Der Spiegel, 24. Februar
Wegen Hamas-Inszenierungen: Entsetzen über Hamas-Video – Israel setzt Freilassung von Häftlingen aus
Geiseln gegen Inhaftierte – das ist Teil des Deals zur Waffenruhe im Gazakrieg. Israel stoppt nun die Freilassungen. Zwei israelische Geiseln mussten verzweifelt mit ansehen, wie Landsleute freigelassen werden.
Extraits:
Droht der Deal zwischen Israel und der Hamas zu platzen? Nach der Freilassung sechs weiterer israelischer Geiseln hat Israel die Entlassung palästinensischer Häftlinge verschoben. Das Büro des israelischen Ministerpräsidenten Benjamin Netanyahu begründete die Entscheidung mit der Inszenierung der Geiselübergaben der islamistischen Hamas im Gazastreifen. Es ist von »wiederholten Verstößen der Hamas« die Rede und einer »zynischen Ausnutzung unserer Geiseln für Propagandazwecke«.
Die für Samstag geplante Freilassung der »Terroristen«, wie es von israelischer Seite heißt, werde verschoben, bis die nächsten Geiseln »ohne demütigende Zeremonien« freigelassen werden. (…)
Israelische Medien verbreiteten am Abend zudem ein Propagandavideo der Hamas. Darin ist zu sehen, wie zwei israelische Geiseln von der Hamas gezwungen werden, von einem Fahrzeug aus die Freilassung ihrer Landsleute in Nuseirat aus nächster Nähe mitanzusehen, während sie selbst weiter in der Gewalt der Terrororganisation sind. »Dieser kalkulierte Akt der psychologischen Folter ist ein eklatantes Beispiel von Grausamkeit«, heißt es vom Forum der Geisel-Angehörigen.
In dem Videoclip rufen die beiden Geiseln demnach die israelische Regierung verzweifelt auf, für ihre Freilassung zu sorgen.
In dem Video sind laut israelischen Berichten die beiden jungen Männer Eviatar David und Guy Gilboa-Dalal in einem Fahrzeug im Bühnenbereich zu sehen, den die Hamas für die Freilassung der drei Entführten im Flüchtlingsviertel Nuseirat in Gaza aufgebaut hatte. Das Video ist laut der »Times of Israel« das erste Lebenszeichen von David seit seiner Entführung am 7. Oktober 2023 und das erste Lebenszeichen von Gilboa-Dalal seit Juni.
New York Times, February 22
Fate of Bibas Family Recalls Trauma of Oct. 7, Renewing Fears for Gaza Truce
Hamas said it had returned the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two sons. The Israeli military announced that the boys were murdered in Gaza and that Ms. Bibas’s body was that of someone else.
Extraits:
(…) On Friday, the Bibas’s lives and disturbing deaths were swept back to the forefront of Israel’s collective consciousness in such a startling and unsettling way that it set off fresh alarm about the fate of the fragile cease-fire in Gaza.
Early on Friday morning, the Israeli military announced that the body of Ms. Bibas — nominally returned, along with those of her sons, by Hamas to Israel on Thursday — appeared to be that of someone else. And an autopsy of the two boys, aged 4 and 8 months at the time of their abduction, revealed that they were killed by terrorists in Gaza, the military said.
Hamas, which had previously said they were killed in an Israeli missile strike, said in a statement that it was investigating the claims and suggested that Ms. Bibas’s body might have been mistakenly confused for that of a dead Palestinian in the chaotic aftermath of an Israeli attack. Neither side’s account could be independently verified.
The news set off a paroxysm of fury and agony in Israel rarely seen since the tumultuous days that followed Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, when up to 1,200 people were killed and 251 were abducted, including Ms. Bibas and her sons, on the deadliest day in Israeli history.
Responding to the military’s announcement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel returned to the language of vengeance that defined his speeches in the aftermath of that attack.
“May God avenge their blood,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a recorded speech to the nation on Friday morning. “And we will also have our vengeance.”
The seething tenor of Mr. Netanyahu’s response was maintained across much of the Israeli political spectrum. Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister, said in a broadcast interview that the Bibas’s treatment showed how “the majority of Gazans want to murder all of the Israelis.” (Polling last fall suggested that less than 40 percent of Gazan Palestinians supported the Oct. 7 attack, down from more than 70 percent early last year.) (…)
For some Israelis, the horror underlined the need to restart the war to defeat Hamas once and for all. The current truce is set to elapse in early March unless Hamas and Israel can agree to an extension. “The only solution is the destruction of Hamas, and this must not be postponed,” said Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister, in a post on social media.
But others called for calm, arguing that the fate of the Bibas family exemplified why the truce needed to be extended to bring home roughly 70 hostages still held, both dead and alive, in Gaza. (…)
Six living Israeli hostages are set to be released on Saturday, and analysts said it was unlikely that Israel would do anything to jeopardize their freedom. Hamas announced their names on Friday morning, projecting a sense of business as usual. (…)
The long-term future of the truce seemed less clear. Arab leaders were set to meet in Saudi Arabia on Friday to try to thrash out a proposal for Gaza’s postwar reconstruction that would allow for the peaceful transfer of power from Hamas to an alternative Palestinian administration.
But in Israel, analysts speculated that the government would rather expel Hamas by force.
“If it were up to Netanyahu and his far-right partners, then next week — upon the completion of the first phase of the deal, with the return of four more bodies of fallen hostages — the path would be paved for the resumption of the war in Gaza,” wrote Amos Harel, a commentator on military affairs for Haaretz, a left-leaning newspaper. “This time, they promise, without restraints.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-hamas-bibas-hostages.html
The Wall Street Journal, Editorial Board, February 21
Hamas’s Coffin Parade in Gaza
The terror group makes a spectacle out of remains of two young children taken on Oct. 7.
Full text :
As if the world needed more evidence of what Hamas is all about, the terrorists Thursday handed over what they said were the bodies of four dead Israeli hostages, including two young children, but only after using the coffins as part of a grisly propaganda event. Did any of the zealous Gaza protesters at American colleges happen to notice?
Kfir Bibas was a baby of 9 months when he was abducted 16 months ago, on Oct. 7, 2023. His brother Ariel was 4 years old. Their mother, Shiri, was kidnapped as well. All are reported dead. The fourth body returned Thursday was Oded Lifshitz, 84. Hamas transferred the remains to the Red Cross, which handed them over to the Israeli military.
But first Hamas put their coffins on a stage in front of a huge propaganda poster of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A crowd looked on and milled around, and “triumphant music” played, according to one news report. Mr. Netanyahu was depicted with fangs, dripping blood above the faces of the four dead hostages, smiling in photographs from happier times. “The War Criminal Netanyahu & His Nazi Army Killed Them with Missiles from Zionist Warplanes,” the poster claimed.
The coffin propaganda underlines the challenge of deradicalization for any postwar plan for Gaza. Hamas has asserted, without giving proof, that the children and their mother were killed in an Israeli strike. Early Friday morning, Middle East time, the Israel Defense Forces disputed this, saying a forensic analysis of the bodies suggests that “Ariel and Kfir Bibas were brutally murdered by terrorists in captivity.”
What’s more, according to the IDF: “The additional body received is not that of Shiri Bibas, and no match was found for any other hostage. This is an anonymous, unidentified body.” What will happen next is hard to predict. This weekend Hamas has been scheduled to free six more living hostages, the last expected under phase one of the cease-fire deal with Israel.
In any case, President Trump has made clear that the U.S. will back its ally against the killers in Gaza. Mr. Trump threatened that hell would break loose if Hamas didn’t release all of the hostages by last Saturday. That didn’t happen. “I told Bibi, ‘You do whatever you want,’” Mr. Trump said Sunday. “Because, you know, my statement was, ‘They got to come back now.’”
The Jerusalem Post, February 20
NYT coverage of war creates ‘imbalanced’ sympathy for Palestinian side, study finds
The study, published by Yale professor, Edieal Pinker, revealed that “Little mention is made of Israeli casualties post-October 7 or of Palestinian acts of violence post-October 7.”
Article intégral :
The New York Times‘s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war has generated “sympathy for the Palestinian people” while at the same time “diminishing Hamas’s responsibility for their situation and the continuation of the war,” according to a recently published study by Yale professor, Edieal Pinker.
With the aim of assessing imbalances in coverage that may influence readers’ views, Pinker carried out a quantitative analysis of 1,561 New York Times articles published between October 7, 2023 and June 7, 2024, that referenced both “Israel” and “Gaza.”
Pinker’s analysis indicated a “dominant narrative” that revolved around the number of Palestinians killed as a result of Israel’s military response to the October 7 Hamas attack rather than the losses on the Israeli side.
“Little mention is made of Israeli casualties post-October 7 or of Palestinian acts of violence post-October 7,” the study added, noting as well that “very few articles mention any Israeli suffering that is not directly related to the events of October 7.”
The study revealed that, in the articles studied, the word “Israel” was mentioned three times more frequently than “Hamas.”
Of the 1,561 articles in the sample, there were only 105 (7%) in which the number of times the word “Hamas” appeared was greater than or equal to the number of times the word “Israel” appeared.
In total, the word “Israel” appeared 27,205 times vs 8,499 for “Hamas” across all articles in the analysis.
Pinker’s study dismisses the argument that the reason “Israel” appears more is because the Jewish State has “more independence than the Palestinians and thus will have more freedom of action.”
If this were to be the case, he argued, there would be less of an imbalance in the ratio of mentions of Hezbollah and Iran. However, the data indicated the imbalance was the same.
Furthermore, while personal stories of Palestinian or Lebanese suffering are generally featured on two out of every three days, “it is common to go a week at a time without a single mention of IDF deaths even when such deaths were frequent.”
Pinker argued that the “net result of these imbalances and others is to create a depiction of events that is imbalanced toward creating sympathy for the Palestinian side, places most of the agency in the hands of Israel, is often at odds with actual events, and fails to give readers an understanding of how Israelis are experiencing the war.”
It is worth noting, as Pinker does, that the Times coverage of the war has been criticized from both the pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli sides. However, Pinker claimed that “academic works purporting to show an anti-Israeli or pro-Palestine bias in the media are rarer.”
Media bias since start of war
Pinker referenced a January 4 interview the Times held with former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, where he said he found it “astounding that for all of the understandable criticism of the way Israel has conducted itself in Gaza, you hear virtually nothing from anyone since October 7 about Hamas.”
Blinken questioned why there has not been a “greater sustained condemnation and pressure on Hamas to stop what it started and to end the suffering of people that it initiated.”
Pinker’s study is one of a few submitted since the war began months regarding international media outlets’ coverage of the Israel-Hamas War, several of which corroborate Blinken’s statements.
A now well-known September report into the BBC’s coverage, led by British lawyer Trevor Asserson, found a “deeply worrying pattern of bias against Israel” and that Israel was associated with genocide 14 times more than Hamas.
This led to the Asserson study’s conclusion that the BBC breached its editorial guidelines for news coverage more than 1,500 times since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas War.
The research also showed that BBC recognized Hamas as a terrorist organization just 409 out of 12,459 times, totaling 3.2%, over the four-month period.
On the other hand, an OSINT analysis carried out by American left-wing publication The Intercept in January 2024, which has also since been cited frequently, claimed that in the first six weeks of the war, the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, “showed a consistent bias against Palestinians.”
The Intercept‘s analysis at the time claimed the words “Israeli” or “Israel” appear more than “Palestinian” and that mentions of deaths of Israelis outnumbered those of Palestinians.
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-842801
The Jerusalem Post, February 20
Lindsey Graham to ‘Post’: Giving Israel leeway to destroy Hamas is non-negotiable
Graham to ‘Post’: If attempts to free the hostages fail, Jerusalem would have no choice but to eliminate the terrorist organization.
Extraits:
The administration of US President Donald Trump will give Israel free rein to hunt down Hamas, Sen. Lindsey Graham told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
“I think the Trump administration is going to give Israel the leeway to destroy Hamas because that’s non-negotiable.” That was the key message the Republican senator conveyed to his Israeli counterparts during his visit to Israel this week.
A strong supporter of Israel, Graham told the Post that if negotiations with Hamas and attempts to free the hostages fail, Jerusalem would have no choice but to eliminate the terrorist organization.
“I think they should go in and destroy Hamas, just as we destroyed the Germans and the Japanese. There is no future for the Palestinians until Hamas is gone,” he said on Monday in Tel Aviv. “No one in Washington has told me that they are restraining Israel’s ability to return to the fight if necessary.”
Graham, the senior Republican senator from South Carolina, led a delegation of six bipartisan senators who met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, and other senior Israeli officials. One of the main topics of discussion was Iran.
“I hope the US will provide Israel with the military capabilities it lacks to ensure it can deliver a knockout blow to Iran’s nuclear program,” he told the Post.
The senator believes that due to military operations over the past year and a half, Israel is now capable of delivering a decisive strike.
“I believe now is the time to eliminate the threat the world faces from a nuclear-armed Iran.”
Graham is not optimistic about Trump’s attempts to reach a diplomatic solution regarding Iran’s nuclear program.
“I think the likelihood of a successful negotiation in which the Ayatollah [Ali Khamenei] gives up his nuclear ambitions is almost zero,” he said, adding that he believes that Trump should set a deadline for diplomatic efforts and that he plans to write a letter to the president.
“I want to put it on a clock – give them 60 days and clearly outline what a good outcome would look like. In my opinion, it should be exactly like Libya, which completely abolished its nuclear program.”
Trump has been pressing Arab countries in recent weeks to support his plan to relocate Palestinians from Gaza to a housing project to be built in Jordan and Egypt.
“The US will own Gaza,” said the president, who outlined a vision for the full reconstruction of the mostly destroyed enclave under American supervision.
“I have no interest in owning Gaza. I have no interest in getting Americans involved in Gaza,” Graham told the Post. He is the only senior Republican publicly criticizing the plan. “There’s very little appetite in South Carolina for us to ‘own’ Gaza. But as a result of his statement, the Arab states are now engaging in ways they haven’t before, developing their own plans. So in Trump’s world, this is actually working.”
In recent years, Graham has been one of the leading American officials pushing for a normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel. As always, when meeting with the senator, I asked him about the chances of reaching such an agreement. “I think once you neutralize Iran’s nuclear ambitions and destroy Hamas, the likelihood of normalization is very high – about 80%.”
https://www.jpost.com/american-politics/article-842713
The Jerusalem Post, February 18
Should Israel execute Hamas terrorists for war crimes on par with the Nazis? – opinion
In some respects, Hamas is worse than Hitler’s Germany. Should Israel execute these terrorists at the first opportunity?
Full article:
I never imagined in my life that I would entertain such radical thoughts as those that have been swirling around my head recently. These are thoughts that make me question my own principles, my values, and the very essence of what it means to be human. They gnaw at me, filling me with a deep sense of sorrow, anger, and despair.
I have spent my entire adult life in the caring profession as a physician – 43 years to date of trying my best to help and to heal people. My duty has always been to preserve life, to alleviate suffering, and to mend broken bodies and fractured spirits. I have held hands with the dying, comforted the bereaved, and fought against illness and pain with every fiber of my being.
Whilst not particularly liberal in my politics, I have never been what one might call right-wing. I have always believed in justice, in morality, and in the rule of law. Yet, I find myself contemplating something I never thought possible: whether Israel should enforce the death penalty for terrorists. There! I have said it. And it does not feel good. It does not feel just. It does not feel like the world I once believed in.
How it feels is wrong and immoral. It is not man’s place to end another person’s life. And yet… I cannot suppress the overwhelming fury and grief that consume me when I see the horrors that have unfolded before our eyes. Hamas has sullied our souls.
When I watch the hostages being released among a frenzy of baying, masked, gun-wielding terrorists, paraded like trophies before a crowd that cheers their suffering, my stomach turns. When I see the few clips of videos I have dared to watch from October 7 – and I have not seen the worst of them by any means – I feel an indescribable pain that twists my soul.
WHEN I saw Eli Sharabi’s gaunt face – so hollow, so empty, so wasted – it was a face that would not have looked out of place at the liberation of Belsen. He had been reduced to a mere shadow of a human being, a living skeleton, stripped of dignity and hope. And then, the cruelest blow of all: he did not know his wife and daughters had been slaughtered. What kind of evil allows a man to live in such agony, unaware that his loved ones are gone?
When I looked into the empty eyes of Or Levy, a man whose wife was also murdered on that infamous day, I saw a void that could never be filled. A man who had been robbed not just of his beloved but of his very reason for being. And when I saw Ohad Ben Ami, his body so frail he could barely walk, I felt something within me break.
I begin to ask myself: do the perpetrators of these crimes deserve to be in this world at all?
Their continued presence contaminates society to the degree that perhaps their actions mean they forfeit the right to be called human. And if they are no longer human, do they deserve the rights we afford to humanity? Do they deserve the mercy they denied their victims?
Israeli law allows the death penalty for certain crimes – treason, genocide, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the Jewish people during wartime. Yet, the only execution that has ever been carried out in Israel’s history was in 1962 when Adolf Eichmann was hanged for his role in orchestrating the Holocaust.
Yes, Eichmann was responsible for millions of deaths. And these vile Hamas animals have been responsible for “only” thousands. But murder is not a numbers game.
Are the actions of those who carried out the October 7 massacres – who raped, beheaded, burned, and maimed innocent men, women, and children for one reason only: that they were Jews or Israelis – any different in qualitative terms from what the Nazis did? If this is not a crime against humanity, if this is not a crime against the Jewish people, then what is?
IN SOME ways, Hamas is worse than the Nazis. As horrifying as it is to say, at least some of the Nazis, even as they carried out their genocide, numbed themselves with alcohol and drugs, drowning in the abyss of their own evil.
These monsters, however, celebrate their atrocities. They take pride in their slaughter. They film their brutality and share it with the world, gleefully boasting about their heinous acts. They revel in their savagery, swearing to repeat their bloodshed again and again if given the chance.
And I am beginning to believe that they should not be given even half a chance.
By imprisoning them, we remain responsible for their welfare. We house them, we feed them, we keep them alive – all at the expense of a society they have vowed to annihilate. Why? What justice is there in that? They are undeserving of any welfare, of any protection, of any life.
