In the last few weeks I’ve received several queries about how Israel plans to end the war. Let me begin by reminding you that Israel did not enter this war with a plan for victory: this war was an unplanned response to an unprovoked attack by terrorists who were actively massacring its citizens and destroying communities.
As I was working on this, we had three rocket attacks over the course of an hour.
Background
Gaza had been a center of Jewish life and scholarship for hundreds of years until the Ottoman Turkish rulers expelled the Jews in the 16th century. After awhile they were permitted to return, but the Jewish community never regained its strength. Arab riots in 1929, which occurred in many if not most Jewish communities, ended Jewish life in Gaza until after the 6-Day War, when the area was again under Jewish control.1 For more on the history of Gaza (but focused more on “Palestine”) see my post of April 9, 2024.
In the attack of October 7, 2023, which began with a massive 6:30 AM rocket attack from Gaza into Israeli communities, an estimated 3,000 terrorists broke through the wall between Gaza and Israel. By 7:19 AM on that very morning—less than an hour later, when the Times of Israel published a Live Update, there were already 300 killed and 1590 injured.2
This attack was of a scale and brutality unseen in the western world since World War II, and quite possibly ever. My original draft listed some of the atrocities, but I cannot bring myself to posting them, they are too grisly. Many of the approximately 3,000 terrorists involved wore Go-Pro-type video cameras and live-streamed their attacks back to their waiting families and friends inside of Gaza. One first responder’s report appeared in Time. The videos show that the terrorists were positively gleeful about the murder and mayhem they caused.3 You can view less graphic videos by entering “go-pro videos of Oct. 7 massacre” in YouTube.4 Viewer discretion is strongly recommended.
Israel’s Goal
Israel’s goal in north and south has been to eliminate the danger to its citizens. Both in the north and in the south, citizens have been harassed for years both by rocket fire into civilian areas and the constant threat of more personal terrorist attacks.5
Israel did not enter Gaza with a plan for victory: she entered the area to protect her citizens. In the end, more than 1200 of whom were brutally murdered. Twelve hundred, compared to the total population of the country, is equivalent to about 40,000 Americans killed. An additional 250 people from age 9 months to about 85 were taken hostage to Gaza.6
In the north, Hezbollah, another army financed primarily by Iran7 and assisted by the United Nations’ UNRWA and UNIFIL, began sending lots of missiles into Israel. I have not written much about Hezbollah, so here’s a short history.
The founder of the conservative lobbying group Act for America, Brigitte Gabriel, probably understands Hezbollah better than any other public figure because she lived through the war in which they gained power.8 Israel has no argument with the government of Lebanon and most Lebanese citizens, but the Palestinian Arab Muslims who make up most of Hezbollah’s forces and virtually all the residents of southern Lebanon are a different story. They are just like their cousins in Gaza and were planning attacks in northern Israel that would have made October 7 seem like a child’s birthday party.
Israelis dream of the complete elimination of Hamas and Hezbollah, but this will not occur until the overthrow of the violently anti-Semitic, anti-Western Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that rules Iran.
So, after a year, how does Israel plan to end the conflicts?
I asked people I knew: friends, shopkeepers, and so forth. I do not know political activists or members of the government. Some of the men had fought as reservists in Gaza or Lebanon and would be returning unless the war ends soon. Nearly every Israeli I asked simply shrugged.
Land for Peace
Land-for-Peace, also called “The Oslo Accords,” is the plan that the Biden-Harris and Harris-Walz teams were promoting. It was a plan dreamed up by western scholars and politicians with big hearts but no understanding of the Muslim mind or the Arab-Israeli conflict. They assumed both sides held western values, but the Arab side is definitely not western. Many of us knew from the beginning that this plan could not possibly work because this is not a fight over land, but a religious war waged by people who seriously believe theirs should be the only religion on Earth. Many Israelis believe Oslo was forced on Israel through threats by the US government.9
I wrote about Oslo here: “Land for Peace: The Two-State Non-Solution. ” Oslo resulted in two Palestinian Arab uprisings. Thousands of Israeli citizens died. Many of them were school children on buses on the way to or from school or standing in line for pizza. Suicide bombers blew themselves up in shopping malls, restaurants, and other crowded places.10 The West, in its inimitable way, ignored the problem or blamed Israel, and continued pushing for Israel to cede land for a Palestinian nation.
Other Possible Solutions
How do I see this war being resolved? I think it is not completely resolvable at this time, but US pressure on Iran to stop funding terror, plus serious prosecution in what used to be called the Free World of those behind and active in the Hamas rallies—deportation for non-citizens, revoking citizenship from non-natives plus any who have citizenship because they were born to women who were visiting the USA and not residents, and LONG jail sentences for the rest—would greatly reduce the problems in Israel’s north and south.
David Friedman, former US Ambassador to Israel, has written a book, One Jewish State, with his plan for peace.11 He proposes that Palestinian Arabs be given a form of citizenship that would grant all the rights of other Israelis except for the right to vote in national elections. Puerto Rican citizens have this kind of partial American citizenship . I have not read the book, just several reviews. Many Israelis say that while he makes some excellent points, he does not offer a solution to hostile citizens who are free to roam throughout the country. Palestinians, who have suffered 70 years of biased education using UNRWA textbooks plus nonstop anti-Israel, pro-all-world Caliphate propaganda in their mosques, need to be reeducated first; otherwise, pogroms (violent riots) such as we saw on October 7 could easily occur again.
I heard a rumor that Israel’s government was negotiating with Russia to provide troops to keep the peace, in the north replacing UNIFIL, the United Nations’ force which has spent the last years abetting Hezbollah rather than preventing the missile attacks. Over 1 million Jewish residents of the former Soviet Union and their non-Jewish close relatives emigrated to Israel after the fall of the USSR, and many of those were academics and scientists who have maintained some kind of relationship to their former colleagues. Russia receives a lot of economic benefit from this, and might be willing to protect it.12
In the south, Hamas has mostly been destroyed. Many Israelis believe Israel should build towns for Jewish residents there; thousands of jobs would be created this way. Israel should also take over the educational system. I think Israel should flood Arab television and sites like YouTube with pro-Israel short spots and longer videos, bombarding people with the truth. This would need to be continued for years but little by little could change the mindset of its people.
True Peace
True and lasting peace can be accomplished in the region, but it will be very difficult and goes against the personal financial interests of many powerful Americans as well as Americans and Israelis who take money in exchange for demonstrating for progressive and/or failed left-wing solutions. If you think a lot of people are not getting very rich taking money from Iran and the Davos crowd, you are naïve.13.14
I have spoken to numerous Israelis about how they see this war ending. They almost all just shrug. Israelis, unfortunately, are realists who hope for quiet for the time being, and hope that their children or grandchildren will see true peace.
Meanwhile, in my opinion several things are needed. Since most of my readers are American, and since that is the other country I know, these apply to the USA but might be applied elsewhere.
Trump needs to get rid of the entrenched State Department employees who have been working for the Davos/Islamic axis and not the USA for a generation.
The U.N. needs to be thrown out of the USA and if not disbanded, then greatly weakened.
UNRWA needs to be disbanded. Its top employees deserve to be hanged for crimes against humanity, but progressives are too soft. The Bible is full of places where the Israelites were punished for not completely eliminating enemies; Amalek was just one example.
The USA needs to stop ALL government financing of any school district, college or university that has accepted foreign money. NO student loans. NO research grants from the taxpayers.
Any student involved in protests advocating violence against any racial, religious, or national group should have their student loans ended immediately and become forever ineligible for any additional loans, modifications of existing loans, or loan forgiveness programs.
In the USA, all government funds should be cut off from academic institutions if any employee supports Hamas, Hezbollah, the IRGC, or any other
Israel needs to implement a re-education campaign to replace the UNRWA academic curriculum used wherever UNRWA ran the education system. Children and adults need to be taught the truth about Israel and need to understand that the way to peace is by accepting Israel, that the Caliphate plan is vile and is at the bottom of their problems.
The USA needs to undermine the Islamic regime in Iran, supporting the opposition there, and threatening Qatar. The moment the Islamic Republic of Iran ends and the support for terrorism is removed, the world as a whole will be better off: the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Boko Haram will starve to death.
Many if not most of the undocumented migrants need to be deported from the USA and a wall built between the USA and Mexico. We have no way of knowing how many of them are radical Muslims or have been trained and paid by anti-Israel or anti-USA groups or countries.
With Trump in the White House and Republicans controlling both the Senate and House, there is a chance for many of these things to come to pass.
The Gaza Strip: History of Jewish Settlement, Jewish Virtual Library, a Project of AICE, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-of-jewish-settlements-in-gaza , accessed Nov. 10, 2024.
Times of Israel Staff, “October 7: Hamas terrorists burst through border, slaughter Israelis in their homes. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-october-7-2023/, 7 Oct. 2023, accessed November 12, 2024.
IDF releases extremely graphic footage of October 7 Hamas massacre. “The YouTube video, posted on the official IDF channel, generated over 5.5 million views in less than 24 hours and contains disturbing and graphic footage that captures the horrifying scenes of Israelis being murdered and burnt - viewer discretion is advised.” Ynet News, https://www.ynetnews.com/article/s1gwdnawt , accessed Nov. 12, 2024.
I watched part of the first one released just after the war began but did not save it. I did not want to watch them again to pick one for you. But if you have any doubts about these claims, I strongly recommend you wait until your stomach is empty and then start watching.
Number of Fatal Terrorist Attacks in Israel: Graph (1993-2023), https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/number-of-fatal-terrorist-attacks-in-israel-1993-2006 , accessed 12 Nov. 2024.
Israel’s population, counting Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and others, is around 9.5 million. Population of the USA is around 350 million. https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/israel-population/, accessed Nov. 12, 2024.
Reuters, Explainer: How Hezbollah widens Iran’s Middle East reach, Oct. 15, 2021, last updated 3 years ago. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-hezbollah-widens-irans-middle-east-reach-2021-10-15/ , accessed Nov. 12, 2024. (Reuters’ history of biased reporting against Israel is well known in the Jewish world. HBG)
Miller, A.D., Why the Oslo peace process failed—and what it means for future negotiators. Sept. 14, 2023, The Times of Israel, https://www.timesofisrael.com/why-the-oslo-peace-process-failed-and-what-it-means-for-future-negotiators/ , accessed Nov. 12, 2024.
Israel Missions Around the World, Suicide and Other Bombing Attacks in Israel Since the Declaration of Principles (Sept. 1993) [Oslo]. https://embassies.gov.il/MFA/FOREIGNPOLICY/Terrorism/Palestinian/Pages/Suicide%20and%20Other%20Bombing%20Attacks%20in%20Israel%20Since.aspx , accessed Nov. 12, 2024.
Ambassador Friedman unveils Israel-Palestinian peace plan at NRB, https://israelinsightmagazine.com/2024/02/23/ambassador-friedman-unveils-israel-palestinian-peace-plan-at-nrb/, accessed Nov. 12, 2024.
Berman, Lazar and Times of Israel staff, Top Netanyahu confidant visited Russia last week amid Lebanon ceasefire efforts—report, 10 Nov. 2024, https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-netanyahu-confidant-visited-russia-last-week-amid-lebanon-ceasefire-efforts-report/ , accessed Nov. 12, 2024.
Block, F., Meet the American millionaire Marxists funding anti-Israel rallies. Opinion, New York Post, Nov. 16, 2023, https://nypost.com/2023/11/16/opinion/meet-the-american-millionaire-marxists-funding-anti-israel-rallies/ , accessed Nov. 12, 2024.
Pope, N., Biden-Harris Admin Routed “Environmental Justice” Cash to Left-Wing Activists, House Report Details. MSN.com, Nov. 4, 2024, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-harris-admin-routed-environmental-justice-cash-to-left-wing-activists-house-report-details/ar-AA1tuo5C , accessed Nov. 12, 2024.
Hanna, thank you for this enlightening article.
Thanks, Hannah, for helping me understand this very complex situation. Your research is admirable and your writing as well. Keep up the great work! Martie