It's Joe-ver for Palestine

26 Tevet 5785 (26 Jan 2025)

I wrote in May that the future of Gaza would lie somewhere between the West Bank-ification and Lebanonization. Much ink has been spilled on the “Zionist right” pontificating and hand wringing about the “bad deal” we’ve agreed to. Amichai Eliyahu of Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party, who resigned from the government in protest of the deal summarizes it well : “in the coming weeks, Israel will release some of the most dangerous terrorists ever held in our prisons. These are not mere foot soldiers or low-level operatives - they are the masterminds, the senior commanders, the architects of terror who transformed the Second Intifada into the darkest period in our nation’s history. They are, make no mistake, the next Sinwars in the making.” The Opium Merchants do not disagree. They will constitute significant future threats to the State of Israel. But, as horrible a price as we paid, and will continue to pay for October 7th, the tragedy of that day will not bring down the Zionist project, no matter how many millions of coping and seething Arabs and keffiyeh Karens insist it will. 

Any deal with Hamas is a deal with the Devil. The Jewish people were compelled by the international community to negotiate on equal footing with Islamonazis hell bent to keep power so they could plan how to kill as many of us as possible. Yet, the Israeli public that has sent its fathers and sons into mortal danger supports the deal with the Devil because the Jewish nation understands that the redemption of the hostages is a holy and sacred mission, that to save a life is to save a whole universe. When Hashem was going to smite Sodom, Abraham haggled and begged him to spare the city if he could find but one righteous person. The Jewish nation has also come to accept - many of us through personal experience - how little Palestinian society values life. And if, in the Muslim Brotherhood’s theological conception, whole populations of human lives are merely shaheeds-in-waiting, then releasing ten, or fifty, or a thousand prisoner terrorists to redeem our dead for a proper burial, and bringing the living back to their loved ones, is worth it. We should mirror how they value their own lives and pay it back in kind. They value their own lives as nothing and so we trade nothing to return our brothers and sisters in captivity, that should be the prevailing arithmetic.

Liri Albag, taken hostage for over 500 days in Gaza, finally reunited with her parents.

Biden, in the twilight days of his Presidency clamored for credit, and we shall give him his due. But even he acknowledged that it was American and Israeli successes on the battlefield - against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and the Red Sea, and their cascading effects on Assad regime, and on Iran itself that created the conditions for a deal. Specifically, Biden pointed to the fact that it was “his” framework (though, at the time, he insisted it was in fact an Israeli proposal), proposed in May, and endorsed by the UN Security Council.  Broadly he is right. The terms agreed in January differ in key ways from what was on the table in May. Though, all in all, we can let the old man claim the win as he withers into irrelevance.

Hamas insisted for months on a complete withdrawal of the IDF in the first phase as a precondition. They caved. The IDF continues to maintain a presence along the Philadelphi and Netzarim axes. Hamas demanded an up-front commitment for an end to the war, which now will only come about with the “mutual agreement of both parties”. Hamas insisted they would release twenty-four hostages in the first phase of any agreement. They are now releasing thirty-three. This is still a bad deal, because Hamas are still the Devil. So far, they have violated the agreement - by failing to submit the initial names of hostages on time, by releasing (B”H) soldiers before all civilian women and children, and by failing to provide information about the condition of the hostages. They have also attempted to turn the hostage releases into propaganda spectacles to convince the Arab world of their victory. Israel must weigh these violations against the war goal of securing the return of hostages. It is in a sufficiently strong position to punish Hamas for transgressions: it delayed the start of the ceasefire, and it has delayed withdrawing from Netzarim or permit the return of Gazans to the North until Arbel Yehud is released (and presumably until the condition of all twenty six hostages to be released is known). 

But here is the critical point, the agreement is a phased one, stating that there will be “upon agreement of the parties, a permanent end to hostility, in exchange for the release of all the other hostages still in Gaza…”. There is a new President in the White House who will manage this transition from phase one to phase two. So far, Trump has ordered the suspension of all foreign aid (with the exception of Egypt and Israel, groypers coping and seething rn), annulled sanctions on settlers, and removed the Biden holds on JDAMs’. Hamas is now caught in a Catch 22. Release the hostages, and they lose any leverage preventing Israel resuming the war in a time and manner of its choosing. Fail to release the hostages, and Israel can resume the war with the full diplomatic and logistical backing of the Trump administration. In May, Hamas had the luxury of having an American President whose electoral coalition was riven over the question, with plummeting approval ratings, and an election campaign to run. They now face a fresh administration, with a strong mandate, and a blueprint for implementing its agenda, at home and abroad. 

The strategic reality on the ground in Gaza has been transformed. First, Israel has tripled the size of the cordon sanitaire inside of the Gaza Strip, creating a square-kilometre wide ‘kill zone’ (How this ‘kill-zone’ is maintained is an ongoing tactical debate within the IDF, but I would personally opt to fill it with landmines + automated weapons systems, and not conscripts). This ‘kill-zone’ is to Swords of Iron, what the completion of the security barrier was to the suicide bombing campaigns of the Second Intifada. Israel has enacted legislation to terminate UNRWA activity in Gaza and East Jerusalem. For decades, UNRWA provided the international community a mechanism to absolve Palestinians for taking meaningful responsibility for governance, perpetuating the destructive narrative of the ‘right of return’ and indoctrinating generations of Palestinians into fanatical hatred of Jews. Israelis, indulged international fantasies far too long, and Netanyahu is as guilty as any other Israeli political leader for perpetuating this conceptzia by topping Hamas off with suitcases full of Qatari cash. 