Worse still, they become pawns in the grotesque and tragic bargaining that takes place – exchanged like currency for our innocent hostages, encouraging further kidnappings and atrocities. How many times must we endure the horror of our loved ones being snatched from us, knowing that their captors will one day be set free to kill again?
And perhaps the most damning truth of all: when they are released, they go back to the same terrorist activities and worse. Yahya Sinwar is the prime example – a man who was imprisoned, who should never have seen the light of day again, but was released in a prisoner exchange and went on to mastermind the very attacks that have shattered our world.
How many more lives must be lost before we acknowledge that our leniency is a death sentence for our own people?
OVER THE years, there have been calls from various sources to enforce the death penalty, the last serious attempt being in March 2023 when a bill was introduced in the Knesset to mandate execution for those deemed to be terrorists.
There will be many in this country who would never have contemplated such a move in the past but who are now reconsidering their position – who, like me, are thinking the unthinkable.
I am deeply saddened to say that I am one of them.
This is not who I wanted to be. This is not the world I wanted to live in. I wanted to believe in redemption, in justice, in humanity. But how do you hold on to those ideals when you are staring into the face of absolute evil?
The grief and rage are all-consuming. I do not recognize myself in this moment, and I do not know if I ever will again.
But I do know one thing: I do not want to live in a world where monsters walk free, laughing at the suffering they have caused, knowing they will never face true justice.
Maybe, just maybe, the unthinkable is the only answer left.
The writer is a rabbi and physician who lives in Ramat Poleg, Netanya. He is a co-founder of Techelet-Inspiring Judaism.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-842074
The Jerusalem Post, February 17
Hamas linked to UNRWA, aid went straight to leaders, recordings reveal – report
Israel presented the recordings to the US, Channel 12 said; however, the Biden administration was adamant that 250 trucks of aid enter Gaza.
Full article:
The humanitarian aid that entered the Gaza Strip at the beginning of 2024 reached Hamas leaders instead of Gaza citizens, according to recordings of communications between Hamas operatives revealed by Channel 12 on Sunday.
Israel presented the recordings to the US, Channel 12 claimed; however, the Biden administration was adamant that 250 trucks of aid enter Gaza on a daily basis.
The recordings further revealed the close connection between Hamas and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
In one instance, an operative could be heard saying, “At the moment, monitoring is underway, and we will receive updates. There are definitely injured among them. Some of them are UNRWA employees. Two of them are police officers.”
According to the report, the junior Hamas operatives complained that the aid was not reaching them. In response, they were, and were told that other operatives had attacked their wives in a Rafah mosque.
“They enter the women’s room and beat them,” the reports noted. “We will redeem our people with our soul and our blood,” the operatives could be heard saying, according to Channel 12. “The leadership is not involved in the matter and has been following it from the very beginning,” came one response to the incident.
“Aamer, spare me these stories that the leadership wasn’t following. Pray that we disperse before we are brought to the south. I swear to you, we will tear you apart. Tell the leadership in Khan Yunis as well. We will tear you apart. You only care about yourselves. There is no leadership,” said the operative.
“All the leadership in Khan Yunis should cover their heads because they are not men. They enter the women’s rooms and beat them inside the room. Everyone needs to understand that our honor is more precious than our lives.
“Our blood is worthless when it comes to our honor. Despite everything we are going through, this is what burned us from within. The war is one thing; the war and the rockets and nothing else scare us. Until this issue. This is what killed us. Our honor.”
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-842474
The Jerusalem Post, February 17
Hamas’s hostage theater is a display of desperate propaganda – editorial
Hamas’s attempts to project strength only highlight their growing weakness and isolation in Gaza.
Full text :
Despite a week full of drama, the sixth exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian terrorists went through as originally scheduled on Saturday.
As has been the case with each previous hostage release, Hamas used the handover of the hostages to the International Red Cross as a moment of propaganda theater.
Behind a table where some absurd paperwork between an ICRC representative and a Hamas terrorist was being signed, was a large poster of Jerusalem with the words in Hebrew, Arabic and English: , “O Jerusalem, Bear Witness: We Are Your Soldiers.”
Next to it, another sign that, in reference to US President Donald Trump’s proposal to relocate Gaza’s residents, read, “No immigration except to Jerusalem.”
Below was a third sign listing the sites of Hamas’ October 7 invasion, emblazoned with the words: “We Crossed Over Swiftly.” A fourth displayed a picture of hostage Matan Zangauker, whose mother has been vitriolic in her criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, next to a photograph of her and an hourglass with the caption underneath: “Time is running out.”
Each of these signs, meant to project strength, instead exposes Hamas’ desperation. “We Crossed Over Swiftly” boasts of their October 7 attack, yet today, Gaza lies in ruins, its people left with nothing. “O Jerusalem, Bear Witness” speaks of conquest, yet Hamas cannot even hold onto its own territory. The sign featuring Matan Zangauker’s mother aims to sow fear, but it only highlights Hamas’ dwindling leverage.
This is not the message of a triumphant force. It is the empty bluster of a movement grasping for relevance, clinging to symbols because reality has turned against it.
Hamas terrorists, clad in full battle regalia—gear they conspicuously never wear in actual combat when they hide behind the skirts of women and under the cribs of babies—strut across the stage like victorious dragon slayers, threatening to march on Jerusalem.
Gaza lies in ruins, utterly destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans walked from the south back to their towns in the north, only to find nothing left. Hamas’ military formation has been shattered; all that remains are pickup trucks with gunmen brandishing rifles—a shadow of the force it wielded on October 7.
Meanwhile, a once unthinkable proposal is now on the table: relocating Gazans. An idea that, given the chance, many Gazans would likely seize to escape the hellhole—Trump’s words—that is Gaza.
And yet, Hamas releases three hostages—three out of the 254 they abducted—under banners proclaiming their intention to march on Jerusalem, just as they “crossed over swiftly” on October 7.
What self-delusion? If this is a victory for the Palestinian people, then the mind boggles at what a defeat looks like.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, visiting Israel this week, has urged the Arab world—if they oppose Trump’s relocation plan—to present a better alternative. Egypt is expected to unveil a proposal at a Riyadh summit later this month, and it’s a safe bet that Hamas will not be part of it. In his meetings with Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi, and Emirati diplomats, Rubio should emphasize something they all understand but won’t say aloud: Hamas, not Israel, is their true enemy.
Who is responsible for mainstreaming the idea of Gazans relocating to Egypt, Jordan, or even Saudi Arabia? Hamas. Who incites unrest in Arab capitals? Hamas. Who jeopardizes the key Arab government’s ties with the US? Hamas.
The same Hamas that, for the last few Saturdays, parades as a victor has brought only disaster upon its people. Now, it is also endangering Egypt and Jordan’s US alliances—as well as Saudi Arabia’s dream of a security partnership with Washington.
Hamas’ pathetic theater and its ridiculous posters do not fool anyone. Their implied threats of marching on Jerusalem do not scare Israelis but rather reinforce a national determination to prevent it. Their highlighting where they entered Israel does not intimidate Israelis but rather guarantees that every step will be taken to ensure it never happens again.
Hamas’ propaganda display is not a show of strength but rather the convulsions of a movement weakened tremendously, grasping at straws for significance.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-842269
The Jerusalem Post, February 17
Torture, interrogation and lice infestation: Hostages reveal first details of captivity
The hostages were held in extremely unhealthy environments full of lice, bedbugs, mold and mildew.
Full text :
The hostages released on Saturday have revealed the details of their captivity, including Hamas’s use of interrogation and the dire conditions they were held in.
The testimonies of Sagui Dekel-Chen, Iair Horn, and Sasha Troufanov were shared with N12 and KAN.
N12 reported that Hamas wrongly insisted that some of the hostages were soldiers, using continual interrogation and torture to try to obtain intelligence from them.
The hostages were held in extremely unhealthy environments, including in tunnels and hiding places, which were full of lice, bedbugs, mold, and mildew.
They also received almost no food and drank only salt water, which was not fit for drinking.
N12 added that because many of the hostages were wounded by Hamas terrorists and did not receive proper medical treatment, they may have to undergo surgery.
Before their release, the terrorists forced the hostages to write letters of gratitude while documenting them.
Horn was held captive for a while with his brother Eitan, who remains in Hamas captivity. He spent most of his time in the Hamas tunnels but was held with other hostages, so he was able to provide Israel with signs of life from those he was held with.
Dekel-Chen was interrogated throughout his time in captivity, including through physical torture, N12 said. This has resulted in physical scars on his body. KAN added that he was shot in the right shoulder on October 7 but told IDF officers after his release to leave the wound alone as “the most important thing is for me to meet my family now.”
He was also unaware of his family’s fate, cut off from all means of communication for nearly 15 months. During the hostage release, Hamas told him that his wife had given birth to a daughter while he was in captivity, which he didn’t believe until it was confirmed by the IDF.
Troufanov was held alone throughout his time in captivity, KAN claimed. He was told by the IDF after his release that his father, Vitaly, had been murdered and burst into tears. Dekel-Chen, Horn, and Troufanov were all held in Khan Yunis in tunnels up until very recently when they were moved to apartments above ground.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-842265
The Jerusalem Post, February 15
‘It is not possible to rehabilitate’: Freed hostage Noa Argamani on life after captivity
Argamani described being unable to sleep, eat, or function because she feels like part of herself is still in Gaza.
Full text :
Freed hostage Noa Argamani said she has been unable to return to her life as she knew it after her time in Hamas captivity in a recent Instagram story post.
“I can’t describe to you in words the feeling that a person who was by your side the whole time in captivity is left behind, and you seemingly come back to life,” Argamani wrote. “A part of you still remains in Gaza, it is not possible to rehabilitate and return to a human routine in such a situation.”
She continued on to say that the dissonance between being held hostage in Gaza versus being back in the world inhibits her ability to function normally.
“You cannot really ‘sleep’ at night, you cannot eat properly, you cannot function at all knowing that just a moment ago, you were there in the Hamas tunnels, and now you are in a modern and connected world,” she wrote.
Argamani went on to describe how she watched two hostages with whom she was held in captivity, her friends Itai Svirsky and Yossef Sharabi, die in front of her.
“I saw and experienced two of my friends who were with me in captivity for so long die in front of my eyes after they barely managed to survive three months in captivity. It is unimaginable.”
She ended the post with a plea to bring the remaining hostages home.
“How can you leave them there? How can you leave everyone alive there? We must bring them home now.”
At the start of 2025, Argamani told audiences about her experience on October 7 and her captivity in Gaza. It was the first time she’d told her story from start to finish publicly since her rescue.
“There are still 98 hostages, 98 families living this endless nightmare,” she told an audience in Miami. “Until Avinatan returns, my heart remains in captivity.”
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-842208
The Wall Street Journal, February 13
If Indians and Pakistanis Can Relocate, Why Can’t Gazans?
Population transfers aren’t a Trump innovation. There are plenty of examples from the 20th century.
Full text :
President Trump’s idea that the U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and relocate two million Palestinians has elicited outrage and derision. But even if the idea never comes to fruition, it has this virtue: It puts a spotlight on the world’s double standard toward Israel.
Many population transfers have taken place over the past century. In the 1920s, Greece and Turkey agreed to a forced population swap: Greek Orthodox Christians in Turkey moved to Greece, while Muslims in Greece moved to Turkey. After World War II, millions of Indians and Pakistanis were forced to find new homes, as were ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. In the 1970s, Uganda expelled Indians. Only in the Palestinian case has the refugee question festered endlessly.
Mr. Trump’s idea involves transferring Gazans to other nations and turning the Gaza Strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Where would the Gazans go? “It could be Jordan, and it could be Egypt, it could be other countries,” Mr. Trump told reporters last week. In a Truth Social post, he elaborated that Palestinians would be resettled “in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes.”
It’s easy to see why many people find this off-putting. We aren’t used to viewing knotty geopolitical problems through a real-estate development lens. The Egyptians, Jordanians and Saudis all appear less than enthusiastic at the prospect of an influx of Palestinians. Longtime U.S. allies, including the U.K. and France, have also criticized the idea.
Nonetheless, the discussion highlights a double standard. Following the creation of Israel in 1948 and the first Arab-Israeli war, some 600,000 to 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes. Yet the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East today supports nearly six million Palestinian “refugees.” That’s because the U.N. counts not only displaced Palestinians but also their descendants as refugees. “A great-grandchild of Palestinian refugees born in Damascus today is considered a Palestinian refugee,” Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, said in a phone interview.
Contrast this with other countries. In the turmoil following Israel’s creation, some 800,000 Jews fled or were expelled from their homes in North Africa and the Middle East. Today the descendants of these Mizrahi Jews make up about half of Israel’s population. Israel never stuck them in permanent refugee camps or used them as a geopolitical bargaining chip.
Or take the partition of India. In 1947 the departing British carved out Pakistan from Muslim-majority areas of India. The bloodshed that followed—with Hindus and Sikhs on one side and Muslims on the other—led to some two million deaths and uprooted 18 million people, according to estimates from a 2008 Harvard study.
Both India and Pakistan worked hard to integrate the new arrivals. Two Indian prime ministers (Inder Kumar Gujral and Manmohan Singh) were partition refugees, as were two Pakistani military rulers (Zia ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf). Had the U.N. set up a special agency to look after the Indian and Pakistani refugees’ descendants, it would be responsible for tens of millions of people today.
No one expects Pakistan to transform its religious demography by offering a “right of return” to descendants of Hindu and Sikh refugees. Why should it be any different for Israel?
Arab states deserve blame for the plight of Palestinians. “The ironic thing about Palestinians in Arab countries is that their cause is sacrosanct, but the people themselves are treated badly,” said Mr. Pipes. Jordan, unlike most Arab states, has extended citizenship to most Palestinian refugees within its borders, yet about 160,000 of them—mostly those displaced from Gaza—remain stateless. Lebanon, meantime, houses some 250,000 stateless Palestinians, nearly half in refugee camps.
Across the region, Palestinians face discrimination in access to employment, government services and property ownership. The Census Bureau estimates that the U.S. houses 172,000 Palestinians. That’s more than the Palestinian population in many Arab countries.
“In the last 100 years, populations have moved repeatedly,” David Friedman, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, said in a phone interview. “Sometimes it’s not fair. Sometimes it’s justified from a humanitarian perspective. But whatever happens, when it’s over, it’s over. This is the only place where it’s weaponized.”
No one knows if Mr. Trump’s plan will succeed. Removing Gazans by force would create a humanitarian crisis, but it’s not unreasonable to believe that the majority would leave if given the chance to build a better life elsewhere. Either way, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if Arab states had welcomed Palestinian Arabs the way many other countries around the world have welcomed refugees.
The Wall Street Journal, February 12
A Warning to Hamas: ‘Let Hell Break Out’
Trump rightly puts the onus on the terrorists to free innocent hostages.
Full text :
What a difference an inauguration day makes. Hamas on Monday called off until further notice its next release of hostages, scheduled for this weekend, under its ceasefire deal with Israel. “As far as I’m concerned,” President Trump said in response, “if all of the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday at 12 o’clock—I think it’s an appropriate time—I would say, cancel it, and all bets are off, and let hell break out.”
Mr. Trump clarified that he was speaking for himself, and Israel can make its own call. He underlined that, in his view, all of the hostages should be freed, “not in dribs and drabs, not two and one and three and four.” A day earlier, Mr. Trump spoke straightforwardly about the emaciated condition of the last hostages let out. “They look like Holocaust survivors,” he said. “You know, at some point we’re going to lose our patience.”
These threats from Mr. Trump came with no details, and he has said similar things before. “If the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025,” he wrote in December, “there will be ALL HELL TO PAY.” The cease-fire that was later struck calls for the release of only 33 hostages in its initial phase, while some 60 or so others remain.
Maybe Hamas thinks it can now call the President’s bluff. “Trump must remember that there is an agreement that must be respected by both parties and this is the only way to return the prisoners,” a Hamas official said. “The language of threats has no value and further complicates matters.”
Terrorists obviously don’t like being threatened by an American President, but credibility is crucial to deterrence. And what a change from the last White House. President Biden had endless time for Hamas to play games. Mr. Trump has none. It matters to have a President who says clearly that the onus is on Hamas to free the innocents it has held in appalling conditions since abducting them 494 days ago.
By warning Hamas that the U.S. will support all hell breaking loose, Mr. Trump is offering Israel freedom of action, which could translate into negotiating leverage. The hard decisions about what to do next are up to Israelis and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His defense minister told the military to “prepare at the highest level of alert for any possible scenario in Gaza.” If Hamas doesn’t heed Mr. Trump’s warning, Israel and the U.S. will have little choice but to make Hamas believe it.
The Jerusalem Post, February 11
We swore ‘never again,’ yet Israeli hostages return skeletal and tortured – comment
We must be clear: Hamas does not take hostages. It takes human lives and reduces them to bargaining chips. Never again is now.
Extraits:
The faces are haunting: Or Levy, Eli Sharabi, and Ohad Ben Ami. Gaunt and hollow, their bodies frail, tell the story of 491 days in Hamas captivity. Sunken eyes, protruding bones, and skeletal frames ring an instant bell for Israelis and Jews everywhere: survivors of the Holocaust, the Muselmann of the concentration camps, and those who starved to the brink of death.
But when these hostages came home precisely 80 years after the fall of the Nazi regime, the world’s response was unimaginably detached.
The BBC, ever selective in its moral outrage, conveniently omitted their suffering from its homepage. CNN, on the other hand, saw fit to highlight the “emaciated” condition of Palestinian prisoners released in exchange-prisoners who, it must be said, received three meals a day, medical care, and family visits. The comparison is not only absurd; it is obscene.
Let’s set the record straight. Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are not hostages; they are convicted criminals, many guilty of terrorism and murder. Their detentions follow trials, evidence, and due process – luxuries Hamas does not grant its captives.
Comparing their conditions is a crime.
Palestinian prisoners in Israel receive complete medical care, dental services, and nutritious meals. They are not starved, beaten, or deprived of basic human needs. Every Palestinian prisoner is entitled to family visits monitored by the Red Cross.
Israeli hostages in Gaza? They were locked in darkness, without contact with their loved ones. Some of them were operated on without anesthesia; others had heavy injuries for more than a year without any medical treatment.
