Like everyone else, I’m happy that the hellish suffering of 20 Jews is about to end. But what’s good for the individual is not always good for the nation, and what’s good for the nation is not always good for the individual.
You’d think we would know that by now. Fourteen years ago, Israel released over 1,000 murderous Arabs, including Yahya Sinwar - the mastermind of the October 7 massacre - in exchange for Gilad Shalit. I’m sure Shalit’s family was happy to get him back. But 12 years later, hundreds of families lost loved ones because of that deal. So we made one family happy at the expense of hundreds of others. That’s compassion?
Thankfully, 20 hostages will soon be returning home, but how many more Jews will be murdered in the years to come by the 2,000 terrorists we’re releasing?
And yet, that’s not even the main problem with the proposed “peace” deal. The main problem is the national humiliation involved. The Arabs of Gaza have machine guns and homemade rockets. We have tanks, submarines, fighter jets, and nuclear weapons. Yet, because this deal ends the war now - the end result is that the Arabs have effectively fought us to a stalemate.
In their eyes, they won. They slaughtered 1,200 Jews on October 7, killed 500 IDF soldiers in the two years since then, and will now receive 2,000 of their own from Israeli custody.
What have they lost? To them, nothing. Death means nothing to them, and they will rebuild Gaza over the next few years with international support.
As anyone on the street knows, the projection of power is often more important than power itself; the converse is equally true. American weakness in Afghanistan, for example, invited Russian aggression in Ukraine. The Arabs are no less perceptive than the Russians. If anything, the opposite is true. They’re both cunning and very primitive in the sense that they can smell what they consider weakness from a mile away. With this “peace” deal, we’re practically inviting them to pounce.
Perhaps even more ominously, we’re also undermining our independence. Today, the AFP reported:
After Trump’s visit to Israel on Monday, he and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will chair a summit of leaders from more than 20 countries in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, the Egyptian presidency announced.
The meeting will aim “to end the war in the Gaza Strip, enhance efforts to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East, and usher in a new era of regional security,” it said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said he will attend, as has Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, his counterparts from Italy and Spain, Giorgia Meloni and Pedro Sanchez, and French President Emmanuel Macron….
Under the Trump plan, as Israel conducts a phased withdrawal from Gaza’s cities, it will be replaced by a multi-national force from Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, coordinated by a US-led command centre in Israel.
So not only is the dream of making Gaza Jewish again effectively dead, we now will have Qatar, Turkey, the UAE, and the United States on our front door step and 20 other countries invested in Gaza’s future. That means the next time a rocket flies into Israel from Gaza, we no longer will be attacking a rabble of Palestinian Arabs in response. We will be attacking Qatar, Turkey, the UAE, and the U.S. and undercutting the efforts of 20 other countries.
In other words, with this deal, it seems we’re tying our hands. The fight will no longer be between us and the Palestinian Arabs. Others will be involved. Our security will be tied to the interests of other countries in a manner we haven’t seen since the 1940s.
Over 2,000 years ago, the Hasmoneans invited the Romans into the Land Israel to resolve an internecine Jewish struggle. Once the Romans came, though, they never left. Eventually they destroyed the Beis Hamikdash. Well, now we’ve effectively invited Qatar, Turkey, the UAE, and the U.S. into Israel. Will they ever leave?
After British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed his infamous peace deal with Hitler, Winston Churchill said, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.” Netanyahu made the same choice, and unfortunately we will see the same result.
Elliot Resnick, PhD, is the former chief editor of The Jewish Press and the author/editor of 10 books, including “Dragged Out of Gush Katif: The Tale of an American Who Flew to Israel to Stop the Disengagement.”