(Telegraph-UK) Charles Moore - The massacres committed by Hamas on Oct. 7 change everything. Most obviously, they change the attitudes of Israelis. If a paramilitary organization in a neighboring territory uses that territory as the base from which to enter your country and commit rape, kidnapping and mass murder of your citizens, no government can continue as before. Everything must give way to the need to disable, disarm, and, if possible, destroy that terrorist organization. A government that talks about a "two-state solution" would be wandering into the realms of fiction. What would a Palestinian state look like and who on earth would run it? How could the attempt to create such a state after the Hamas massacres, and after so many failures with less extreme Palestinian interlocutors in the past, not look like a capitulation to the worst actors in the region? It seems that, for some time, Israel had been operating in the belief that Hamas might be moving quietly towards a more peaceful path. The policy that began with Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 was based on an idea which now seems to have been almost literally shot to pieces. Although the surrounding Arab states loudly condemn Israeli attacks on Gaza, most of them want Hamas defeated. The "two-state solution" at this juncture perpetuates the idea that ground must be given "on both sides." This might ultimately be true of a settlement in the region one day. But to suggest that Israel must concede something because more than 1,000 of its civilians have been murdered in cold blood is the inversion of morality and an incentive to further Islamist atrocities.
2023-12-21 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive