releases, and they will put on a show. More celebrations, more gunfire, more well-fed Arabs.
3. The message will be clear to all Arab “innocent civilians” in Gaza: “Good thing we stood with Hamas and never joined an opposition because, one way or another, the Yahud was going to leave, and Hamas would be back in charge — taking unmitigated revenge on any and all who stood aside. Good that I stood with Hamas even though I blame them for all my suffering, even more than the Yahud. Because I knew they would outlast the Yahud and would settle scores when the Yahud leaves. The next time there is a war with the Yahud — and there surely will be — I again will stand with Hamas and will make sure they know it because the Yahud cannot or will not remove them, and we will be left to face their vengeance against those who stood aside.”
4. The same exact message will be derived in Judea and Samaria among Arabs living within the boundaries of the Arab Entity in Judea and Samaria (AEJS). They know that Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) is just about age 90 and will die soon enough, if not sooner, and Hamas will take over the AEJS, too. Having seen Hamas survive two years of Israeli devastation, they will draw the same lessons for Judea and Samaria: Hamas, one way or another, will outlast the Yahud. This lesson likewise will be grasped by the leaders of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and of course Iran: Hamas will outlast the Yahud, and then they will settle other scores.
5. With Hamas back in unopposed power in Gaza, they will be slaughtering Gazan Arabs all over the Strip with blood flowing down the streets. Keir Starmer and David Lammy of the UK, Emanual Macron of France, Mark Carney of Canada, the Irish, the Spanish, and the Portuguese will call for calm. The U.N. will condemn Israel for not having established a functioning Arab civil government before leaving. The International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court will apologize that they have no jurisdiction over a non-signatory. The U.N. Human Rights Council will name Hamas to a seat on the Council’s executive, alongside Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, and the like. The New York Times will not publish a word about the Gazan slaughter, focusing instead on the Likud’s renewed focus on judicial reform within Israel’s Deep State, calling Netanyahu an anti-democratic tyrant.
6. “But won’t Hamas regret having lost so many leaders — Sinwar I, Sinwar II, Deif, Haniyeh, etc., etc., etc.?” No, not really. They are best understood as a real-life equivalent of the Klingons and Romulans of the first seasons of the original “Star Trek” TV series. That is not a joke nor the famous Rav Fischer wit. I am as serious as a humorless analyst of international law. They somehow have evolved culturally into Klingons and Romulans. Remember them? “The glory of death!” “The glory of the kill!” “Kirk, what makes us stronger than you is that you humans value life, but we value the supreme glory of death in battle!”
To that mental deviance within Hamas, add a theological belief that those who are killed in battle against the Yahud ascend to eternal joy in Valhalla where 72 virgins await them for eternity. They believe that. So, yes, they were slowed — but not utterly deterred — when Sheikh Yassin was blown up or “The Engineer.” Take a look at this list of Israeli assassinations. That’s a whole bunch of Sinwars, Nasrallahs, and Haniyehs, enough to fill a town. It slows them down. Deters some — perhaps many — from joining them. But it does not stop them, and it does not really depress them. They celebrate anyway. The glory of death when battling the Infidel: the Christian, the Great American Satan, the Yahud. From war/ceasefire after war/ceasefire after war/ceasefire:
– First Gaza War (2008-2009)
– October 7 War
So “the Day After” an Israeli full withdrawal will hardly be very helpful for the Zionist enterprise — or the civilized West. The more radicalized Arab Muslims of London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, and so many other cities in once-Christian Europe also will take note.
We know — as a fact — that five previous ceasefires with Hamas of Gaza resulted only in subsequent and harsher wars with them as they learned lessons from their previous encounters and failures, and gained new insights:
Build an entire Gaza-wide and Gaza-long tunnel infrastructure.Develop incendiary balloons, then rockets, then missiles, even paragliders.Get anti-tank missiles.Build more command infrastructure under hospitals, mosques, schools, cemeteries, and residential apartment structures.Focus more on taking hostages and then manipulating the psychological weaknesses of people.Weaponize local civilian hunger and the hypocrisies of Western liberal-progressive governments and the United Nations to force Israel and the U.N. to send in more-than-ample food and fuel supplies to nurture Hamas fighters and power the air conditioning, heating, and lighting in their terror tunnels.Leverage the Israeli and Jewish Left to break Israeli national will by joining with those who would destroy them to demand that Israel withdraw and cede to all Hamas demands “at any cost.”
Each ceasefire planted the seeds of the next more terrible war. That is The Day After.
And The Day After that.
The Likud leadership, trusting the IDF and its CoS, blew the many opportunities it had earlier in the war two years ago, especially during the first three months when the world would have accepted anything. That was the moment to cut off all food, all fuel, all water, all everything. That was the moment to expel at least the northernmost half or third of the Gazan population and to annex the territory outright (more accurately, to “liberate” it). I wrote it here many times then. That moment has passed, but the reality remains:
There is no choice but to win outright. The region must be demilitarized and Hamas disarmed, eliminated permanently from governance, and forced to surrender.
Adapted by the writer for Arutz Sheva from a version of this article that first appeared here in The American Spectator.
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