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[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
A Likud MK has just denounced Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner for leading Israel to the “Gates of Hell.” More on this charge can be found here: “Trump envoy and associates ‘leading us to the gates of hell,’ Likud MK says,” Maariv, October
Likud MK Amit Halevi launched a scathing attack against real estate developer and Donald Trump associate Steve Witkoff, accusing him and his associates of endangering Israel’s security on Monday.
“These people are leading us to the gates of hell,” Halevi said in an interview with Army Radio.
The Likud lawmaker emphasized that the Gaza Strip must ultimately come under Israeli control.
“Sooner or later, Israel will control Gaza – there is no other way,” he said.
Control of Gaza does not necessarily mean annexing Gaza. The Israelis don’t want the 2.2 million Arabs in Gaza to become part of Israel. They only want to prevent them from ever again posing a danger to the Jewish state’s security. That means that the IDF will remain not everywhere, but at critical outposts in Gaza to monitor, and deal with, possible threats to security.
Halevi previously called for establishing full Israeli control over the Strip in an interview with 103FM several months ago.
“If you control the territory, then no one else controls the territory,” he said.
In MK Amit Halevi’s zero-sum view, there can be no sharing control of Gaza. Either Israel will control the Strip, or the enemies of Israel will do so. Amit Halevi knows the American negotiators are preventing Israel from asserting control over all of Gaza. After all, in the very first phase of the Trump plan, the IDF was required to pull its troops out of 48% of Gaza — at the time the IDF controlled all of Gaza — leaving it in control of little more than half of the Strip.
Halevi knows, of course, that Israel has a legal right to attack Hamas everywhere in Gaza and to take control of the very territory from which constant assaults on the Jewish state have been made for many years. The apotheosis of those attacks from Gaza was carried out by 6,000 Hamas members on October 7, 2023, when they tortured, raped, mutilated, and murdered 1,200 Israelis.
Gaza belongs to Israel, just as Tel Aviv does, according to Halevi, because both are within the territory assigned by the League of Nations to be included in the Mandate for Palestine, which in time was supposed to become the Jewish National Home and then the State of Israel.
Under no conditions should Hamas be left standing, even if much diminished in weapons and combatants, in Gaza. Otherwise it will boast of having been “the only Palestinian force capable of standing up against the Zionists.”And such an ending would be a valuable recruiting tool for Hamas in Gaza, as it tries to replenish its depleted ranks. And if it is left battered but intact, it will still command support — both weapons and money — from its chief supporter, Qatar. Little by little, with the IDF no longer in Gaza to monitor it, Hamas will regain its strength. This is not something Israel can tolerate.
The American negotiators — Witkoff and Kushner — want Hamas to be disarmed, and its leaders sent into exile, but they don’t see a role for Israel in Gaza, which they expect will withdraw all of its troops from Gaza once a government of Arab technocrats takes over. Amit Halevi is not the only Israeli who thinks that this will never do.
I wouldn’t call it zero-sum. I’d call it the result of bitter experience in world interference in Israeli affairs.
Excellent article, thanks !
Thanks, Mr Fitzgerald. Your articles are always spot on. I had not heard of this anywhere else. ‘What a breath of sanity and realism, from this MK, It food to hear it despite how dire things are with the current US administration.
And, wow, just imagine what the next one is likely to be – after yesterday we know – one hundred times worse.
smh smh Israel needs a new plan.
Agreed.
Not all real estate developers are equal
One gets the feeling those two American Jews have no idea the threat this poses for Israel
Obsession over dead bodies is what will lead Israel to the Gates of Hell.
Talk about having one’s cake and eating it, too.
Israel should have done what needed to be done a long time ago without concern for those still kept as hostages.
It all sounds very wonderful to obsess over recovering the hostages even though they knew most of them had been dead for over a year – all the while IDF soldiers are dying in this conflict to collect what will turn out to be damaged human beings if found alive and questionable remains of the dead. If not for this overwrought and futile attempt at moral superiority the place could have been razed without concern for the people who asked for this and should have got what they asked for instead of demanding food after deliberately starting a conflict. It is so absurdly absurd.
Even a chosen people do not get everything they want. Life is about making choices and the length of one’s life is just as much a matter of choice as anything else.
Stupid choices will lead to further terrorism and misery. But then, that’s life on Earth.
From day one, I believed that Israel should have invoked Maritime Law where Bibi (the captain of the ‘sinking’ Israeli ship) would have called the shots. 300 hundred people on the oat and only room for 200 on the lifeboats. The captain declares ….”women and children first, then any volunteers who want to give their lives for another,” and then the captain picks who lives and who dies, who gets on the life boats and who doesn’t.
All this means is that the hostages should have been sacrificed and the IDF should have gone in and not stopped until there were no more terrorists left alive. Difficult decision ? Not really when you calculate the number of IDF dead and wounded and the number of Israeli’s and IDF that will be killed by the release of all of those murderous Gazan barbarian prisoners.