The Palestinian prisoners can object to their detention in Israeli courts and with the help of lawyers. Hostages in Gaza had no rights, no trials – only the mercy of their captors.
You would be surprised to hear that Palestinian prisoners have access to books, television, newspapers, and, in some cases, even higher education programs. The Israeli hostages, meanwhile, were wasting away in underground dungeons, deprived of sunlight, human dignity, and proper medical care, let alone clean water and air.
To equate these two realities is an insult to morality. Those parroting Hamas’s propaganda about prisoner mistreatment should spend a single night in Hamas captivity – if they are lucky enough to survive it.
Hamas paraded our hostages before their release, forcing them to stand on a stage in front of a crowd of jubilant Gazans. The cruelty was calculated. Hamas terrorists made sure the world saw Israeli suffering as a spectacle before begrudgingly handing them over to the Red Cross.
And speaking of the Red Cross, they are allowed to visit Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, while not one Israeli hostage met with them throughout their entire time in captivity. (…)
Indeed, the contrast could not be starker. The hostages’ skeletal frames stand as a living indictment of Hamas’s barbarism, an undeniable crime against humanity. The fact that some still equivocate, still seek to “both sides” this horror, is a stain on the conscience of the world.
We must be clear: Hamas does not take hostages. It takes human lives and reduces them to bargaining chips. Never Again is now. And if Israel does not act decisively, if the international community does not finally recognize this evil for what it is, we risk failing those still trapped in the depths of Gaza.
They must be freed before it’s too late.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-841238
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 11. Februar
Mirna Funk : Gazastreifen-Riviera: Wer Trumps Vorschlag ablehnt, akzeptiert die diktatorische Herrschaft der Hamas und zeigt null Verständnis für die Palästinenser
Der radikale Islam will die Weltherrschaft und die Vernichtung der Juden. Trumps Tabula-rasa-Vorschlag wäre ein ernsthafter Versuch, eine von Ideologie durchseuchte Gesellschaft zu erneuern.
Extraits:
Es wurde ordentlich rumgebrüllt die letzten Tage: Trump sei doch irre mit seinem Vorschlag, die Bevölkerung des komplett zerstörten Gazastreifens in die Nachbarländer umzusiedeln und aus dem Stück Land die «Riviera des Nahen Ostens» zu machen. Das sei Vertreibung, so der Tenor. Deutsche Medien von der «Zeit» über die «Süddeutsche Zeitung» bis hin zum «Spiegel» übertrafen sich reflexhaft in Abwehrhaltung, während etliche Palästinenser in Gaza selbst jubelten, wie man in viral gegangenen Videos sehen konnte.
Die Reaktion der Medien und der Gesellschaft in Deutschland ist ein sicheres Zeichen dafür, dass der Nahe Osten nicht verstanden wird – grosse Ideen darf es einfach nicht geben. Aber ohne Mut und Risiko geht nichts im Leben. Das weiss nicht nur Trump, das wissen insbesondere Juden. Vor über hundert Jahren gaben sie, im Gegensatz zu Christentum und Islam, die Phantasie auf, ein Messias werde irgendwann kommen, um sie zu erlösen.
Die Juden entschieden sich für aufklärerische Mündigkeit und nahmen ihr Schicksal selbst in die Hand: Der Zionismus entstand und mit ihm die Idee vom jüdischen Staat. Nach 2000 Jahren Vertreibung hatten die Juden ihr angestammtes Land zurückerobert. Nicht nur mit Waffengewalt, sondern auch mit diplomatischem Geschick und infolge des Holocausts, der sechs Millionen Menschen das Leben kostete, aber den Überlebenden gleichzeitig in die Hände spielte.
Geschichte ist komplex – besonders dann, wenn ein Krieg stattfindet. Jener, der nun fast anderthalb Jahre in Gaza und Israel wütete, war von den Palästinensern selbst ausgerufen worden. Die «Al-Aqsa Flood», wie die Islamisten den gewaltsamen Grenzübertritt nach Israel und das anschliessende Massaker nennen, war über Jahre vorbereitet worden und der Wahnvorstellung von der kompletten Auslöschung Israels («From the river to the sea») geschuldet.
Der 7. Oktober 2023 war der kriegerische Angriff auf einen souveränen Staat, bei dem über 1200 Menschen innerhalb weniger Stunden abgeschlachtet sowie über 250 Geiseln verschleppt wurden. So etwas wie Bedauern oder Irritation in der muslimischen Welt blieb grösstenteils aus.
Die grössenwahnsinnige Idee der Einnahme Israels durch Tausende von Hamas-Terroristen und Zivilisten aus Gaza ist gescheitert. Aus der Befreiung Palästinas wurde das Ende der Zweistaatenlösung. Das hätte der Mastermind und Hamas-Chef Yahya Sinwar alles antizipieren können. Wer aber einen solchen Vernichtungskrieg plant, ihn begeht und diesen Krieg verliert, der kann anschliessend nicht jammern und auch keine Ansagen machen. Denn der Sieger eines Krieges diktiert die zukünftigen Bedingungen.
Deutschland musste nach der Niederlage nicht nur ordentlich Land abgeben und 14 Millionen Menschen umsiedeln, sondern das Land wurde auch zehn Jahre lang unter die Verwaltung von vier alliierten Mächten gestellt. Diese Konsequenzen dienten dazu, eine ideologisch verseuchte Gesellschaft zu gesunden und wieder in ein demokratisches Selbstverständnis zu bringen, um eine internationale Zusammenarbeit in der Zukunft möglich zu machen.
Im Gazastreifen dominiert eine islamistisch motivierte Gesellschaft, die glaubt, erst wenn der letzte Jude tot sei, werde man selber frei sein. Wie einst in Nazideutschland ist die Erlösungsvorstellung an die Vernichtung der Juden geknüpft. Denken alle in Gaza so? Mit Sicherheit nicht. Glaubten alle Deutschen an den Nationalsozialismus? Nein. Aber die Alliierten betrachteten es dennoch als Notwendigkeit, einmal Tabula rasa in Germany zu machen, um die Herausbildung demokratischer Verhältnisse in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zu ermöglichen und damit die nachfolgenden Generationen vor einer erneuten Ideologisierung zu schützen. (…)
Nehmen wir also an, Hitler hätte sich geweigert zu kapitulieren. So wie die Hamas. Die Amerikaner hätten ihm zwar in den Kopf geschossen, aber der Rest der Irren hätte nach einem ausgehandelten Waffenstillstand eine neue politische und gesellschaftliche Hierarchie aufgebaut. Mit demselben Ziel im Übrigen: der Weltherrschaft und der Vernichtung der Juden. Da treffen sich Islamismus und Naziideologie.
Die an Deutschland angrenzenden Länder wären weiterhin in Gefahr gewesen. Die Juden auch. Deutschland wäre zwar in Schutt und Asche gelegt und ein Grossteil der Nazis tot gewesen. Aber die Gesellschaft immer noch fehlgeleitet von einer kranken Ideologie und nach zwölf Jahren Diktatur unfähig, jemals so etwas wie Demokratie zu denken. Nichts hätte sich gross geändert. Die Situation wäre völlig fragil geblieben.
Wer Trumps Plan vom Tisch wischt, fordert nichts weiter als die Aufrechterhaltung einer diktatorischen Herrschaft in Gaza. Mit Mitgefühl den Palästinensern gegenüber hat das aber rein gar nichts zu tun.
Der Nahe Osten wird sich in den nächsten Jahren vollständig neu ausrichten. Die arabischen Länder, die dem Westen wohlwollend gegenüberstehen, werden ihre abgehängten muslimischen Brüder und Schwestern hinter sich lassen müssen, um endlich glücklich mit Gucci-Läden und Michelin-Restaurants leben zu können. Erst durch eine ökonomische Isolation der islamistischen Staaten werden diese sich von dem ganzen Mittelalter-Wahnsinn verabschieden.
Man muss Trumps Plan weiterdenken. Denn mithilfe der USA und anderer (arabischer) Alliierter würde auf der einen Seite eine Riviera des Nahen Ostens entstehen, während auf der anderen Seite im Westjordanland, in Jemen, Libyen und anderen Failed States, also den gescheiterten Staaten, immer noch Kindern Kalaschnikows in die Hände gedrückt würden. Eine solche Diskrepanz würde den Blick nicht nur der Palästinenser verändern, sondern aller Araber, die sich bis dato einem Todeskult verschrieben haben.
Es geht schon lange nicht mehr um den Nahen Osten oder den Westen. Spätestens seit der grossen Flüchtlingskrise vor zehn Jahren geht es in beiden Regionen um Terror oder Frieden, um Islamismus oder Modernität. Nur wenn der Westen das endlich versteht, kann er sich um sein eigenes Islamismus-Problem kümmern und zulassen, dass der Nahe Osten endlich modern wird.
Mirna Funk ist eine deutsche Schriftstellerin und Publizistin. Jüngst von ihr erschienen: «Von Juden lernen», DTV-Verlagsgesellschaft, München 2024. 160 S., Fr. 27.90.
The Jerusalem Post, February 11
Trump’s outlandish Gaza plan may spare Middle East from past mistakes – opinion
The Arab world has no real interest in the people of Gaza, so while Trump’s idea is radical, it should not be dismissed as unrealistic.
Full article:
President Donald Trump’s plan for the Gaza Strip captivated attention this week as a seemingly outlandish proposal for Israelis desperate for a post-war vision.
After 16 months of intense fighting, the president presented an unexpected blueprint of what could follow the end of the war and, more importantly, how Israel’s security will be preserved in its aftermath.
On its face, the proposal raises numerous questions: Who will be tasked with evacuating Gaza? Where will its residents go? Who will rebuild the wreckage?
And perhaps most crucially, who will be permitted to return and live there in the future? These are questions that, at this stage, remain largely unanswered.
It is unclear whether the plan can truly be called a “plan” at all, as it appears Trump surprised not just his own staff but also Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Yet despite the glaring uncertainties surrounding the plan itself, the most vital aspect is the message it sends to the international community: The status quo in Gaza is no longer tenable.
The international community, along with Israel and the Palestinian Authority, has long pursued the two-state solution as the only viable path toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This assumption has been a guiding principle for decades but has failed to lead to peace.
Consider the past. Israel withdrew from the West Bank in the mid-1990s only to face a wave of devastating suicide bombings that rocked the nation.
In 2005, Israel disengaged from the Gaza Strip, only to watch Hamas seize control just two years later.
Since then, the cycle of violence has been almost on an annual basis with no end in sight.
Yet despite this history, the international community – and certain segments of the Israeli political establishment – has clung to the two-state solution as the ultimate objective.
This persistence, even in the face of failure, has been puzzling.
Take, for instance, the words of Antony Blinken, US secretary of state. Less than a month after the horrific October 7 massacre, Blinken reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to the two-state solution.
“The United States continues to believe that the sole viable path is a two-state solution,” he declared, as if history had not already offered a clear verdict on its efficacy.
But Blinken’s unwavering stance was hardly unique. Even during the war, many Israeli policymakers continued to speak about the two-state solution as a goal, albeit one that may take longer to achieve.
THIS IS the context for Trump’s recent remarks, which suggest a starkly different approach: The two-state solution has failed, and it’s time to rethink the entire framework of the conflict.
At its core, the message from Trump’s proposal is unmistakable: Hamas cannot be allowed to maintain control of Gaza.
For the past two decades, Gaza has been a constant flashpoint of violence.
Yes, the IDF’s operations against Hamas and the destruction of much of its military infrastructure will delay for longer than before the next round of hostilities, but unless Hamas is eradicated entirely, the next war is simply a matter of time.
Trump’s relocation idea touches untouched terrority
Trump’s idea, though, goes beyond merely advocating for the removal of Hamas.
It acknowledges that Gaza has been a disaster. The Egyptians didn’t want Gaza. Israel didn’t want it. The Palestinian Authority couldn’t control it.
Even today, Arab countries remain indifferent to the fate of Gaza’s population.
Despite sharing a direct border with Gaza, Egypt has shown no willingness to take in Palestinians from there. Likewise, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, geographically close, have also refrained from taking in people displaced from their homes.
This is the sad truth: The Arab world has no real interest in the people of Gaza.
This harsh reality cannot be ignored. And yet, while Trump’s idea is radical, it should not be simply dismissed as unrealistic.
The situation in Gaza requires a fundamental shift in strategy. As long as Hamas controls Gaza, as long as it remains mired in poverty and destruction, and as long as organizations like UNRWA continue to fund the perpetuation of conflict, the cycle of violence will persist.
To break this cycle, alternative solutions must be considered.
The conventional wisdom of the last 30 years has failed, and though Trump’s proposal may appear outlandish, sometimes drastic ideas are the only way to wake the world from its complacency.
That said, as this debate unfolds, there is one undeniable priority that must remain front and center for Israel: the safe return of the hostages.
Earlier this week, I bumped into the brother of a hostage not included in the first stage of the deal. The man was waiting in the lobby of an office building in the hopes of landing a chance meeting with a senior cabinet minister who he believed could help ensure his brother would be on the list.
It was an act of desperation, a reminder that, for many families, the war is far from over.
Another group of hostages are supposed to be released this weekend and that is what matters right now.
There are still dozens of Israelis languishing in Gaza. Trump’s idea and plan can wait. The hostages cannot.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute and a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-841006
Asharq Al-Awsat, February 11
Voices from the Arab press: Is there another way with Israel?
A weekly selection of opinions and analyses from the Arab media around the world.
Extraits:
Is there another way with Israel?
Asharq Al-Awsat, London, January 29
One might argue that one of the unforeseen benefits of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation was that it threw into question the notion of relying solely on force to resolve the conflict. Neither the numerous wars nor the various forms of resistance have effectively achieved their goals. It is now more crucial than ever to voice certain truths, even if they may seem harsh, accusatory, or unsettling to those accustomed to familiar narratives and sentiments.
The immense Palestinian suffering must not continue unchecked, nor should the hardships of the Lebanese and other populations burdened by the exploitation of their cause. The situation under Trump’s leadership has only worsened, increasing the likelihood of disasters, displacement, and even acts of genocide. We must acknowledge that bridging the gaps that disadvantage us – Israel’s international relationships with influential world powers, its technical advancements, nuclear capabilities, and its political and social structure, which can navigate internal contradictions even amidst war – will be impossible, both in the near and distant future. Furthermore, our societies have no desire for conflicts whose primary function has diverged from serving Palestinian interests.
Take Syria, for example, a nation once championing warfare and rhetorical grandstanding, now distancing itself as both people and government from such ideologies. This is not to suggest that Israel poses no problem – certainly not. But it does imply the need for alternative strategies to address the issue that do not resort to violence or endanger peace.
History offers insights into major conflicts, providing potential pathways to exit the war mindset and perhaps even influence Israel toward moderation, rekindling the diminished moderate forces weakened by the pervasive culture of violence and militarization. This approach could reinvigorate the possibility of a two-state solution, a prospect that once rallied over two-thirds of Israeli society during the Oslo Accords.
France and Germany’s historical trajectory offers a pertinent illustration. They faced each other in wars, including the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 – where Germany’s victory led to the humiliation of France and the inception of German unity – and during World War I, which saw Germany’s defeat and the articulation of the Versailles Treaty’s severe terms, cited as a factor in the rise of Nazism. Yet, after World War II, despite the shame of occupation, France and Europe, under leaders like François Mitterrand, embraced German unification within a European framework, laying the foundations for the Maastricht Treaty and the introduction of the euro.
Similarly, the chronicles of conflict between Japan and Korea, with the former’s occupation of the latter from 1910 to 1945, saw unimaginable atrocities. Despite longstanding grievances, it took only 20 years post-occupation for relations to normalize, although challenges remain, particularly over reparations. Nevertheless, trade and partnerships in the economic, military, and security sectors endure.
The Anglo-Irish discord, dating back to the mid-17th century with Cromwell’s Protestant conquest and subsequent settlements, eventually transitioned from a violent independence war (1919–1921) to the 1998 Northern Ireland settlement that balanced power to appease both Catholics and Protestants, maintaining their respective affiliations.
India’s partition from Pakistan in 1947 led to catastrophic civil strife, displacing millions and claiming countless lives. The subsequent Indo-Pakistani wars highlight ongoing disputes, most prominently over Kashmir. Yet, diplomatic dialogues and trade interactions persist, emphasizing attempts at conciliation.
The Arab-Israeli conflicts are neither unique nor the most egregious examples of war. Perhaps the solution lies in emulating European strategies akin to Mitterrand’s vision, where the European Union served to contain and mitigate perceived threats from future German aggression. –
Hazem Saghieh
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-841043
The Wall Street Journal, February 8
Syria Has a New Government—or Does It?
Ahmed al-Sharaa has declared himself president, but the country is fractured among competing armed factions.
Extraits:
Ahmed al-Sharaa, leader of the organization that overthrew Syria’s Assad regime, has “assumed the presidency of the country in the transitional phase,” according to a statement last week from the military command of the current government in Damascus.
The announcement formalizes the government that has existed since Mr. Sharaa and his group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, made their remarkable march from Idlib to Damascus eight weeks ago. It appears to herald the foundation of a centralized Islamist government in Syria after 14 years of civil war.
But not so fast. The new rulers’ declaration is belied by a complex reality on the ground. During a recent reporting trip to Syria, I saw a broken, divided country in which many armed factions are competing. Mr. Sharaa’s “presidency of the country” is more aspiration than reality.
For starters, the HTS government doesn’t have formal control over all Syrian land. Nearly a third of Syrian territory, from the Euphrates River north to the Turkish and eastward to the Iraqi border, is ruled by the U.S.-aligned, Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces. This authority played a major role in defeating the Islamic State terrorist group in Syria in 2019. Its rulers are determined to maintain their independent political and military capacity, albeit within the framework of a united Syria.
“Those who have come to power in Damascus, everyone knows their history,” Saleh Muslim, former leader of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, the ruling party in the Kurdish region, said in an interview. “They were part of al Qaeda. They were part of Nusra. . . . It was just a few years ago. Everyone knows what they’ve done. And now they’re in Damascus. . . . No one can force us to dismantle what we’ve built.”
