Times of Israel – “For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas”

Obviously there are millions of Israelis who support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom, after all, has occupied that office longer than any of his predecessors, and whom, despite credible charges of fraud and receiving bribes from wealthy business types – allegedly using his office to further their interests – was re-elected (after a short voter mandated hiatus) to serve yet again earlier in this year.

But just as clearly there are almost an equal number of Israelis who have had more than enough of the Trump-loving military hero who sees each of Israel’s challenges and adversities as nails and himself as a hammer.

In my post Sunday I featured an article from Haaretz News that outlines how Netanyahu’s quest – since regaining office – to weaken the Israeli Justice system that had attempted to hold him to account for his influence peddling, has cost him the support of many in the Israeli military and security services who still believe in… you know… Democracy… and whose opposition to the government as currently constituted has emboldened its enemies and possibly contributed to the decision to stage the horrific attacks of last Saturday.

Today’s featured article from The Times of Israel illuminates that Bibi has been playing a dangerous game with Hamas for some years now, allowing the organization- whose stated goal is to establish an Islamic Republic over the entirety of Israel- to hold sway over the Gaza Strip, while he and his right-wing allies colonize the West Bank in defiance of International Law and to the despair of its Palestinian inhabitants:

“For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.

The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.”

History buffs will remember that the West Bank, which is delineated by the Jordan River in the East and encompasses East Jerusalem, was set aside and originally designated by the 1947 UN Partition Plan as the home of a future Arab State.

Almost immediately the King of Jordan, perhaps not being the most trusting of men, saw no reason to leave that hopeful designation to chance and occupied the West Bank in 1948, when Israel was officially established, and annexed it proper in 1950, holding onto it until the Israeli Army took it from him in the 1967 war.

Proponents of the “Two State” solution to the Israel/Palestine conundrum have since sought to negotiate between the two parties to bring into existence what the UN wistfully imagined in 1947 – Israel and Palestine coexisting peacefully side by side as neighbors.

For… uh… various reasons… that has never quite worked out.

We’ll not engage here in that argument.

But whatever else the reasons, one roadblock to the realization of that perhaps utopian dream is the existence, in Israel, of powerful men and perhaps some women who think that Palestinians deserve no state at all:

“Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.

According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2018, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

“Prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

As the article goes on to point out master strategist Bibi’s ploy to purchase peace from Hamas whilst plundering the West Bank and sidelining the Palestinian Authority and Abbas was obliterated by the events of 10/7/23.

Before Saturday’s attacks, Hamas had so effectively lulled Bibi into complacency with it’s strategy of affecting peace while using foreign cash to stockpile weapons, that Netanyahu saw fit to transfer Army units from the border areas Hamas would soon terrorize north to The West Bank, where his – and his right wing partners’ predations – were ratcheting up tensions among the people for whom the UN’s 1947 Plan for peace has never really worked out.

Here’s hoping that after Israel sorts out Hamas, who are probably currently hiding out in their concrete tunnels waiting for the IDF to come and get them as their women and children above are bombed indiscriminately, it will see that it is time for new leadership and long past time to earnestly engage and give the UN plan a try.

I may not know much but I know this:

There can be no Two-State solution without a second state.