The Palestinians’ fate was sealed without them

"At the Assembly, I will speak the truth—the truth of Israel’s citizens, the truth of IDF soldiers, the truth of our state," declared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Ben-Gurion Airport before his departure to New York on September 25. "I will denounce those leaders who, instead of condemning the murderers, rapists and child-burners, seek to grant them a state in the heart of the Land of Israel. That will not happen," he added.

And he did denounce. In his New York speech, the Israeli Prime Minister expressed indignation towards the states that had supported a previously adopted declaration recognizing the Palestinian state, accusing Palestinians in the Gaza Strip of terrorist activities. He stated that Israel would never agree to the establishment of an independent State of Palestine without complete disarmament and dissolution of units in the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS).

Indeed, to date, the number of countries that have officially recognized the State of Palestine has increased to 153 out of the 193 UN member states. These recent days, France, Malta, Luxembourg, Monaco, San Marino, Belgium, Britain, Australia, and Portugal have stated this. Russia was one of the first to recognize Palestine in 1988, consistently adhering to the need for a peaceful coexistence between the Jewish and Arab states within the borders existing before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

All these years, since 1967, Israel has used all the subsequent conflicts with enviable consistency and frequency to bite off pieces of Palestinian land for itself. This has occurred despite international criticism, numerous UN resolutions, and the indignation within the Arab world. Only one-third remains of the territory of the Palestinian National Authority on the West Bank of the Jordan River: Israel controls two-thirds of the land, having built a network of Jewish settlements there. The same is happening in the vicinity of East Jerusalem designated as the capital of the State of Palestine.

The bloody events of October 7, 2023, were vital for Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu personally. The victims of Palestinian militants numbered over 1,200 Israelis, and 251 people were taken hostage by the terrorists. To this day, 50 Israeli citizens remain in captivity. Negotiations for their release have reached a dead end.

The Jewish state’s military-political leadership, having launched a military operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, outlined its goals — liberation of Israeli hostages and a complete military infrastructure destruction of Islamic Palestinian formations.

A perfectly natural question arises: did the HAMAS group pose a real threat to Israel's security? The unequivocal answer is yes.

The Islamic Resistance Movement in the Gaza Strip had units totaling up to 30,000 militants armed not only with small arms but also with numerous rocket launchers of various ranges. Their artillery also included mortars and recoilless rifles. The Palestinians had established their own makeshift production not only of rocket systems but had also set up production of ammunition for them. By the moment the Israeli operation began, according to its intelligence, an extensive system of underground tunnels, bomb shelters, storage facilities for military equipment, and hospitals had been established within the Strip. As per estimates by the Israeli army command, the total length of underground passageways was about 200 kilometers.

However, one has to pay die regard to the fact that this radical religious movement was created by Israeli special services back in 1973, based at the Islamic University of Gaza City, as a counterweight to the growing political influence of the Palestine Liberation Organization and, in particular, its leader Yasser Arafat. In the late 1980s, HAMAS acquired its own armed units, which were initially used by Tel Aviv in the struggle for influence against pro-Arafat factions. It was only after Arafat's death that the Gaza Strip Palestinians got forced to defend themselves against attempts by the Israeli authorities to extend their policy of creeping annexation, which had been successfully applied to the Palestinian Authority on the Jordan River’s West Bank. The most reactionary representatives of the Israeli government, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have openly urged annexation of Judea and Samaria (the biblical name for the West Bank). Currently, over 500,000 Israelis live on the West Bank.

In East Jerusalem occupied and annexed by Israel, there are about 240,000 Jews and approximately 370,000 Palestinians.

The seizure of Palestinian territory has occurred through creation of Jewish settlements (outposts). They are built without official consent of the Israeli government though with active support and financial assistance from local and foreign radical religious Jewish organizations. This year alone, Netanyahu announced construction of 3,400 residential buildings for Jewish settlers in the Palestinian Authority and the vicinity of East Jerusalem.

All this and more could not but cause indignation among the Arab population, which largely served as a motivating factor for the bloody massacre of October 7, 2023. At the same time, it is already becoming apparent that the Israeli leadership had long been developing plans of action to fundamentally ensure security.

Thus, during his talks with Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump outlined a US-developed draft plan for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli crisis. Several days earlier, he had presented this plan to the foreign ministers of leading Arab and Muslim countries, who generally endorsed it.

The content of the US initiatives was communicated to the political leadership of HAMAS, which, according to the Arab Asharq Al-Awsat outlet, has begun its careful study and evaluation. No reaction from Tel Aviv has been reported in the open press.

Crucially, the White House has abandoned the idea of relocating Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Arab countries and building a "Middle Eastern Riviera" in that territory.

However, one should probably still consider the inconsistency of statements by the current US President on many essential international issues, the uncompromising nature of Israeli and Palestinian positions in reaching agreements, and their unexplained abandonment of implementation, in order to be confident in the American project’s positive outcome.