Aldar Khalil, a senior Democratic Union Party official, put it even more plainly: “The revolution in Syria started to destroy centralized rule in Syria, and after that’s gone, its not possible to put something new ruling from the center. That’s not acceptable.”
The Syrian Democratic Forces, with more than 100,000 fighters, is the most direct barrier to the consolidation of a new, centralized Islamist regime in Syria. (…)
So Mr. Sharaa, declarations notwithstanding, isn’t the undisputed president of Syria. His forces prevail in Damascus and the Idlib province. Elsewhere, things are fluid.
HTS isn’t a huge organization, and it appears hobbled by a lack of manpower as it struggles to control the region. When it seized power, it likely consisted of no more than 40,000 fighters. With these modest ranks, it now seeks to control Syria.
The manpower shortage is evident on the ground. Driving from the Euphrates Dam across the desert toward the capital on Jan. 14, I traveled about 125 miles between the last Syrian Democratic Forces checkpoint and the first HTS one. I passed many empty roadblocks deserted by the former regime. Only around the city of Homs, in an area of Alawite population, could many fighters of the new regime be found, conducting one of their sweeps.
Even in the capital, one sees scant evidence of the new authority. Plenty of HTS fighters are hanging around and holding impromptu victory processions. But the Assad regime’s police force has been disbanded, and nothing substantial has taken its place. The city is in limbo.
European and other Western officials traveling to Damascus to meet what they imagine to be the new government of Syria should bear in mind that the country remains divided. The Islamist organization controlling Damascus is only one of many groups vying for control in the region. The task it faces is consolidating its power. It’ll be up to the West to decide whether to support a new, centralized, authoritarian, Islamist Syria—or consider other options.
Mr. Spyer is director of research at the Middle East Forum and director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis. He is author of “Days of the Fall: A Reporter’s Journey in the Syria and Iraq Wars.”
The Wall Street Journal, February 7, pay wall
About Those Beachfront Gaza Condos
Critics deride Trump’s idea, but what are they offering Palestinians?
Full article: https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/7-fevrier-2.pdf
The Economist, February 6, pay wall
From MAGA to Gaza : Donald Trump’s eye-popping plan to make Gaza American
Is his call to evict Palestinians from the “hell hole” an imperial fantasy or a negotiating ploy?
Full article : https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/6-fevrier-3.pdf
Le Point, 6 février, article payant
Pourquoi il faut écouter la proposition de Trump sur Gaza
CHRONIQUE. Gérard Araud analyse la proposition choc de Donald Trump concernant Gaza et revient sur les questions essentielles qu’elle soulève pour l’avenir de la région.
Article intégral : https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/6-fevrier-1.pdf
The Economist, February 4, pay wall
From rebel to ruler : Syria’s new president, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, gives his first interview
Warlord, jihadi or nation-builder?
Extraits:
In his first interview since assuming the Syrian presidency on January 29th, Ahmed al-Sharaa sat down with The Economist and laid out his vision for rebuilding Syria’s smashed, fractured and bankrupt state. Forty-eight hours into his tenure, the former al-Qaeda leader in Syria previously known by his nom de guerre, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, outlined a timetable for taking Syria in “the direction of” democracy and promised presidential elections. Many outsiders hoped that his rise would mark Syria’s strategic shift out of the clutches of Iran and Russia and into the Western fold. In fact, he spoke harshly about America’s “illegal” military presence in Syria, welcomed negotiations with Russia about its military bases and warned Israel that its advance into Syria since the fall of the Assad regime “will cause a lot of trouble in the future”.
There was little sign of the inclusivity that he mentioned so enthusiastically. He was surrounded by a small band of advisers mostly drawn from his Idlib emirate. Otherwise, the cavernous palace, six times the size of the White House, was empty.
Mr Sharaa has a way of appearing to be all things to all men. When he announced his presidency two nights earlier, he wore military fatigues as he stood before rebel chiefs. The following evening he spoke to Syrians as a civilian in a black suit and green tie. For The Economist, he chose a hipster look: a casual cream jacket over a black shirt buttoned to the neck and slim trousers. He might have been heading for a Friday night out on the town. He seems preoccupied with his image. He mentioned his attire three times, perhaps because he knows that observers will read a lot into it.
His messages, delivered in soft tones, appeared tailored for each audience. But the constant changes make a man who orchestrated suicide-bombings for Islamic State and led al-Qaeda in Syria hard to measure. Though inaugurated as an interim president, his vision is long term. Many of his undertakings—like a constitution and elections—were pushed “three or four years” into the future. In the meantime he is intent on consolidating the power he has grabbed.
First is the question of capacity. He wants to re-establish central authority over Syria’s fractured state and, Kurds aside, claims to have secured the agreement of “all” Syria’s militias to join a new Syrian army. (…) He ruled out a federal arrangement to deal with Kurdish opposition. (…)
On the ground his 30,000-man force is stretched just as thin. As he notes, “a vast area is still out of the control of the Syrian state”. None of the rebel commanders assembled for his stage-managed inauguration were broadcast clapping. “We also sacrificed for a decade,” says a southern rebel commander, who fumes that Mr Sharaa took charge of what had been a collective effort to overthrow the Assads. Rival militias control most of the country’s borders. Many of their chiefs, some of whom were previously officers in the Syrian army, are reluctant to surrender their weapons, fiefs or command. (…)
Mr Sharaa is also struggling to curb the excesses of jihadists who hitherto formed his base. To date, a bloodbath has been averted. But the information ministry has restricted access for foreign journalists to the coastal provinces and Homs, where revenge killings against Alawites are spiking. Mr Sharaa dismisses talk of a resurgent Islamic State (IS) as “a big exaggeration”. But he admits that his forces have foiled “many attempted attacks” since he took power. IS cells are believed to be returning to Damascus and other cities, soaking up growing dissent.
Second is the question of whether he actually intends to fulfil his promises—or at least try. In our interview, Mr Sharaa used the word “democracy” publicly for the first time since taking power. “If democracy means that the people decide who will rule them and who represents them in the parliament,” he said, somewhat half-heartedly, “then yes, Syria is going in this direction.” (…) He would also hold “free and fair” elections and complete the drafting of a constitution together with the UN after “at least three to four years”. For the first time, he promised presidential elections.
But Mr Sharaa is juggling many constituencies, including his jihadist base and a largely conservative Sunni Arab majority. If he deprives them of the spoils of war and the Islamic state he promised when he was running Idlib, he risks a backlash. He has turned a side-room in the presidential palace into a prayer-room and removed the ashtrays from the coffee tables, in keeping with his puritanical strain of Islam. (He has, however, also grown his moustache, which is at odds with it.)
In our interview, he palmed off the issue of sharia, Islamic law, onto one of his appointed bodies. If the interim government approves sharia, he said, “my role is to enforce it; and if they do not approve it, my role is to enforce it, as well”. In the meantime, the courts would adjudicate the vast backlog of legal cases according to the old civil code, he said. (…)
That is unlikely to satisfy Syria’s religious minorities, particularly the Alawites, who held sway under the Assads. When he speaks of democracy, many suspect he means Sunni Arab majoritarian rule. (“In our region there are various definitions of democracy,” he says.) Presidential elections could look like the plebiscites of other Arab security regimes. After all, Syria has been a dictatorship for all but three years since independence in 1946. (…)
Mr Sharaa’s biggest challenge is the economy. Power flickers for an hour a day. The scale of reconstruction is unfathomable. And the country has a massive liquidity crisis (caused, according to bankers, by delays in currency shipments from Russia) and lacks the cash to pay salaries even at pitifully low rates. “Without economic development we will return to a state of chaos,” he warns. (…)
Recovery can only come with help from abroad. On January 30th he welcomed Qatar’s emir, the first head of state to visit since Mr Assad’s ousting. On February 2nd he made his first trip abroad as president, to Saudi Arabia, where he was born. Ahead of the visit, he singled out both as potential investors in “big… projects”. But he also needs America, whose sanctions, he said, pose “the gravest risk” to his plans: “The Syrian people have suffered enough.” He praised Donald Trump for “seeking peace in the region” and spoke of restoring diplomatic relations “in the coming days”. (…)
But Mr Sharaa carries the millstone of his designation and that of his movement as terrorists. “My status is the president of Syria, not HTS,” he protests. But many in the region are outraged at his appointment of HTS cadres to top positions and of foreign jihadists to army posts. There are signs that the frustration could be denting his initial courtship with the West. He contrasted Russia’s readiness to negotiate a deal on its military bases with America’s reluctance and called the presence of American forces in Syria “illegal”.
He also said Israel “needed to retreat” from territory it had occupied beyond the armistice lines of 1974 after Mr Assad’s fall. Israel’s displacement of Palestinians was “a big crime”, he continued. Asked whether he would be ready to follow Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto ruler, Muhammad bin Salman, if he normalised with Israel, he replied that “actually we want peace with all parties”. But he noted that as long as Israel occupied the Golan, a mountain plateau it conquered in 1967, any agreement would be premature. It would, in any case, require “wide public opinion”.
For now, under Mr Sharaa, Syria is the calmest it has been since the Arab spring in 2011. The country is breathing more freely after half a century of totalitarian rule. But its new president has a long way to go to prove that he is inclusive, that his jihadist worldview is behind him and that he is Syria’s best hope of a fresh start.■
The Wall Street Journal, February 3, pay wall
Why Arab States Hate Trump’s Plan to Relocate Palestinians
A history of violent conflict is among the reasons that regional neighbors are opposed to providing a haven for war-weary Gazans
Extraits:
(…) President Trump has repeatedly said he wants Palestinians in Gaza to move out of the devastated enclave and into neighboring Egypt and nearby Jordan. The Arab world is pushing back, ostensibly because it would undermine efforts to create a Palestinian state.
But Arab leaders have another reason to oppose providing safe haven to millions of Gazans forced from their homes: past experience. Palestinian refugees have been a headache for Arab governments since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. (…)
The violent Palestinian nationalist movement that emerged then spread to other countries as they took in refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the Six-Day War in 1967, spawning conflicts with Israel that reverberate today.
In the decades that followed, that movement turned into a political and existential threat for the governments of Arab states hosting Palestinians—whose numbers included guerrilla fighters launching attacks on Israel. Arab states suffered Israeli reprisals for such assaults, often at the expense of native-born populations.
As of mid-2022, there were 5.8 million Palestinians classified as refugees under the mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Most of them are descendants of people displaced by war decades ago. Many live in refugee camps run by Unrwa.
In some Arab countries, Palestinian refugees complain they are treated as second-class citizens, largely confined to refugee camps and limited in their work opportunities. It is a status quo that is sometimes justified because changing it would be a tacit recognition that the refugees will never return to their families’ homeland in what is now the state of Israel.
Foreign ministers of Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabi, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt met Saturday and said Palestinians’ ability to remain on their land should be ensured, and they rejected any attempts to forcibly remove them. (…)
Palestinians remain a lightning-rod issue in Lebanon, where they almost exclusively live in Unrwa-maintained areas that grew from refugee camps. Giving them more rights and citizenship would upset the delicate sectarian balance among Lebanon’s Sunni, Shia, Christian, Druze and others. (…)
Jordan still has the biggest population of Palestinians with refugee status, with 2.4 million. Most—but not all—have Jordanian citizenship, posing a challenge to the U.S.-backed government in Amman that has recognized Israel since a 1994 peace deal.
The country’s ruler, King Abdullah II, has ruled out accepting Palestinian refugees en masse, citing ”the need to keep the Palestinians on their land and to guarantee their legitimate rights, in accordance with the Israeli and Palestinian two-state solution.”
After the 1948 war, Egypt administered a Philadelphia-sized swath of Mediterranean coastline that became known as the Gaza Strip. The U.S. and U.N. initially tried to resettle Gazans in Egypt, Libya and other Arab countries, but President Gamal Abdel Nasser halted the effort in 1955 after protests erupted.
Nasser’s stand helped turn the Palestinian struggle for a nation into a cause that resonated across the Arab world and brought a halt to international attempts to resettle them elsewhere. (…)
The Persian Gulf monarchies technically don’t host any Palestinian refugees, instead viewing them as immigrants seeking a better life. Yet the Gulf has more than 600,000 Palestinians, including some who hold influential roles advising the region’s monarchies.
There is a “tacit understanding that provides them a haven in exchange for noninterference in their hosts’ internal affairs,” said a 1983 Central Intelligence Agency report. But beginning in the 1980s, Gulf leaders, worried about radical Palestinian leaders abroad calling for more action against Israel, began putting limits on Palestinian migration, the CIA said. “The Palestinian cause is popular, and the Gulf governments fear that any Palestinian discontent within their countries would spread to natives and other expatriates unhappy with the ruling families.”
The most significant rupture in the Gulf-Palestinian relationship came in 1990, when Arafat declared his support for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. It led to Kuwait eventually expelling more than 300,000 Palestinians.
New York Post, February 1, libre accès
Douglas Murray: Gaza must reject terror of Hamas for war to end
Article intégral :
How do wars end?
There is a modern belief that they end around a negotiating table.
In fact, historically, most wars end by one side winning and the other side losing.
Critical to this is that the side that has won knows that it has won, and that the side that has lost knows that it has lost.
Which brings me to the Middle East.
Over the past 15 months, since Hamas invaded Israel and Hezbollah attacked from the north, Israel and its enemies have been in a full-on conflict. The Revolutionary Islamic Government in Iran has been funding and organizing a multi-pronged attack to destroy the Jewish state. And it has failed.
Now, as some Israeli hostages are being returned and an uneasy pause in hostilities continues, some people think that the war might be over.
But it is not — and it should not be.
Not just because the hostages — including the American hostages — ALL need to be returned home. And not just because Hamas still has an active presence in Gaza. As demonstrated by its sick publicity stunts while releasing some female hostages.
No — the reason why the war shouldn’t be over is because it cannot be over until the people who started the war have lost. And are forced to realize that they have lost.
That is why I was so encouraged this past week by comments from President Trump where he talked about clearing people from the Gaza Strip. (…)
Hamas has ruled Gaza pretty much ever since Israel withdrew from it in 2005. Within living memory, the Strip was ruled by Egypt. But strangely enough, today the Egyptians do not want the Arabs in Gaza to be part of Egypt. Just as the Jordanians seem never to have wanted to welcome the Arabs who live in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).
It is almost as though they know something that we do not. Which is that these are highly radical populations. Every country that has taken in the Palestinians — including their leadership — has always had terror come in their wake. That has been the case for Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, among others. The Arab and Muslim world that claims to support the Palestinians does not in fact care for them. They mostly distrust them.
And you can understand why.
Look at the way in which the Palestinians in Gaza voted for a known genocidal terrorist group to govern them. Look at the way in which they celebrated the attacks of October 7 just as they celebrated the 9/11 attacks on this country. (…)
Is there a chance that this population that so enjoys terrorizing Jewish girls could suddenly become a lovely, pluralistic group of people? I’d say not.
The best postwar plans that anyone has been able to come up with seem to include the Palestinians being allowed to start all over again in Gaza. Which means the same thing happening again and again.
It will take many years to rebuild Gaza, whoever is there. It will take years not just because of the devastation — which I have seen with my own eyes — but because to even start to rebuild the Gaza Strip, you would have to fill in the hundreds of miles of tunnels that Hamas used Western taxpayer money to construct all these years. There isn’t an area in Gaza that hasn’t got a tunnel system underneath it, built by Hamas to move around and store weapons in. (…)
How long will it take to remove all the bombs and boobytraps that Hamas has stockpiled in Gaza? How long will it be before anyone could be persuaded to put money into the area?
And in the meantime, where should the population go?
Trump has floated the idea that the Gazans could go to Egypt or Jordan. But I would like to extend that offer. Why not offer them to Ireland, Canada, Pakistan, and all those other countries that profess to care so much for the Palestinians? If they want these terrorist supporters so much, why shouldn’t Dublin, Toronto and Islamabad benefit from their presence? I’m sure the Palestinians will help these countries boom. In their own traditional ways. (…)
But here’s the thing: The citizens of Gaza mainly supported Hamas when Hamas started a war to annihilate Israel. And while Hamas has mostly lost — it has not yet lost completely.
Yet it must lose — completely. And if that means that they are no longer allowed to live in their enclave of terror, then so be it. There is no law of war that says you are allowed to keep waging wars, keep losing them, and then be allowed to do it all over again.
In fact, if you start a war that you then lose, you usually also lose all or most of the territory you started it from. That is not only right, but the only language that these terrorists and their masters understand. (…)
The Wall Street Journal, January 31, pay wall
The Imperative Remains: Destroy Hamas
Bernard-Henri Lévy: We all rejoice at the return of hostages from Gaza, but the survival of both Israel and the Palestinian people depends on ending the terror group’s reign.
Article intégral :
The recent hostage releases demonstrate that life in Israel is priceless. Here and there we heard discordant voices, like the far-right former minister’s remark that four Jewish hostages in exchange for 200 Palestinian perpetrators of blood crimes was a steep price to pay. But for the most part, everyone met the news of the releases with relief and joy.
From families who piously gathered at Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square every Saturday evening for more than 15 months to a prime minister reputed to be indifferent and cynical, there was hardly a false note. The Jewish people respect pidyon shvuyim, the imperative to redeem captives. Unlike empires that recognize only large numbers, the Jewish people understand the only truly great and true number, is one—the one in man, the one of man, and the one of each saved life, which, as Maimonides suggests, is worth all the Sabbaths in the world.
I know no one in Israel who could watch, without immense emotion, the images of Karina, Daniella, Naama and Liri reuniting with the families that awaited them. These four young women, unlike others whose remains we still await, survived an atrocious captivity. But if survival is the humblest form of life, the one that barely keeps us above despair and death, it is also, when it is that of a hostage resisting in the face of humiliation and torture, the highest form of life—the form that soars above us as a secret even greater than that of misfortune.
But then there was the other image—the one that preceded the magnificent moment of reunion. It was the image of the small stage on which the four young women were forced to stand, where they were seen wearing strained smiles, waving at—whom? The Palestinian crowd perched across from them on rubble turned into makeshift bleachers? Their jailers? Their families, so near yet so far, on the other side of the mirror? Each held at arm’s length a strange paper bag containing—no joke!—provisions for the road, some trinkets, a map of the Gaza Strip and, as if they were goods being delivered, a certificate of handover to the Red Cross. The same Red Cross behaved with an utter lack of dignity and did not visit one hostage over the past 481 days.
This second image was chilling. Chilling because of the childlike smiles of the petrified prisoners, frozen at the prospect of those last minutes—so close to the goal yet sticky with tension, knowing that everything could still go wrong. Chilling because of the black-clad, masked men surrounding them—some pressed close, their lifeless fishlike eyes fixed on the captives, others turned away, in mismatched uniforms, either filming them with cellphones or flashing victory signs. And chilling because of what the scene intended to signify—and did, in fact, signify—to the crowds who watched it live, from Jabalia to Rafah, from Jericho to Ramallah, from Cairo to Amman. These crowds have replayed the videos since, as one would rewatch a cult image: an army of criminals wounded but not sunk, weakened but not defeated. An army that often returns only the remains of its captives but still has the power to hold Israel to ransom.
This idea is unbearable. Now more than ever, faced with the cowardly relief that so often accompanies the profound and solemn joy of seeing the first hostages return, it is vital to remember that Israel has always pursued two objectives in this war. The first is the release of the hostages, which was made possible only by Israel’s military pressure. The second is the total defeat of the last pogromist squads, which would otherwise emerge from this disaster as so-called resisters, cloaked in a dark aura that would again inspire those tempted, in Israel and elsewhere, by jihad.
We should resist the ideas that this temptation is irresistible and that silencing the proponent of an idea inevitably gives rise to new adherents ready to take up the cause. Wasn’t al Qaeda slowed after its November 2001 defeat between Tora Bora and Kabul? Wasn’t ISIS stopped when a coalition of free nations destroyed its caliphate from Mosul to Raqqa?
The same must happen in Gaza. Nothing would be more dangerous than leaving behind, as Machiavelli put it, a wounded prince. As long as Hamas retains even a fraction of its capacity to strike—or to govern—Israel can tolerate neither a “durable ceasefire,” a “peace of compromise” nor a “political solution.”
Hamas must be destroyed. The survival of both peoples—Israeli and Palestinian—depends on it. Israel didn’t seek this war, but it must decisively win.
Mr. Lévy is author of “Israel Alone.” This was translated from French by Emily Hamilton.
The Jerusalem Post, January 31, pay wall
A ‘victory’ in branding: Hamas is solidifying its narrative with the ceasefire agreement – opinion
With the ceasefire agreement taking effect and with the hostage-prisoner exchange deal playing out, Hamas has begun constructing a new narrative — a “victory” narrative.
Extraits:
Hamas and its supporters have begun disseminating social media content that presents the terrorist organization as triumphant and solidifies a narrative in which “Israel is expelled” and “the Al-Aqsa Flood is the first spark of victory” — and of “freedom.”
Hamas has even changed the branding of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” and begun distributing content that now terms it “the “Flood of the Free,” drawing a connection to the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails and winking a message to the Gazans and to the Palestinians of the Judea and Samaria area to the effect that the October 7 attack was the opening salvo, the first step on the way to freeing the Palestinians from the “Israeli occupation.”
Hamas also seeks to boost the motivation of its supporters by portraying this as “the first phase in the course of Jerusalem’s liberation.”
Until recently, Hamas had directed its incitement machine at urging Palestinians and Israeli Arabs to carry out terror attacks in Israel. Now, in addition, it has launched a broad social media campaign to promote its “victory” narrative.
This narrative is inculcated not only across social media but also elsewhere. For example, we have seen terrorists from Hamas’ elite Nukhba unit joined by the populace as they celebrate in the streets with Kalashnikov rifles brandished in the air, with Hamas flags, and in fresh uniforms. Adding to the grim display were white pickup trucks to remind us all of the painful sights of October 7.
Nukhba terrorists were greeted like rock stars by cheering crowds. Children rushed after them and hugged them, and the masked terrorists taught the children the slogan “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahud,” invoking a centuries-old Arab massacre of Jews.
This scene is an important foretaste of Gaza’s “day after.” Hamas is reasserting control of the Gaza Strip and indoctrinating the next generation, preparing a future generation of Nukhba terrorists. Hamas is targeting young minds, and many posters are reproduced on social media that glorify its fighters and portray “joining the resistance” as a path to “glory and success.” (…)
The “victory” campaign that Hamas is trying to advance is, in fact, a recruitment drive. By publicizing the false narrative of “a victory for Hamas,” the organization is already recruiting future operatives.
Thus, it is likely to replenish its ranks. From now on, those children chanting slogans — and idolizing the Nukhba terrorists, who appear to them like heroes deserving credit for the “Al-Aqsa Flood triumph” — will be Nukhba terrorists themselves. Hamas inculcates them with the narrative that the road to success lies in joining its ranks among the Al-Qassam Brigades military wing. (…)
The Hamas “victory” campaign was intended to re-energize Palestinian support for the organization. But with it comes the question of where the current public support in the streets of Gaza derives from.
After all, throughout the war, Gaza’s residents grieved for their wrecked homes and the destruction of Gaza, blaming Hamas for bringing a new Nakba upon them. Now Hamas is exploiting that Gazan population for its own purposes in order to revive and rebrand itself as a “victor” at their expense.
Hamas visited disaster upon Gaza, and it needs its propaganda organs in order to survive and restore its military capabilities. Its mere survival is the terrorist organization’s only “victory,” but Hamas knows how to leverage it to construct a false victory narrative and increase support for itself in anticipation of the next round and of maintaining its control into the future.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-839790
The Jerusalem Post, January 30, pay wall
The Hamas prisoner release is a justification for death penalty for terrorists – opinion
A death penalty for terrorists won’t eliminate terrorism, or even hostage-taking to free other, less wicked, prisoners – but it will minimize the pain of impacted Israelis.
Extraits:
If anyone had any doubts after Hamas’s October 7 mega-atrocity, the terrorist organization has now made it clear: to deter terrorism, civilized countries need a death penalty, implemented swiftly, after mass terror events. Allowing terrorists to hang out in prison until they are traded for innocents taken hostage is absurd, spurring more terrorists to violence.
The Gaza ceasefire agreement has condemned Israelis to ride an emotional roller coaster for the next few weeks. First, Hamas releases some hostages, drip, drip, three, four at a time. Israelis try looking past their drug-induced smiles, hoping to see the strength that sustained them, fearing a glimpse of the brutality Hamas systematically imposed on them for nearly 500 days.
While delighting in the hostages’ liberation, calling these strangers by their first names because they feel like family, everyone braces for the hangover. That includes the anguished cries of families whose relatives are not on this cruelly truncated list, or yet another story about yet another terror victim whose life was cut too short by the mass-murdering evildoers Israel keeps releasing to free innocents.
Tt’s a grotesque exchange. Philosophers – and propagandists – can contrast Israelis’ cult of life, and the price Israel pays to free each holy hostage, with Hamas’s death cult, as they deify murderers of children, of students eating at Hebrew University’s cafeteria, of a shopper going about his business on a sunny day.
Still, people of conscience worldwide have to wonder: how can we prevent this spectacle – and are our leaders enabling it?
When politicians say: “We don’t negotiate with terrorists,” it’s as credible as debtors saying: “The check is in the mail.” Most Western leaders don’t just negotiate with terrorists, they facilitate the sick black market whereby innocents kidnapped are considered suitable currency to liberate homicidal maniacs.
Today’s approaches doubly incentivize terrorists. They know that if they survive the attack, they face years in well-tended jails, bonding with like-minded buddies. And, in Israel’s case, they know they can spend those years suing its Supreme Court, demanding rights and indulgences for themselves that their tyrannical leaders don’t grant others. Meanwhile, their presence in prison encourages future murderers to go violent, hoping to “liberate” these imprisoned comrades.
A SPECIAL death penalty for terrorists – imposed swiftly – will help break the cycle. It won’t eliminate terrorism, or even hostage-taking to free other, less wicked, prisoners. It will, however, minimize the pain Israelis are currently enduring. Perhaps, next time – and there will be a next time – survivors won’t be forced to watch the murderers of their loved ones go free, and then brazenly celebrate their “victory” over human decency.
Urging any country to put individuals to death through a legal process is not a stance to take casually. The subject is especially sensitive in Israel, having been founded after the Holocaust and after thousands of years during which Jews were unfairly put to death for worshipping incorrectly.
But today’s terrorism epidemic is so out of control that it requires extreme measures. The death penalty will deliver justice, restore some deterrence, and is a merciful move: for those murdered and for those unknowns who might be future targets if the terrorists roam free again.
Even former president Joe Biden, as he went out in a blaze of pardons and clemencies, singled out terrorism as particularly heinous. He commuted the death sentences of 37 cop killers, prison-guard murderers, and deadly bank robbers. But he kept three mass murderers on death row, including two terrorists. (…)
Safeguards are essential. Limit this death penalty to mass terrorists who killed three or more, or terrorists who slaughtered minors under 18. But justice must also be swift. Appeals after exceptionally speedy trials should be allowed only within three months and expedited by special tribunals. Within a year of any terrorist attack, punishment should be meted out.
The writer, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. His latest book, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream, was just published.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-839675
The Economist, January 30, pay wall
Gaza’s future : Hamas talks a big game but is in chaos
Look beyond the latest bravado and brutality and it is bitterly split
Article intégral : https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/30-janvier-2.pdf
Link : https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2025/01/29/hamas-talks-a-big-game-but-is-in-chaos
The Jerusalem Post, January 30, pay wall
It isn’t a hostage ‘deal,’ it’s extortion of Israeli souls – opinion
For more than 10 years, we have warned that appeasement and enabling genocidal terrorists to dictate conduct and equations
Extraits:
Anyone with a heart was moved beyond words at the return home of Emily, Romi, and Doron. Every parent, child, sibling, and friend could almost taste their mothers’ embraces.
The script could not have been imagined by anyone when Emily raised her three remaining fingers, signaling life, resiliency, and hope.
The thing is that for the heartless, genocidal Hamas barbarians who stole Emily, Romi, and Doron from their beds on October 7, 2023, human tragedy is the strategy.
For them and for the murderous Islamic regime in Iran, of which they are proxies, every parent, child, sibling, and friend is a human shield or sacrifice on the altar of genocidal intent to destroy civilization and build an alternate reality on its rubble.
The thing is that internationally created and funded institutions and agencies in whose “civilian shelters” Emily, Romi, and Doron and other hostages were held have been hijacked and weaponized to sow fear, despair, and distrust that collapse the foundations of democracies. (…)
Their release was not the result of “negotiations” that enable making “a deal.” It is the result of multitiered extortion, resulting from decades of appeasement and cemented in 16 months of false moral equivalence – by Western countries, international institutions, terror-supporting campus mobs, and legacy media spewing lies provided by genocidal proxies and their supporting regimes; extortion that will be compounded with every passing day and “stage” of “the deal,” feeding the beast and emboldening genocidal proxies of murderous regimes to continue dictating equations and conduct in this and other contexts.
For more than 10 years, we have warned that appeasement and enabling genocidal terrorists to dictate conduct and equations, even as they trample law and morality, out of the false hope that they’ll “play nice,” will only whet the appetite of terror proxies and their supporting regimes. (…)
With the recognition that what enabled the release of Romi, Doron, and Emily is not at all “a deal” but extortion, this can and must be remedied by what should have been the immediate and unconditional demand made by the US in the lead, international institutions, and human rights warriors on day one – the demand to let them all go.
It is the most basic demand in the face of extortion, a demand that uses all existing leverage to ensure Hamas releases all hostages or “there’ll be all hell to pay” – for Hamas, and for all those who enable it through silence, false moral equivalency, impunity, and outright support.
In what is a raging war of barbarism on civilization, this existential moment requires clarity, action, and courage, from all committed to life and liberty, to rise and reclaim all that has been hijacked and weaponized. (…)
The writer is Israel’s special envoy for combating antisemitism and a former member of Knesset.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-839693
The Economist, January 29, pay wall
The Middle East and nuclear weapons : Iran’s alarming nuclear dash will soon test Donald Trump
There is no plausible civilian use for the enhanced uranium Iran is producing
Extraits:
“It would really be nice if that could be worked out without having to go that further step,” declared Donald Trump on January 23rd, speaking with the insouciance of a man complaining to a waiter about his meal. In fact Mr Trump was referring to Iran’s nuclear programme. The “further step” was an Israel strike. And whether it can be “worked out” is perhaps the biggest question in the president’s in-tray.
The past year was painful for Iran. Its president died in a helicopter crash. It was twice hit by Israeli missiles, which wiped out its best air defence and missile facilities. And three of its regional allies—Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza—have crumbled. Its nuclear programme is a rare area where Iran might claim to retain the initiative.
Late last year Iran was producing around 7kg of uranium enriched to 60%—a stone’s throw from weapon’s grade—each month, enough to make around two nuclear bombs per year if enriched further. Now it is installing more advanced centrifuges, and feeding some with uranium already enriched to higher levels. “The capacity is increasing by a factor of seven,” Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (iaea), a un watchdog, told The Economist. There is no plausible civilian use for all this.
Iran suspended its formal nuclear weapons programme in 2003, but continued to pursue weapons-related work. The killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a nuclear physicist, by a satellite-controlled gun in 2020, almost certainly by Israel, has left a vacuum. No one person co-ordinates weapons-related activity. An Israeli source says that “there are now at least five or six Fakhrizadehs and they’re much harder to get at”. Some units in Iran’s programme are thought to be conducting research without telling policymakers. Iran is not believed to have any secret enrichment sites other than Natanz and Fordow. But there are worries it is hoarding undeclared centrifuges to use later.
Many in Israel would like to strike Iran’s nuclear sites to prevent it from getting a bomb. But Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister who once advocated such action, and other former Israeli politicians argue that Iran’s programme is now too advanced and deeply buried to take out. “Practically speaking, you cannot easily delay them in any significant manner,” he conceded in October. Other Israeli officials, buoyed by the success of their strikes last year, insist that they could still do serious damage—if America helps provides the necessary bunker-busting bombs, as well as intelligence.
Mr Trump is not convinced. “They can’t have a nuclear weapon,” he insisted recently, “they are religious zealots”. But his early moves suggest he is not keen on an immediate scrap. Within hours of taking office, Mr Trump fired Brian Hook, a hawkish official who was Iran envoy in Mr Trump’s first term. He then withdrew security protection from Mr Hook and Mike Pompeo, his former secretary of state. Both were targets of Iranian assassination threats because of Mr Trump’s decision to kill Qassem Suleimani, an Iranian general, in 2020.
Many of Mr Trump’s early appointees are also fiercely opposed to American entanglement in the Middle East. (…)
Mr Trump’s preference is to resume “maximum pressure” on Iran by adding to and enforcing sanctions. The question is to what end. The president will have to decide how far he wants to roll back Iran’s programme, and whether to demand constraints that go beyond those of the jcpoa, a nuclear deal which he left, and essentially killed, in 2018. (…)
For their part, Iran’s leaders are in a quandary. The loss of their missile stockpiles, air defences and regional allies means that the nuclear option is more attractive. But that same trio of factors means that they are in a poor position to weather the fallout if they are caught in the process of dashing for a bomb. Israeli spies have demonstrated a remarkable degree of penetration of Iran over the past year. (…)
Mr Pezeshkian is a weak president who has little say on nuclear policy. But even those with real decision-making power have reason to cut a deal. Iran’s leaders fear Mr Trump’s impetuosity. They are also in dire economic straits. “Iran is likely to choose negotiations for now,” says Raz Zimmt, an Iran-watcher at Tel Aviv University. Even so, he is unsure whether the gap between Mr Trump and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, can be bridged. “They will try and string [Mr Trump] along in negotiations,” says an Israeli intelligence official.
That may only work up to a point. “We are working against a very tight timeline,” acknowledges Mr Grossi. Under the jcpoa, Britain, France and Germany—the three remaining Western members of the pact—can vote to re-impose the full panoply of pre-2015 sanctions on Iran, a move they threatened in December. If they do not do so by October, they lose that ability. Iran has said it might pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in response. There is no consensus between London, Paris or Berlin right now. The timetable could also shorten if Israel believes that Iran is making a clandestine dash for a bomb. Like Iran, America’s allies are waiting to see how Mr Trump will approach talks. “Iran will hopefully make a deal,” said the president on January 23rd. “And if they don’t make a deal that’s okay too.” ■
The Guardian, January 28, free accès
😮 👎 Who will lead the Palestinians? This is a question they must be allowed to debate and answer themselves
The current leadership is seen as either absent or illegitimate. A postwar plan must not simply repackage it
Dana El Kurd is a researcher of Palestinian and Arab politics and a senior nonresident fellow at the Arab Center Washington
Extraits:
Since the announcement of a ceasefire in Gaza, much of the world has focused on the immediate impacts of destruction in the strip. The discussion has been focused on which bodies will administer aid, how reconstruction might start, the role of international actors and the terms of the fragile ceasefire.
These are all important issues. But something is missing from this discussion, and from the ceasefire agreement: the Palestinians themselves and their political agency. The following questions also need to be asked. What will happen to the Palestinian national movement in the aftermath of this war? Who will speak for the Palestinians, and negotiate the terms of possible agreements with Israel moving forward? Are the previous frameworks for negotiation even relevant any more?
😮 Palestinians are, of course, relieved that the ceasefire has finally been announced, after 15 months of unimaginable devastation that many experts characterise as genocide. The war surpassed, in scale, the 1948 Nakba, in which approximately 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes.
😮 Nonetheless, many Palestinians view the current moment as, on some level, a victory. The people of Gaza were displaced en masse but were not expelled. Palestinians insisted on, and won, their demand to begin returning to whatever remains of their homes in the north of the strip. Moreover, Palestinian identity and nationalism are alive and well, with the movement in support of Palestinian rights globally expanding in scope and recognition over the past year of war. These are all noteworthy developments.
This takes us to the main crisis plaguing internal Palestinian politics today: a leadership that is seen as absent or illegitimate.
Palestinian leadership currently takes two forms. There is the political bureau of Hamas, which has an acting head negotiating in Qatar, and the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Neither has risen to the occasion; it remains unclear how either intends to pursue Palestinian national claims beyond this moment. Indeed, the fact that there are two actors claiming to represent the people is the clearest sign of the political stagnation Palestinians face.
Since the early 1990s, a Fatah-run Palestinian Authority, backed by the US and in coordination with Israel, has been allowed to function in parts of the West Bank. It has claimed legitimacy on the international stage, all the while refusing to hold elections or be accountable to Palestinians in any meaningful way. (…)
😮 Alternatively, Hamas came to control Gaza after winning the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006. It seized control of the Gaza Strip after those election results were rejected by the US and its allies. Since then, no one in the international community has found it urgent to address the fact that the Palestinian territories have been governed separately, or that people in Gaza have had to endure a severe blockade since Hamas took control of the strip. Until 7 October 2023, policymakers assumed that the “violent equilibrium” between Hamas and Israel would hold, and that this status quo of split governance, unaccountable leadership and no political solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would remain sustainable. (…)
So, what next? A majority of Palestinians reject the idea of the Palestinian Authority governing Gaza alone. The PA is seen as the institution that has presided over the deterioration of living conditions and the national movement. It is true that PA institutions provide some basic services, but accusing Abbas and the PA of betraying the Palestinian cause is a common theme in Palestinian discourse.
😮 It is important to recognise the fact that, despite international opprobrium and its designation by the US and its allies as a terrorist organisation,Hamas has gained some legitimacy among Palestinians since the war began. Public opinion polls show more support for the organisation today than prior to the 7 October attacks, likely to be a “rally around the flag” effect of the war – 27% of Palestinians polled in September 2023 believed that Hamas is the “most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people”, compared to 43% in September 2024. However, a full third of Palestinians in the latest poll do not believe either party deserves to lead. The majority of Palestinians also want both parties to enter into a unity government as their first preference for political change after the war. The idea of returning to split governance, with one organisation running Gaza and the other the West Bank, is outrageous to many who prioritise the unity of Palestine.
Finally, it is important to observe that very few Palestinians approve of outside intervention. This flies in the face of plans floated by the United Arab Emirates, for instance, in which Arab forces allied with Israel “secure” Gaza after ceasefire.
There are no easy answers here. (…)
😮 It is astonishing that more than a year of war has not made clear a simple fact: a resolution to this conflict cannot be found without the Palestinian people. Furthermore, expecting the Palestinians to face existential threats to their lives and identity – through starvation, bombardment, repression, settler attacks and more – without any reaction is to believe in a fantasy. If political and policy solutions do not exist, armed action will inevitably increase. This is indeed what we have seen in the West Bank, and as Blinken claimed earlier this month: “Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost.” It should be deeply disturbing to everyone that the conditions that preceded this war have only worsened.
For any solutions to be sustainable, Palestinian society must be on board. This means allowing Palestinians to choose their leadership, so that whoever negotiates on their behalf actually has legitimacy in their eyes. It also means allowing Palestinians the space to negotiate internally, without reprisals and assassinations, in order to come up with ways to move beyond the Fatah-Hamas binary. And it means the international community should take bold and creative solutions seriously, rather than ignore any manifestations of Palestinian agency.
Nothing less will resolve the immediate crisis of suffering and devastation in Gaza – and nothing less will achieve a long-term peace.
Dana El Kurd is a researcher of Palestinian and Arab politics and a senior nonresident fellow at the Arab Center Washington. She is the author of Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/27/lead-palestinians-debate-leadership-postwar
The Wall Street Journal, January 27, pay wall
Trump’s ‘Clean Out’ Gaza Proposal Stuns All Sides, Scrambles Middle East Diplomacy
New plan doesn’t spell out if he would support allowing Palestinians to eventually govern their own state
Extraits:
President Trump’s Saturday night proposal that Palestinians vacate a devastated Gaza marked a sharp break with his predecessor and introduced a contentious new initiative into his unfolding Middle East diplomatic plans.
Trump said the resettling of the Palestinians from Gaza “could be temporary or long term.”
His statement could mark a dramatic shift in U.S. policy toward Palestinians under presidents of both parties. No recent White House has suggested the “long-term” departure of Palestinians from Gaza, which most U.S. presidents have seen as a part of an eventual Palestinian state.
“It’s literally a demolition site right now,” he said. “So, I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations, and build housing in a different location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”
But on Sunday Trump officials suggested the U.S. and regional partners could provide guarantees the Palestinians would eventually be allowed to return, sketching out an assurance that appeared designed to make the idea more politically palatable to Arab states.
Officials have yet to spell out the precise parameters of the suggestion, including how the more than two million Palestinians in the enclave could be relocated and whether they might eventually fulfill their aspirations to fully govern their own territory.
“You’re talking about a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said. “You know over the centuries it’s had many, many conflicts. And I don’t know, something has to happen.” (…)
Trump’s foray into Middle East peacemaking comes at a critical moment as Israel’s cease-fires with Hamas in Gaza and with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon appear increasingly fragile and special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has been planning a return to the region.
“It’s an interesting opening gambit, but it’s hard to imagine it having much traction as an idea,” said Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“It will certainly arouse deep alarm in Egypt and Jordan, among their Gulf Arab allies, and among European governments who have an interest in stability in Egypt and Jordan in addition to their sentiments about the rights of Palestinians.” (…)
Asked about Trump’s plan, administration officials said Sunday that they look at Gaza as a wasteland filled with rubble and unexploded ordnance, whose reconstruction would be greatly facilitated by the departure of its residents.
“You cannot demand that people remain in an uninhabitable place for political reasons,” said a senior Trump administration official, who added the Palestinians might be provided with an assurance they could eventually return after negotiations with regional partners. (…)
Egypt and Jordan have long rebuffed the idea because of their security and the economic burden they foresee in taking in so many Gazan Palestinians. Another fear is that they would be accused of abetting Israel’s annexation of the enclave should Israel bar the Palestinians from returning.
“Encouraging the ‘voluntary migration’ of civilians from Gaza has long been the fever dream of the most messianic extremists in Israel,” said Frank Lowenstein, a former Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiator at the State Department.
Among them is Ben-Gvir, who resigned as Israel’s minister of national security over the cease-fire deal in Gaza. He praised Trump’s plan and urged Netanyahu to support it. “Encourage immigration now!” he wrote on X.
The decision by Israel’s far right to embrace Trump’s suggestion has made winning Arab support for the initiative all the more difficult, former officials say.
“The idea of Egypt and Jordan accepting a significant number of Gazan Palestinians is a nonstarter,” said a former senior U.S. official. “These were red lines for both countries before the Gazan crisis and they remain even sharper red lines now.”
The Jerusalem Post, January 27, pay wall
Shimon Peres’s vision: Transforming Gaza into Singapore – opinion
Even Singapore was once a small, poor place that became an economic paradise. Gaza has great potential in agriculture and especially in tourism.
Extraits:
The phrase “making Gaza Singapore” was used by Shimon Peres to express a vision for transforming the Gaza Strip into a prosperous, thriving area, similar to how Singapore developed from a small, poor country into a wealthy, hi-tech hub.
Peres often spoke about the potential for Gaza to become a successful, peaceful place if it could embrace peace and economic cooperation with Israel. His vision was based on the idea that Gaza, with the right investments and international aid, could flourish through trade, tourism, and technology, much like Singapore had done, thus leading to a better life for its residents and reducing the tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.
This idea was part of Peres’s broader approach to achieving peace and economic development in the region. However, critics often pointed out the challenges of such a vision, given the ongoing political, security, and humanitarian issues in Gaza.
The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas (the hostage crisis) opens a door and creates an opportunity for a dramatic change on Israel’s southern border. Thinking outside the box could bring to fruition Shimon Peres’s vision of turning Gaza into the Singapore of the Middle East.
While this may seem somewhat absurd in today’s reality, given the leadership on both sides, one should never say “never.” In the absence of a vision, which at times seems like a delusion, it is impossible to change reality. There is always a chance for change; the question is whether there is the will and the power to implement it.
Even Singapore was once a small, poor place that became an economic paradise. Gaza has great potential in agriculture and especially in tourism. A long, pristine beach could be a major attraction for surfers. (…)
I can see Shimon Peres’s vision coming to fruition: hotels filled with tourists along the beaches of Gaza, an open border with Israel for the passage of agricultural products (strawberries, tomatoes, etc.). This may sound absurd to today’s ears, but the same reaction would have come from an English person in 1945 if they were presented with the reality that England would one day have such close, peaceful relations with Germany.
The writer served as a strategic adviser to Shimon Peres from 1990 to 2016. He recently published a book in Hebrew, Whispering in His Ear, which includes never-before-told stories about his years as a senior aide to Peres.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-839197
The Economist, January 24, pay wall
The Middle East’s wars : Trump should try to end, not manage, the Middle East’s oldest conflicts
And he should see the region as more than a source of instability and arms deals
Full article: https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/24-janvier-1.pdf
The Wall Street Journal, January 23, pay wall
How Trump Can Counter Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions
If hard-line diplomacy doesn’t work, he’ll likely need to let Israel bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Extraits:
Will Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei agree to nuclear negotiations with President Trump? According to the Justice Department, the cleric’s minions tried to assassinate Mr. Trump during the campaign. But given the Islamic Republic’s precarious standing in the Middle East, its ever-worsening economy tied to a collapsing currency and shortages of energy and gas, and a foreboding among many regime loyalists about their grip on Iranian society, Mr. Khamenei might be willing to make compromises in his nuclear aspirations in return for softened U.S. sanctions. After all, he has already made Iran a nuclear-threshold state.
The more important question: If Mr. Trump agrees to nuclear negotiations with Iran, how will he approach them? Will he firmly deny Iran the capacity to enrich uranium and retain deeply buried centrifuge facilities and nuclear-capable ballistic missiles? Will he demand that the International Atomic Energy Agency inspect all suspected nuclear sites in Iran and have access to all nuclear-related paperwork and personnel? Will he insist on all the things Barack Obama should have demanded but didn’t when he approved the Iran nuclear agreement in 2015?
Or will Mr. Trump take a more conciliatory approach? (…)
Whichever path Mr. Trump takes, unless he connects nuclear talks to Iran’s regional behavior, he will find himself in Mr. Obama’s predicament: Any sanctions relief will fund Tehran’s nefarious actions, including the supply of arms to regional terror proxies that have killed Americans and Israelis. This would fundamentally compromise the Jewish state. Among all the painful things the Oct. 7, 2023, attack revealed, the worst was that Mr. Obama’s decision to address Tehran’s nuclear intentions while ignoring its other regional activities gave the regime carte blanche to arm and fund Israel’s enemies. (…)
Many in Mr. Trump’s America-first movement would probably rather see Iran go nuclear than have the U.S. pre-emptively destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. As JD Vance put it before the 2024 election, referring to the U.S. and Israel, “sometimes we’re going to have overlapping interests, and sometimes we’re going to have distinct interests. And our interest very much is in not going to war with Iran.” (…)
Would Mr. Trump approve of Israel’s trying to take out Iran’s nuclear program, an option it’s reportedly considering? Would he block such an attack if Jerusalem’s assessment of tolerable risk differed significantly from Washington’s? Mr. Trump said in October that he’s in favor of Israel’s targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities—will he maintain this perspective as president?
Assuming diplomacy goes nowhere, Mr. Trump might need to back Israel militarily to maximize the destructiveness of a strike. He could decide to give Israel the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator, which would require a B-2 or possibly a B-52 bomber for delivery and is powerful enough to obliterate Iran’s underground Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant.
Such a “lend-lease” program, which would require extensive training for Israeli air crews, would be controversial. With anyone other than Mr. Trump in the White House, it would be impossible. (…)
Since any Israeli attack against Iranian nuclear sites could trigger Iranian attacks on Persian Gulf oil, Washington could also soon face the risk that Arab Gulf states drift entirely out of the U.S. orbit. (…)
Israel knows its role in the Middle East, but it’s unclear the same is true for the U.S. Israel’s future is now inextricably tied to whether Americans, especially Republicans, learn quickly that skirting the Middle East is neither advisable nor possible.
Mr. Gerecht, a former Iranian-targets officer in the CIA, is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Dubowitz is the foundation’s CEO.
The Economist, January 23, pay wall
A terrifying knock-on effect: The Gaza ceasefire is stoking violence in the West Bank
Hamas and the Israeli far right both want to destabilise the West Bank
Extraits:
(…) “We are determined both to fight Hamas wherever it tries to operate and to prevent violence by Israeli citizens,” insists one senior Israeli officer. These two missions do not sit comfortably together. Many Israeli soldiers are settlers; some have joined the rioters. Many of the idf’s West Bank bases are next to the settlements, and the main job of troops stationed there is to protect their residents. And though the army claims to be fighting settler violence, its political boss, the defence minister Israel Katz, announced a few days ago that he was releasing from administrative detention suspected organisers of past attacks on Palestinians.
Both the settlers and Hamas, the Islamists who run Gaza and also have a presence in the West Bank, are keen to foment violence there. For now, Hamas wants to preserve the ceasefire in Gaza. It has provided the movement with some much-needed respite from the idf’s incessant attacks since October 2023. However, it also needs to prove that it is still a fighting force. It is using the West Bank to do so.
Meanwhile the settler movement has made no secret of its desire to rebuild its communities in Gaza, which Israel dismantled in 2005. For that, they need the war in Gaza to continue indefinitely, thus perpetuating Israeli control of the strip. Provoking a new conflagration with the Palestinians in the West Bank might achieve that. More violence there could scupper the next round of ceasefire talks. It could also lead to attacks against the idf in Gaza by Hamas. Squeezing Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, politically might also achieve their goals. One of the settlers’ leaders, Bezalel Smotrich, is an important ally of Mr Netanyahu. If Israel does not restart the war in Gaza within six weeks, he has promised to topple the government. (…)
Meanwhile on the ground in Gaza the ceasefire, which came into effect on January 19th, is holding. The first hostages have been released as have 90 Palestinian prisoners. Aid has begun to flow in. The idf has begun to dismantle some of its bases. Displaced Gazans are returning to the rubble of their homes.
Will the truce hold beyond this first stage? Much depends on Donald Trump. (…)
Nevertheless, the impression of senior Israeli officials and diplomats working with the Americans is that Mr Trump wants to prioritise building a regional alliance in which Israel and Saudi Arabia are central. Ending the war in Gaza is a key part of any such plan.
That leaves Mr Netanyahu in a political bind. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the former national-security minister and leader of one of the two far-right parties in his coalition, has already resigned from the government in protest over the Gaza deal. If Mr Smotrich makes good on his threats, Mr Netanyahu’s coalition will lose its majority. The opposition has promised to support him until the ceasefire is complete; but ultimately this would mean holding an early election. (…)
The Jerusalem Post, January 21, pay wall
Trump says he’s not confident ceasefire in Gaza will be kept
US President plans to lift pause on 2,000-pound bomb supply to Israel • Thinks Saudi Arabia will normalize relations with Israel
Full text:
Trump says he’s not confident ceasefire in Gaza will be kept
US President plans to lift pause on 2,000-pound bomb supply to Israel • Thinks Saudi Arabia will normalize relations with Israel
JANUARY 21, 2025 03:57
President Donald Trump, while signing a slew of executive orders in the Oval Office on Monday night following his inaugural parade event, was asked if he was confident he could keep the ceasefire in Gaza and complete the three phases of the deal.
“I’m not confident,” Trump replied. “It’s not our war. It’s their war. I’m not confident, but they’re very weakened on the other side.”
Trump said he looked at a picture of Gaza and said it’s like a “massive demolition site” and that it’s “really got to be rebuilt in a different way.”
The President said Gaza is a “phenomenal location on the sea” with the best weather.
“You know, everything’s good,” he said. “Some beautiful things could be done with it, but it’s very interesting, but some fantastic things could be done with Gaza.
On the future governance of Gaza, Trump said, “You certainly can’t have the people that were there. Most of them are dead.”
“But they didn’t exactly run it well. They run viciously and badly,” he said. “You can’t have that.”
Trump is expected to lift the Biden administration‘s freeze on the supply of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel in his first days in office, Walla News reported on Monday, citing an interview with the Israeli envoy to Washington.
Trump is also expected to reverse sanctions the Biden administration imposed against Israeli settlers accused of violent attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.
However, Trump said that he thinks Saudi Arabia will end up joining the Abraham Accords, a series of normalization agreements between Israel and Arab nations.
“I think Saudi Arabia will end up being in the Abraham Accords,” Trump told reporters.
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-838482
Le Point, 21 janvier, article payant
Israël-Hamas, une trêve pour rien ?
ÉDITO. Aucun chemin vers la paix ne peut être crédible tant que le mouvement islamiste palestinien reste au pouvoir dans la bande de Gaza.
Extraits:
La sinistre réapparition de combattants du Hamas armés et masqués, paradant en treillis dans la bande de Gaza dès les premières heures du cessez-le-feu dimanche 19 janvier, témoigne de la volonté du mouvement islamiste de se réinstaller au pouvoir comme si de rien n’était. L’armée israélienne se prépare à évacuer une grande partie du territoire, mais les terroristes, eux, restent.
Le Hamas entend tirer profit de la trêve qu’il a conclue avec Israël et dont la première phase, d’une durée de six semaines, prévoit la libération d’encore 30 otages – après les trois femmes relâchées le 19 janvier – sur les 95, vivants ou morts, toujours détenus. À l’évidence, le mouvement islamiste veut utiliser ce laps de temps pour affermir son contrôle sur les 2,5 millions de Palestiniens de la bande de Gaza et reconstituer ses forces. Il va exploiter le plus longtemps possible l’arme des otages, en ne les libérant qu’au compte-gouttes, pour garder un moyen de pression efficace sur Israël.