A mapped representation of the IDF buffer zone established around Gaza

With Hamas leadership decimated, a ceasefire tentatively in place, the world now turns to resolving the question of the future political administration of the Gaza Strip.  Here are the options, though please note that they are categorized for analytical simplicity, and in practice will overlap to some, if not to a great extent. 

Option A - Jewish Settlements in Gaza. I think this would be a mistake, because there is little strategic purpose to building Jewish communities in Gaza. It would, like some of the communities deeper in Judea & Samaria stretch limited manpower and intelligence resources to the overall detriment of Israeli security. It would require Israel to resume responsibilities for the day-to-day lives of Palestinians in Gaza as the ‘occupying power’ placing further strain on Israeli finances at an inopportune time. However, there is still political value in the expression of this position, because it shifts the Overton window.  Being able to credibly threaten resettlement grants Israel leverage in negotiating with the Americans, Arabs, and Europeans on the future administration of the territory. Recall that one of the key goals of Arab states in the process of negotiating the Abraham Accords was to forestall Netanyahu’s proposed annexation of the Jordan Valley under the auspices of Kushner’s “Deal of the Century.” We may be seeing a repeat of ‘flooding the zone’ for diplomatic gains once more. However, if Option D comes to pass, and the security concerns diminish, then developing Jewish communities in Gaza becomes feasible. 

Option B - The ‘Reformed’ Palestinian Authority. This was the brainchild of Biden’s State Department. It inverts the logic of Option A: linking future Arab-Israeli normalization to a concrete “political horizon” for a Palestinian state. The intention of this approach was first and foremost to shift the Overton window. In broad strokes, the United States would accommodate Israeli financial and security concerns in the short-to-medium term through an American funded, trained, and supported international peacekeeping and interim governance arrangement - a freakish hybrid of UNRWA and UNIFIL for the duration of reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. This would have given sufficient breathing space to “reform” and “revitalize” the Palestinian Authority - shelving “pay-for-slay”, drafting a new constitution, creating a timetable for elections, after which the reformed Palestinian Authority (rPA) - under an American created security umbrella would take over responsibilities for civil administration. It remains to be seen if Trump will discard this possibility. Based on the fact that Abu Mazen is (again) congratulating convicted murderous terrorists on their steadfastness and congratulating on their release thanks to the work of the ‘resistance’, I would say that he believes the rPA plan is dead. That said, the PA, having international legitimacy through the Oslo Accords of the status quo ante Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the PA may be involved in technocratic aspects like approving exit visas for Gazans, helping to secure shipments of humanitarian aid, etc. This option is as dead as Yahya Sinwar. 

Option C - The Dermer Plan. Israel Hayom reported that a “preliminary” agreement was reached between Israel and the United Arab Emirates on “how Gaza will be managed after the war.” The report is light on details. In essence, this option involves the Arab world accepting that the “political horizon” for a Palestinian state will be measured not in years, but decades. It involves “rebuilding” Gaza “in a way that neutralizes any potential threat to Israel.” Somewhere in the Negev, Mordechai Kedar is smiling. The lengthening of this “political horizon” reverses Biden’s diplomatic and Hamas’ terror-pogrom effort to recenter Palestine as the central question in Middle Eastern political affairs, and places Israeli-Saudi normalization back on the table. Given that Saudi Arabia has committed hundreds of billions of dollars in investments in American AI infrastructure, negotiations appear on an accelerated track. Israeli-Saudi normalization effectively outsources the maintenance of American interests in the region to a coalition of modernizing and moderating Arab monarchies: fusing Arab financial capital with Jewish human capital, under the protective umbrella of the Israeli Air Force, and as a backstop, the might of the US Navy. 

Option D - “‘Temporary’ Resettlement”. It remains to be seen if this is a serious proposal from President Trump, or if he is merely ‘flooding the zone’ to keep all players involved off balance. Initially, Trump mused that Indonesia could temporarily house some percentage of Gaza’s population during the reconstruction. Yesterday, during an impromptu presser aboard Air Force One, Trump revealed he had called King Abdullah II and demanded that Jordan take in Gazan refugees, and that he planned to speak with President Sisi of Egypt to demand the same. The Ummah is being called to help their downtrodden brethren. It was easy to refuse the doddering Biden administration, it will be costlier for Egypt and Jordan to refuse Trump, because he may not be in the mood to take “no” for an answer. أوه لا! نكبة أخرى

Somewhere between the Dermer Plan, and ‘Temporary’ Resettlement of Gazans to Indonesia it will hopefully become clear that it’s never been more Joe-ver for Palestine. And Jimmy Carter lived just long enough to realize it. TRUST THE PLAN. 

“Hey Grok, generate me an image of the orange madlad standing on the shores of Gaza with a Trump hotel chain in the background.”

And now that you’ve been thoroughly whitepilled, get on with the important things in life: create a strong kehillah, strengthen your bond with your fellow Jews, develop and deepen your personal relationship with the Almighty, פרו ורבו, and stay tuned for the arrival of epic LEZM merch.

- Abba Eben