Yes, I understand how Israel places such a high value on human lives, but that value should be placed on the IDF and future victims of those released killers and not have allowed themselves to be ‘controlled’ by the years old ploy of hostage taking. And the IDF is still being controlled by ‘dead’ hostages today.
Rev. Roy…….<
That is a very aggressive stance for a clergyman, but I agree with you 100%. As is usual in war, prevaricating for any reason costs many more lives and does not vanquish the enemy or its desire for more war. The hostages should have been sacrificed and the war over by November 2023. Ridiculous. How many warning has Hamas had from Bibi and the Donald about how they will be obliterated “next time” they break a cease-fire?
The failure is in protecting the enemies lives. I see none of these Nazi’s are going to go on trial for war crimes, but are being released as prisoners of war.
Every single one who participated in Oct 7th need to be tried and executed
Israel needs to complete the task given to Joshua by God when he defeated the Canaanites. Kill every living thing. Imho Hammas and the Palestinians are their descendants and need to be eliminated from this earth. Kushner and Witkoff be damned.
It’s not only Gaza! With this peace plan script, Trump is refusing for Israel to claim Judea and Samaria as Israeli land yet another capitulation to these Islamic Arab countries bent on Israel’s complete annihilation.
Understand Islam determines triumph by acquisition of land and Judea and Samaria were the spoils of the 1967 war started by these Arab countries. Neither Trump, Witkoff or Kushner seem to understand this land-conquering pillar in Islam so having Trump say Israel has no right to Judea and Samaria is to completely undermine both the 3,000 plus years of Jewish history in this very area along with Israel’s triumphant win of the war and their rightful acquisition-return of the land of Judea and Samaria to Israel.
There is nothing Trump, Witkoff and Kushner are doing that benefits Israel other than the 20 living hostages being returned.
Everything else is the willful curation of business deals under the pretense of peace when the mounting evidence shows that this entire plan is designed to fundamentally strip Israel of its sovereignty.
Here’s a clue: whether mankind wants to acknowledge this or not, the eternal land grant of Israel was made by G-d to the Jewish people in an eternal (everlasting) covenant and Trump and his “negotiators” attempting to modify it for business profit is to put a bullseye in each of them because mocking G-d never, ever ends well!
Israel did this to themselves with their idiotic we are so nice, we are even nice in war. The whole world will have to like us now. We gave away everything we are pleading, no commanding you to like us.
Why are you bothering with this we have no responsibility and it’s everyone else’s fault?
No. Israel has chosen a path of attempting to be all things to all people. I have long disagreed with Israel’s secular, suicidal tendencies by negotiating with terrorists starting with obtaining the return of Gilad Shalit by releasing multiple hundreds of imprisoned terrorists, one of whom was Yahya Sinwar, the architect of October 7.
Throughout this war, I have often commented on Israel’s actions not the least of which was the Knesset accepting this nightmare to get back the few living hostages. Israel will either address this honestly understanding the submissive position they keep putting themselves in or expect more of the same. The fact that terrorists are being released and returned to Gaza, Judea-Samaria and Jerusalem is insane and while it appears to value life, the deaths of IDF soldiers, innocent Israelis and more to come in the future reveals that some lives are afforded greater value than others. War is very ugly but when dealing with savages, it’s them or us. This pastor has tough talk but it’s the truth and one Israel keeps avoiding in deference to the leftist outrage. G-d, however, instructed Israel to completely destroy her worst enemies and if we followed G-d instead of the ever-changing hearts of man this would have ended with the first intifada! Hamas has read Israel, it’s past time for Israel to read Hamas and totally destroy them.
My point is Israel controls its destiny and if it lets Trump or the liberals use Trump’s plan to fuel the suicide it’s still their fault. The infiltration started a long time ago and it won’t do any good to blame Trump instead of fixing the underlying problem. Serious work needs to be done, so IMO it’s a bit of an emergency that there is a focus on this and no distractions.
Yeah it was a crap proposal, probably beyond careless, that was meant by Witkoff and Jared maliciously to sabotage Israel, that Trump approved to get a quick win.
After Netanyahu I really think Israel will fall. One side recognizes the importance of propaganda (the liberals) and the other doesn’t.
Israel needs to take full control of Gaza and annex it. “The Israelis don’t want the 2.2 million Arabs in Gaza to become part of Israel. ” The Arabs of Gaza need to be deported to another Arab country. The precedent for this is the forcible expulsion of over 12 million Germans from eastern Europe after WWII with the death of around 1 million on the way back to a much smaller postwar Germany.
Dutch from Indonesia
Israelis know very well that Qatar, Egypt and Turkey all are working hand in hand with Hamas to anhilate Israel. They know Trump is being worked on, led by bad advisors Witkoff and Kushner with conflicting business interests in Qatar, and also Tucker the rabid antisemitic- who Vance is beholden to.