La paix entre Israéliens et Palestiniens n’est pas imaginable tant que des groupes politico-militaires qui veulent effacer l’État juif de la carte du monde restent aux commandes côté palestinien. (…)
Pour empêcher la reprise des combats, pour permettre de commencer la reconstruction tant attendue, il est impératif que les Palestiniens se dotent d’une direction crédible. Tous les citoyens de bonne volonté qui pressentent que la création d’un État palestinien pacifique à côté d’Israël est la seule solution viable pour régler le conflit ne peuvent pas accepter le maintien, sous une forme ou sous une autre, du Hamas au pouvoir. (…)
Israël a affermi sa position stratégique dans la région depuis le 7 Octobre, en affaiblissant l’Iran et son réseau de milices islamistes anti-occidentales et anti-israéliennes. Mais son principal but de guerre, l’éradication du Hamas, ne sera pas atteint tant que celui-ci restera au pouvoir. (…)
La force militaire ne peut pas, à elle seule, vaincre une idéologie radicale. Il manque toujours une alternative politique pacifique qui fasse justice aux deux peuples en conflit pour la même terre. Seul Israël peut offrir cette alternative, mais seuls les Palestiniens peuvent se doter d’une direction crédible qui pourrait permettre aux Israéliens de surmonter le traumatisme du 7 Octobre et de s’engager sur la voie de la paix. Un mince espoir est apparu avec le cessez-le-feu du 19 janvier. Il faut tout faire pour le conforter ; c’est l’intérêt des Palestiniens comme des Israéliens. Or le manque de confiance mutuelle est tel qu’un seul faux pas, d’un côté ou de l’autre, peut tout faire déraper.
La force militaire ne peut pas, à elle seule, vaincre une idéologie radicale. Il manque toujours une alternative politique pacifique qui fasse justice aux deux peuples en conflit pour la même terre. Seul Israël peut offrir cette alternative, mais seuls les Palestiniens peuvent se doter d’une direction crédible qui pourrait permettre aux Israéliens de surmonter le traumatisme du 7 Octobre et de s’engager sur la voie de la paix. Un mince espoir est apparu avec le cessez-le-feu du 19 janvier. Il faut tout faire pour le conforter ; c’est l’intérêt des Palestiniens comme des Israéliens. Or le manque de confiance mutuelle est tel qu’un seul faux pas, d’un côté ou de l’autre, peut tout faire déraper.
https://www.lepoint.fr/editos-du-point/israel-hamas-une-treve-pour-rien-21-01-2025-2580406_32.php
The Economist, 20 janvier, article payant
A glimmer of hope : The start of a fragile truce in Gaza offers relief and joy
But the ceasefire is not yet the end of the war
Extraits:
PEOPLE IN GAZA and Israel celebrated the start of a ceasefire and the return of three young women held hostage by Hamas on January 19th. The war, sparked by the Islamist movement’s attack on Israel in October 2023, has dragged on for more than 15 months. It is not about to end in a simple ceasefire. The best that can be hoped for is a protracted truce, during which Israel gradually withdraws its forces from the ravaged coastal strip.
Delays and crises are likely in the coming weeks. Even the start of the truce, scheduled for the morning of January 19th, was put off by nearly three hours because Hamas failed to meet a deadline to provide the names of the hostages it would release. Israel had already started to pull back troops from northern Gaza and had allowed, for the first time since May, lorries with aid to enter Gaza directly from Egypt through the Rafah crossing. However, it continued conducting air strikes until Hamas released the names. (…)
Israelis and Palestinians are in for a long period of anguish as the hostages, potentially ill, injured or traumatised, are released in small weekly tranches—some will be returning in body-bags—and thousands of displaced families in Gaza return to the rubble of what was once their homes. The Hamas-run health authorities claim that nearly 47,000 people have died there in the war, but many more bodies could be under the wreckage.
For the families of the 33 Israeli hostages to be released over the next six weeks there will be relief, and for those whose loved ones have died there is at least an end to uncertainty. For the families of 735 Palestinian prisoners who are due to be freed by Israel there will be much celebration. Among the Israelis who will see the convicted murderers of their relatives go free there will be consternation. Underlying it all will be the fear that this truce is but temporary.
Leaders on both sides have been quick to claim victory. Hamas militants emerged from their tunnels to hold gun-toting parades. Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, boasted: “We have changed the face of the Middle East.” (…)
Another reason for the fragility of the ceasefire is the absence of a governing authority in Gaza that will be acceptable to Israel. Hamas has lost nearly all its senior leadership there to Israeli strikes. However a younger generation of commanders has come to the fore and there is no alternative force to challenge them. The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, which was ousted from Gaza by Hamas in a coup in 2007, has said it is prepared to take responsibility for the strip, but it lacks the capacity to govern and secure the territory.
Throughout the war Mr Netanyahu refused all entreaties from the Israeli security establishment, and from other governments, to prepare for an alternative force to secure Gaza. His excuse was that Hamas must first be fully vanquished. With Israel leaving Gaza Hamas, though battered, is already taking back control.
Gaza is not the only place where the ceasefire could be broken. The largest Palestinian population is in the West Bank, where 3m live under an uneasy collaboration between the Palestinian Authority and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Jewish settlers have made no secret of their desire to annex both the West Bank and Gaza, and would gladly derail the ceasefire by provoking a Palestinian uprising. (…)
Left with the slimmest of majorities, Mr Netanyahu has a clear incentive to abandon the ceasefire agreement should he get an excuse to do so. In his speech announcing the deal, he did not accept that the war was over and said that “if we need to go back to the fighting, we will do so in new ways and with great force.”
He remains stuck between the demands of his right-wing coalition members and the desire of a majority of Israelis for peace in exchange for all the hostages coming home. Complicating matters for him is the insistence of the incoming administration of President Donald Trump that Israel ends the war. Much will ride on whether the Americans keep up their pressure. ■
Le Point, 18 janvier, article payant
Peggy Sastre : Comment les « idiots utiles » de la gauche radicale ont permis l’ascension du Hamas
Michaël Prazan dévoile l’envers du mouvement terroriste islamiste, soutenu par les « idiots utiles » d’une certaine gauche occidentale.
Extraits :
Il y a les essais qui documentent et il y a ceux qui marquent. La Vérité sur le Hamas et ses « idiots utiles », que l’historien, documentariste et journaliste Michaël Prazan fait paraître ce 15 janvier aux Éditions de l’Observatoire, est de cette trempe. Un ouvrage incisif qui ne se contente pas d’exposer les mécanismes d’une idéologie destructrice, mais dévoile et dénonce les complicités et aveuglements qui lui permettent de prospérer.
Pas des dérapages, pas le fruit chaotique et spontané d’une barbarie opportuniste, mais bien la traduction d’une stratégie pensée, calculée et exécutée dans un cadre dépassant de loin le théâtre de la guerre. La conséquence directe d’une idéologie structurée, ancienne et méthodique dont les racines plongent, certes, dans une histoire complexe, mais aussi et surtout dans une partition historique et sociale adroitement orchestrée.
Michaël Prazan connaît Gaza. Il y était voilà près de quinze ans, et son séjour a été essentiel pour appréhender l’organisation et la domination du Hamas. « Les lieux sont toujours une source précieuse d’information et de compréhension », nous explique-t-il. Prazan sait comment cette enclave, exiguë et surpeuplée, est devenue au fil des années le reflet d’une organisation politique ayant réussi à imposer son pouvoir par la force, la terreur et l’endoctrinement. Il y a rencontré des figures majeures du Hamas, notamment l’un de ses fondateurs, ainsi que le futur chef du Jihad islamique. Il nous révèle des individus tout à fait conscients de leurs agissements et les raisons qui les animent : « Ce sont des stratèges qui savent très bien ce qu’ils font, de même que les conséquences de leurs actes », confirme-t-il. (…)
Stricto sensu, le Hamas n’est d’ailleurs même pas un mouvement nationaliste palestinien. Il est avant tout l’expression d’une théologie politique voyant dans la Palestine un waqf, une terre sacrée appartenant à l’ensemble des musulmans, pas à un peuple spécifique. Cette dimension religieuse rend toute concession impossible. Pour le Hamas, négocier ou céder un morceau de terre n’est pas seulement une trahison, c’est une hérésie. Avec son cocktail de termes religieux et d’exhortations belliqueuses, difficile de faire plus éloquent que la rhétorique des leaders du Hamas que Prazan expose et décortique. On y entend, sans la moindre ambiguïté, que le Hamas ne mène pas une guerre pour un territoire mais une lutte existentielle pour une vision du monde.
C’est à ce titre qu’il n’y aura jamais de paix, que des « trêves ». Comme le précisait à Prazan son ami Hassan Balawi, cadre de second rang du Fatah et ancien chef de la communication du ministère des Affaires étrangères de l’Autorité palestinienne, devenu l’un de ses ambassadeurs à l’Unesco et au Parlement européen : « Pour les islamistes, Israël représente une nouvelle croisade. Les croisades ont duré deux cents ans, et, pendant ces deux siècles, des dirigeants islamistes tels que Saladin faisaient, de temps à autre, des “trêves” avec les rois chrétiens. Après un certain temps,les dirigeants musulmans repartaient au combat. » Et Prazan de commenter : « Les croisades sont la principale référence historique des Frères musulmans. Peu importe le temps qu’il faut : seul compte, en bout de course, le fait de parvenir à ses fins. »
Parmi les autres passages fondamentaux du livre, l’analyse de l’endoctrinement, en particulier chez les plus jeunes. Gaza, où près de la moitié de la population a moins de 18 ans, est un terrain fertile pour la propagande du Hamas, que Prazan restitue avec une force tragique. Comme ces programmes télévisés diffusés par Al-Aqsa TV avec leurs personnages costumés appelant au meurtre des Juifs comme d’autres récitent une comptine.
« Il est presque impossible de rencontrer quelqu’un qui conteste le pouvoir du Hamas », constate aujourd’hui Prazan. L’absence quasi totale d’opposition à Gaza s’explique non seulement par la répression brutale exercée par le mouvement, mais aussi par des décennies de lavage de cerveau.
À Gaza, une génération entière a grandi sous le joug du Hamas, sans connaître d’autre réalité politique ou idéologique. (…)
Mais l’emprise du Hamas ne se limite pas au Proche-Orient, et les islamistes peuvent compter sur un réseau de soutien propageant leurs idées bien au-delà de ses frontières. « L’entrisme des organisations fréristes diffuse un discours de victimisation à même de convaincre les nouvelles formes prises par l’antiracisme, déplore Prazan. Il y a un aveuglement volontaire, notamment d’extrême gauche, qui semble obstruer ou évacuer la réalité pour des motifs idéologiques et électoralistes. »
Le tout s’enracine dans un phénomène historique : depuis les années 1980, la cause palestinienne est devenue un marqueur essentiel du militantisme étudiant à gauche. Avec l’effondrement du communisme, le pro-palestinisme a pris le relais comme dernier grand identifiant idéologique : un mouvement que galvanisent une méconnaissance des réalités et une opposition systématique à Israël, érigé en symbole d’oppression.
Comme le résume Prazan : « Ajoutons à cela l’ignorance – qui renvoie à la baisse du niveau scolaire qui affecte les lycéens ou les étudiants, mais aussi un certain nombre d’enseignants –, l’hystérie et la violence des réseaux sociaux, le développement des théories complotistes, l’explosion de l’antisémitisme qui, depuis le 7 Octobre, s’exprime désormais sans aucun garde-fou, la disparition des communautés juives de banlieue, depuis, en gros, les années 2000-2005, qui a renvoyé les Juifs à toutes sortes de fantasmagories, et la perte de repères qui touche les nouvelles générations sur ce qui fonde le pacte républicain, la pulsion ou la séduction révolutionnaire qui identifie la violence islamiste à un adjuvant capable de renverser le capitalisme, le dévoiement du mot “résistance” ou le romantisme supposé de la violence révolutionnaire en général, palestinienne en particulier, et vous aurez là les éléments du combo explosif qui a façonné ce à quoi nous avons assisté au cours de l’année écoulée. » Sans compter que « certains acteurs sont motivés par un antisémitisme de moins en moins masqué, ou par intérêt, sachant que certains d’entre eux sont en lien avec des pays, notamment des émirats perméables à l’idéologie des Frères musulmans. »
À ce titre, le livre de Michaël Prazan n’est pas qu’une dissection du Hamas. Il interroge aussi les failles des démocraties occidentales, gangrenées par la peur, l’autocensure et les compromissions. Une dérive que l’assassinat de Samuel Paty aura tragiquement illustrée, avec l’intimidation islamiste parvenant à imposer le silence dans des sphères pourtant censées incarner la liberté d’expression. Une complaisance qui, pour Prazan, équivaut à une trahison morale. Comme si, en relativisant certains actes, en refusant de nommer clairement le mal et en faisant petit à petit de la barbarie un « moyen de lutte » acceptable, nos sociétés consentaient à leur autodestruction.
The Jerusalem Post, 18 janvier, article payant
My Word: Justice, and injustice on the brink of a hostage deal
Examining the complexities of hostage deals with Hamas, justice, and the ongoing impact on Israel’s fight against terrorism.
Extraits :
There is no good hostage deal. There is no justice. No agreement on the release of those abducted to Gaza is going to be ideal because although Hamas and its jihadist partners in crime invaded southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and perpetrated a mega-atrocity murdering 1,200 people and kidnapping some 250, it is Israel that is expected to pay the price in an exchange.
As I write these lines, the terms and timeline of a hostage deal are not clear, but there definitely has been a shift, with the hostages’ release more likely than ever.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that a deal also involves the release of Palestinian terrorists from Israeli jails.
And we’ve been here before, most notably with the Gilad Schalit exchange in 2011 that resulted in the release of some 1,000 terrorists in return for the kidnapped IDF soldier.
Many of the released prisoners returned to their terrorist activities – including Yahya Sinwar, the October 7, 2023 mastermind whose brother Mohammed Sinwar now heads the terrorist movement.
Nobody with a heart wants the hostages to stay in captivity. Over the last 15 months, the names and faces have become familiar to all Israelis, the greater Jewish community, and beyond.
We don’t know exactly who or how many of the 98 hostages still being held are alive and that just adds to the pain, part of Hamas’s psychological warfare.
The reported outline of the latest deal doesn’t seem so different from previously discussed plans. So what has changed? One obvious element is Donald Trump’s election and imminent inauguration.
Trump has more than once threatened-promised Hamas that there will be “hell to pay” if the hostages aren’t released before he begins his term in office. Hamas doesn’t want to risk provoking the US president, whose trademark unpredictability is part of his operating method. (…)
The incoming Trump administration appears to be applying pressure on Qatar, a major Hamas sponsor, in a way that the Biden administration did not. (Biden even granted Qatar “major non-NATO ally” status.) The Israeli government also wants to avoid upsetting Trump at the outset of his term. (…)
This week when news of fallen soldiers was released, the left-leaning echo chamber on social media began to reverberate with the mantra: “They are being led like lambs to slaughter.”
What an injustice to the soldiers who just sacrificed their lives! They were not led like lambs to their deaths. Many have been fighting like lions for months. Lions of Judah. And the reason they were in Beit Hanoun was not a political caprice; they were there to fight the terrorists.
Hamas terrorists returned to the northern Gazan neighborhood as soon as the IDF pulled out in previous operations.
And you can be sure that following any ceasefire deal, the terrorists will again exploit the absence of an Israeli military presence and try to reestablish a base in areas like Beit Hanoun, close to Israel’s border.
This, too, is part of the unfair price of a deal.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-837931
The Economist, 17 janvier, article payant
The Arabs, Iran and Israel : First, the ceasefire. Next the Trump effect could upend the Middle East
Will Israel and Donald Trump use the threat of annexation to secure a new grand bargain?
Extraits :
Even before the ceasefire in Gaza Donald Trump had begun to reshape the Middle East. He was influential in pushing Israel to a truce with Lebanon in November. The fragile deal struck between Israel and Hamas on January 15th further reduces the intensity of the fighting in the region and resets Israel’s domestic politics. It will also reinforce the president-elect’s power over the Arab states that helped broker the deal, and over Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.
He will need all the leverage he can get. As Mr Trump enters the White House, he and his advisers face huge decisions about what policies to pursue in a region that has been transformed since his first term.
One dilemma is how much effort Mr Trump should expend on the region. (…) The other dilemma is choosing between competing visions of the region’s future: whether to enable Israel’s hard right, or constrain it in pursuit of a grand bargain with Saudi Arabia.
Such a bargain would potentially have a knock-on benefit, of creating a stronger grouping of Middle East countries opposed to Iran, making it easier for America and its allies to contain the Islamic Republic or weaken it further and force it to the bargaining table. Mike Waltz, the incoming national security adviser, calls it a “huge priority”. Mr Trump sees it as his ticket to a Nobel peace prize.
The agenda of right-wing Israelis remains ambitious. They dream of rebuilding settlements in Gaza and of annexing the occupied West Bank (see map), and are bullish about Israel’s recent incursions into Lebanon and Syria. One of the most extreme individuals in Mr Netanyahu’s coalition is Bezalel Smotrich, the hard-right finance minister. He has already spent the past two years trying to bring about a de facto annexation of the West Bank, pushing through bureaucratic changes that make it easier to expand Jewish settlements there. (…)
Mr Netanyahu had not sworn off annexation for ever. “The word ‘suspend’ was chosen carefully by all parties,” said David Friedman, then America’s ambassador to Israel. “It’s off the table now, but it’s not off the table permanently.” In private, American and Arab diplomats said Israel had promised not to pursue annexation until the end of 2024.
The project of an expansive Israel also has sympathisers within Mr Trump’s swirling group of advisers, among them Mike Huckabee, tipped to be the next ambassador to Israel, an evangelical Christian who believes there is “no such thing as a settlement”. Yet for all that, the Gaza ceasefire points in a different direction. Many of Mr Trump’s close advisers—including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff—have ambitious plans for regional diplomacy. Allowing Israel to annex the West Bank would scuttle those and lay the groundwork for renewed conflict with the Palestinians.
A major consideration is Saudi Arabia. Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince and de facto ruler, is eager for a deal that normalises relations with Israel. He sees it as the gateway to better relations with America, which has offered a formal defence treaty, nuclear co-operation and other sweeteners. The plight of the Palestinians does not move him as it does older Saudi royals. (…)
A deal establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia will have to go far beyond ruling out annexation. The Saudis will want a credible Israeli commitment to Palestinian statehood. That, in turn, requires a reset of Israeli politics, with Mr Netanyahu facing down the hard-right parties that he has come to rely on in order to build a viable coalition.
