(JNS) Jonathan S. Tobin - When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first said that the objective of his nation's response to Oct. 7 was to eliminate Hamas, his comments were put down as rhetoric and not a serious policy. No matter how wrong Hamas had been to breach the border and commit mass murder, any response on Israel's part was doomed to failure. Every blow struck at Hamas would "create more terrorists." The "experts" are still convinced that the Israeli war against Hamas is unwinnable and that the Israelis had to concede defeat. The skeptics are right that the IDF is still a long way from complete victory in Gaza. Still, the notion that the Gaza tunnel complex is an impregnable fortress that cannot be destroyed or that Hamas gunmen are so clever that they cannot be killed or captured in the small geographic area of Gaza is nonsense. The Palestinians have rejected every compromise peace offer that would have given them statehood for the last 75 years. They don't see a peace that would give them a state as an "opportunity," if it means accepting the legitimacy or even the existence of a Jewish state, no matter where Israel's borders are drawn. The Western press has framed the Palestinians' war to destroy Israel as a conventional insurgency against a foreign occupier. But Israel can't simply pack up and leave as the Americans did in Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam. Gaza isn't halfway around the world from Israel. It's next door. And Hamas is never going to be satisfied with merely being the lords of an Islamist tyranny in Gaza. The current war wasn't caused by the Israeli "occupation" of Gaza because it wasn't occupied on Oct. 6. The Israelis withdrew every civilian and soldier from Gaza in 2005. Hamas' objective on Oct. 7 was not advancing the two-state solution. It was in continuing and winning the Arabs' century-old war on Zionism. The only path to peace is to be found in a decisive end to the war in which the Palestinians will be forced to rethink their objectives.
2024-01-01 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive