The death of Haniyeh, a significant figure in Hamas’s political and diplomatic structure, has raised serious questions about the future of ongoing ceasefire negotiations. American officials had recently indicated that these talks, mediated by Qatar, the United States, and Egypt, were close to yielding a temporary ceasefire and a potential hostage release deal.
However, the assassination has cast doubt on the feasibility of these efforts moving forward.
Sure. It was hard after WW2 with Germany and Japan. America literally nuked two Japanese cities, more or less wiping them from the map, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, many orders of times greater than have been killed in this defensive war by Israel.
But we managed to do it.
We did in fact succeed in both countries in deradicalising them and now they’re both thriving democracies.
This would only be true if you had literally zero clue about the extent of Hamas’ physical embeddedness within the infrastructure of Gaza. They’ve had 17 years to turn the entire strip into a deathtrap. Particularly easy to do that when they don’t care about Palestinian civilians. They’re all just ‘martyrs’, as Haniyeh agreed.
Does Israel want a Palestinian state? No, not really. Especially not after October 7th. But it was willing to go along with that in the 1990s after the First Intifada made its point with dignity. In December 2000, they accepted President Clinton’s offer to the Palestinians of a two-state solution, with a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem, some minor landswaps for the largest WB settlements, Palestinian airspace sovereignty, shared custody over the Temple Mount, etc.
The response was that Arafat walked away and launched the Second Intifada, a multi-year onslaught of wave after wave of suicide bombers, mass shootings, driving vehicles into crowds, bombing restaurants, and slaughtering schoolchildren. The Palestinians also had the distinction of inventing an entirely unprecedented form of terrorism: they pioneered the use of children as suicide bombers.
The Israeli left, which had pinned its colours to the ‘land for peace’ strategy which had worked with Egypt (Sinai) and Jordan, has never recovered from the Palestinian Second Intifada. The Intifada only ended when Israel created the walls and security checkpoints across and around the West Bank, the same thing which Palestinians today so hate. Well, guess what, maybe you should have made better choices…
So does Israel today want a Palestinian state? No. Why would they? They offered one in 2000 and got wave after wave of suicide bombers. They pulled out of Gaza unilaterally in 2005 and gave the Palestinians a democratic election. They elected Hamas, which culminated in October 7th, the single worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. You’ve got the West Bank where the PA and UNRWA teach children how to count and do geometry by talking about firing rockets at Tel Aviv.
In a future scenario where the Palestinians were willing to live in peace next to Israel? Many Israelis would still say yes. But nobody in Israel thinks that’s ever going to be the actual scenario, and if they did then October 7th more or less decided that one for them.