The Gaza ceasefire showed a new dynamic in play, with Mr Trump putting pressure on Mr Netanyahu, who then overruled the extremists in his cabinet. But Mr Netanyahu has yet to fully cross the rubicon: he continues to maintain that the war has not ended and that Israel seeks a total victory over Hamas. (…)
Mr Netanyahu (…), or a future Israeli leader, could pursue a grand bargain backed by Mr Trump. But a huge outstanding question would still remain: the status of Gaza. Hamas has lost its top leadership and thousands of fighters during the war, but it has had no trouble finding more amid the strip’s teeming misery. “We assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost,” Antony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, said in a speech on January 14th. (…)
The group’s past wars with Israel followed a familiar pattern. Gaza endured days or weeks of bombardment. Once a ceasefire took hold, donor countries stepped in to fix the damage. Hamas retained its grip on power. It hopes to do the same this time. If it does, though, it is unlikely Gaza will be rebuilt soon. (…)
Hamas will not find it easy to wield power in post-war Gaza—but there are also no easy alternatives to its rule. Mr Biden had been keen for the PA to take control of the territory. Mr Netanyahu refused even to discuss the idea, let alone pursue it; he hoped to dump the job on Arab states. Mr Trump’s views are a mystery. If he does not pursue a viable plan for governing the strip, the ceasefire will remain fragile: reconstruction is meant to be part of the deal. Israel will remain isolated. Ending the war will not buy it much goodwill if Gaza still resembles an enormous refugee camp.
Much has changed in the Middle East. That does not mean anything is possible, though. A Saudi-Israeli deal is a realistic goal in the next four years, but it may not be possible to strong-arm the Saudis.
Nor will Mr Trump negotiate that deal in isolation. He has also promised another round of “maximum pressure” aimed at forcing Iran into a diplomatic agreement that restrains its nuclear programme and, perhaps, its support for regional militias as well. The events of the past year have left those militias deeply weakened. Hizbullah, the Iranian-backed Shia group in Lebanon, is no longer in a position to menace Israel. The Assad regime in Syria has collapsed, yielding to an interim government that seeks accommodation with Israel.
Empowering Israel’s far right would jeopardise these gains: the Palestinian cause can still mobilise violence and unrest across the region. On the other hand, a durable peace in Gaza and a fair settlement for the Palestinians would get Mr Trump the deal he covets—and probably the peace prize, too. ■
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 17 janvier, article payant
Die Waffenruhe im Gazastreifen ist eine gute Nachricht – doch die Hamas bleibt ein Problem
Israel muss in dem Abkommen schmerzhafte Zugeständnisse machen und den «totalen Sieg» über die Terrororganisation aufschieben. Die Hoffnungen auf ein Ende des Krieges sind verfrüht. Dennoch bietet die Feuerpause Chancen, die nun genutzt werden sollten.
Extraits :
(…) Sosehr nun Erleichterung herrscht – dieses Abkommen ist alles andere als perfekt. Es sichert das Überleben der Hamas und zwingt Israel zu schmerzhaften Zugeständnissen, wie etwa zur Freilassung von Hunderten verurteilten Terroristen aus israelischen Gefängnissen. Die Zerschlagung der Terrororganisation aus Gaza ist und bleibt ein legitimes Ziel der Israeli – zumal diese nicht von ihrem Anspruch, den jüdischen Staat zu zerstören, ablassen wird.
Deshalb ist die Hoffnung, dass die Einigung in Doha zu einem definitiven Ende des Krieges führen wird, völlig verfrüht. Die Hamas wird alles unternehmen, um ihre Machtposition im Gazastreifen nicht zu verlieren. Gelingt ihr dies, hat Israel jedes Recht, den Krieg wieder aufzunehmen und sich gegen die mörderischen Terroristen zu verteidigen.
Warum der Sinneswandel Netanyahus? Hat er eingesehen, dass sich die Hamas mit militärischem Druck allein nicht zerschlagen lässt? Nach Einschätzung der Amerikaner haben die Terroristen jüngst mehr neue Kämpfer rekrutiert, als sie verloren haben. Fest steht: Solange dieser Konflikt andauert, wird es immer junge Palästinenser geben, die sich von islamistischen Predigern dazu verführen lassen, mit einem Sturmgewehr in der Hand «Widerstand» zu leisten.
Es ist nicht ausgeschlossen, dass Netanyahu darauf spekuliert, nun einige Geiseln freizubekommen, nur um dann mit Unterstützung von Präsident Trump den Krieg mit neuer Härte fortzusetzen und auch die israelische Kontrolle über das besetzte Westjordanland zu zementieren. Doch Trump, der selbsternannte «Dealmaker», könnte andere Ziele vor Augen haben: ein Normalisierungsabkommen mit Saudiarabien, einen Friedensplan für den Nahen Osten, einen Friedensnobelpreis. Dies wäre jedenfalls ein hoffnungsvolleres Szenario als ein fortgesetzter Krieg.
All dies wird jedoch davon abhängen, ob es gelingt, die Macht der Hamas zu brechen – und das ist mehr als fraglich. (…) Doch wer sollte an ihrer Stelle die Kontrolle übernehmen? Die korrupte Palästinensische Autonomiebehörde – der Wunschkandidat der Biden-Regierung –, die es bis heute nicht geschafft hat, das Massaker vom 7. Oktober 2023 unmissverständlich zu verurteilen? Die Golfmonarchien, die nur dann helfen wollen, wenn gleichzeitig ein palästinensischer Staat entsteht? So oder so wird die Hamas keine Gelegenheit auslassen, eine alternative Nachkriegsordnung zu sabotieren. Die Vorzeichen stehen schlecht.
(…) Donald Trump scheint für diese Aufgabe besser gerüstet als sein zaudernder Vorgänger Joe Biden. Nach der Einigung vom Mittwochabend schimmert ein kleines bisschen Hoffnung über dem Nahen Osten. Doch Optimisten haben es bekanntlich schwer in dieser krisengeplagten Region.
https://www.nzz.ch/meinung/israel-trotz-waffenruhe-bleibt-die-hamas-ein-problem-ld.1866500
The Wall Street Journal, 16 janvier, article payant
Trump Forced Netanyahu to Make a Deal With the Devil
Some hostages will come home but Hamas survives, which means more Israelis and Americans will die.
Extraits :
The cease-fire and hostage agreement announced by Israel and Hamas Wednesday is a bad deal. Worse, it comes at the wrong time and under unfavorable conditions. The deal stipulates that roughly three dozen hostages kidnapped from Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, will be returned to their families. While that’s good news, the price—the survival of Hamas—is too steep.
A better deal was available and could have been reached had Jerusalem and Mar-a-Lago waited a few days. President-elect Trump’s demand for a final agreement before his Jan. 20 inauguration pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the current framework. (…)
Under the agreement, Hamas will be able to replenish its depleted ranks. Seven hundred or more terrorists will go straight from Israeli prisons to the streets of Gaza. Many are sadistic killers who have spent their years behind bars dreaming of a return to the battlefield.
By releasing these hardened killers, Israel is repeating a mistake it has learned 100 times the hard way: Releasing large numbers of terrorists ignites waves of terror. This happened after the May 1985 Jibril Agreement, which led to the first intifada. In 2011, Israel exchanged 1,027 Hamas prisoners for one kidnapped hostage—soldier Gilad Shalit. Among those released in exchange for Mr. Shalit was Yahya Sinwar, who later became the leader of Hamas in Gaza and masterminded the Oct. 7 massacre.
Hamas terrorists freed by the current deal will soon rejoin the organization’s network, which spans Judea, Samaria, Gaza, Qatar and Turkey. Once reunited with their colleagues, they will launch new attacks. It’s as if the U.S. sent captured al-Qaeda fighters back to Afghanistan in 2002. Crazy.
Goods and fuel will also flood into Gaza as a result of Wednesday’s agreement, helping Hamas to rebuild itself militarily and financially. Hamas will use the fuel for tunnel digging and operations against Israel Defense Forces soldiers. (…)
Hamas has a long history of stealing foreign aid, selling what it steals to Gazans at inflated prices, and using the proceeds to recruit young fighters. When the cease-fire takes effect and the IDF withdraws, the organization will quickly rebuild itself and resume its cross-border activities.
It’s reasonable to ask why the IDF hasn’t been able to destroy Hamas completely in 15 months. The main reason is that President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken repeatedly intervened in ways that helped Hamas survive. Israel’s acceptance of the American demand that it fight with one hand tied behind its back was a strategic failure. One strategic failure doesn’t justify another.
Many Israelis hoped that Mr. Trump would stop the madness and give Mr. Netanyahu the green light to crush Hamas once and for all. Instead Mr. Trump pushed Mr. Netanyahu to accept a deal with the devil. The Israeli prime minister should never have done it.
Mr. Kahana is diplomatic and White House correspondent for Israel Hayom, a daily newspaper.
The Economist, 16 janvier, article payant
A ceasefire in Gaza at last : After 15 months of hell, Israel and Hamas sign a ceasefire deal
Donald Trump provided the X factor by putting heat on Binyamin Netanyahu, who insists the war isn’t over yet
Extraits :
AFTER MORE than 15 months of war, and just five days before Donald Trump is inaugurated as America’s 47th president on January 20th, a ceasefire in Gaza has at last been agreed. The deal, struck on January 15th, is essentially the same proposal that the outgoing American president, Joe Biden, extracted from Israel in May. It took eight months of tortuous mediation and the joint efforts of both old and new American administrations, alongside those of Egypt and Qatar, to get Israel and Hamas, Gaza’s Islamists, to commit.
Mr Trump seems to have been the X factor. He made it clear to the Israelis he has no desire to enter the White House having to manage yet more war in the Middle East. That bellicosity seems to have helped secure a ceasefire in Lebanon, and now one in Gaza.
During the first phase of the accord, meant to last six weeks, Hamas will free 33 of the 98 Israeli hostages still held in Gaza, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. During this initial period, further talks will be held to finalise the next stage of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and the release of the remaining hostages.
It is too soon to say the war is over. (…)
Meanwhile Hamas is divided between its leaders outside Gaza, who have proved more flexible in the talks, and its surviving commanders in the enclave, led by Muhammad Sinwar, a younger brother of Yahya, the mastermind of the October 7th attack who was killed by Israel last October. The younger Mr Sinwar now controls the fate of the Israeli hostages. He is eager to prove to Palestinians and the rest of Hamas that he can drive a tougher bargain in return for freeing the captives. He insisted on being the last to give his assent to the ceasefire and may yet scupper it.
In Israel, too, Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, still has to bring the accord to his cabinet, where his more radical ministers remain opposed to ending the war. He will almost certainly win that vote, but his government may collapse as a result. Still, now that he has promised Mr Trump a deal, it will be difficult for him to wriggle out of it, as he has done so often in the past.
The new administration’s approach is yielding results in part because the Trump team has little truck with the diplomatic niceties of the outgoing bunch. When Mr Trump’s new envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, a New York real-estate mogul, arrived in Israel for talks on January 11th, he brusquely informed the Israelis he would not wait for the Sabbath to end to meet Mr Netanyahu.
But it is not just manners. Despite five decades of steadfast support for the Jewish state, Mr Biden is less popular in Israel than Mr Trump. Mr Netanyahu could at least tell his supporters that by refusing Mr Biden’s demands he was standing up for Israel’s interests. That argument is much less convincing when the Israeli right sees the incoming president as much friendlier than his predecessor. (…)
In the past year Israel has gone to war with Hizbullah, the Iranian-backed Shia movement in Lebanon, destroying much of its military capabilities and eliminating its senior leadership. It has done the same to Hamas in Gaza as well. Mr Netanyahu claims to have “changed the face of the Middle East”. He has even taken credit for the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. Now he may be ready to secure what he believes would be his legacy as Israel’s long-serving leader: a deal with the Saudis which he hopes would weaken Iran and curb its regional ambitions.
To do so would probably mean losing his current majority in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. (…) Mr Netanyahu is trying to keep his radical partners on side by promising them that the war is not yet over. But those close to the prime minister acknowledge that unless Hamas throws a spanner in the works, he is now prepared to go the full course, even if it means losing his majority.
Israel’s successes, against Hizbullah in particular, have revived Mr Netanyahu’s flagging popularity, at least somewhat. And a clear majority of Israelis now support a deal to end the war. In talks with the far right the prime minister has emphasised that the second stage of the deal leading to a full Israeli withdrawal and permanent ceasefire is far from inevitable. This is true, but Mr Netanyahu knows that a return to full warfare in Gaza would incur the wrath of Mr Trump, a president whom, unlike the outgoing one, the prime minister fears crossing. ■
The Wall Street Journal, 16 janvier, article payant
Which President Will Get Credit for a Gaza Cease-Fire?
The Biden administration has spent months on negotiations, but Trump might have pushed it over the line
Extraits :
WASHINGTON—The finalizing of the cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas owes much to the impending transfer of power from President Biden to President-elect Donald Trump, sparking a pointed debate over who deserves the credit.
Though the deal is the product of months of on-and-off talks, the approaching change of U.S. administration has served as an unofficial deadline for cementing the accord, current and former U.S. officials say.
“WE HAVE A DEAL FOR THE HOSTAGES IN THE MIDDLE EAST. THEY WILL BE RELEASED SHORTLY. THANK YOU!” Trump announced Wednesday on Truth Social, his social-media platform. “This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November.”
Biden also took credit for the deal in a statement confirming the deal. “My diplomacy never ceased in their efforts to get this done,” he said, expressing a theme he emphasized in remarks Wednesday afternoon at the White House.
While walking away from the podium, a reporter asked Biden if he or Trump ultimately deserved credit for the deal.
Biden turned around, smiled and said: “Is that a joke?” (…)
Regional dynamics played an important role. Israel is increasingly focused on reining in Iran’s nuclear program and well aware that both Biden and Trump support sealing the Gaza deal over the next week. Hamas, meanwhile, has been gravely weakened by the Israeli military, which also decimated Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The scramble over which American president deserves the plaudits has begun in Washington and will only intensify as the initial release of nearly three dozen hostages and a 42-day cease-fire takes place. (…)
Middle East analysts and even some Biden administration officials argue the combination of Democratic and Republican efforts appears to have brought the talks to the finish line. (…)
Netanyahu, Ross added, doesn’t feel he can go against Trump, giving the incoming president leverage in the relationship at the start of his second term. “But the Biden team deserves credit for basically helping to craft the deal,” he said. (…)
“There was tremendous cooperation here between Trump and Biden,” said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. Middle East negotiator who is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “But this is not a resolution of the issue. There’s no Hollywood ending here.” (…)
Incoming Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz, previewing how the next administration sees the problem, said it was imperative to get a resolution of the Gaza conflict and encourage a “finally reformed” Palestinian Authority.
But he expressed skepticism about the ability to moderate extremist movements in the region. “Hopefully you can reform the next generation,” he said, “but sometimes you just have to put bombs on foreheads.”
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/which-president-will-get-credit-for-a-gaza-cease-fire-736fef87
Le Point, 16 janvier, article payant
À Gaza, une trêve trumpienne
ÉDITO. L’accord entre Israël et le Hamas est un soulagement bienvenu car il met un terme au moins provisoire aux hostilités, mais il laisse entière la question de l’avenir de la bande de Gaza.
Extraits :
C’est une trêve bienvenue car elle n’a que trop tardé. Une trêve qui devrait conduire en principe, si tout se passe bien, à la libération des 98 otages israéliens qui restent détenus à Gaza, ainsi qu’une accélération de l’aide humanitaire à la population palestinienne qui a tant souffert des 15 mois de guerre. Mais c’est aussi une trêve fragile, qui peut se rompre à tout moment, et surtout qui laisse entière la question de l’avenir de la bande de Gaza et de sa gouvernance. Sur le plan politique, tout reste à faire.
Pour l’instant, le Hamas reste au pouvoir à Gaza. C’est un échec patent pour le Premier ministre israélien Benyamin Netanyahou qui s’était fixé comme but « d’éradiquer » le mouvement terroriste après le méga pogrome dont il s’est rendu coupable le 7 octobre 2023 (1 200 Israéliens tués, 250 autres pris en otages).
Si Israël a pris le risque de valider l’accord du 15 janvier – dont les dispositions sont grosso modo sur la table depuis mai 2024 –c’est d’abord parce que l’armée israélienne a porté des coups tels au Hamas que la dangerosité du mouvement est émoussée (…).
C’est aussi parce que l’équilibre des forces a radicalement changé depuis un an au Proche-Orient, au profit d’Israël (…).
Cependant, le facteur décisif semble bien avoir été le retour imminent de Donald Trump à la Maison-Blanche. Le président élu avait menacé l’an dernier de « déchaîner l’enfer » au Proche-Orient si la question des otages n’était pas réglée avant son investiture, lundi 20 janvier. L’accord est programmé pour entrer en vigueur la veille, dimanche 19 janvier. L’émissaire personnel de Trump au Proche-Orient, Steve Witkoff, a participé aux dernières tractations au Qatar, comme si le dirigeant républicain était déjà le vrai chef de l’exécutif américain. « Ces derniers jours, nous avons travaillé comme une seule équipe », a d’ailleurs reconnu Joe Biden depuis la Maison-Blanche, notant que « les termes de l’accord seront, pour l’essentiel, mis en place par la prochaine administration ». (…)
Donald Trump, lui, a déjà annoncé qu’il entendait relancer dès que possible la dynamique des accords d’Abraham, qu’il avait parrainés pendant son premier mandat. Ces accords avaient conduit les Émirats arabes unis, le Bahrein puis le Maroc à développer leurs relations avec Israël. La prochaine étape que le nouveau président américain est désireux d’aider Israël à franchir concerne l’établissement de relations avec l’Arabie saoudite. Mais celle-ci a déjà averti qu’elle ne s’engagerait pas sans que l’État hébreu accepte un processus crédible conduisant à l’émergence d’un État palestinien. Une perspective que le gouvernement Netanyahou exclut catégoriquement. Même si la trêve devait finir par tenir à Gaza, la paix au Proche-Orient reste une perspective hors d’atteinte pour le moment.
https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/a-gaza-une-treve-trumpienne-15-01-2025-2580073_24.php
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