Phase two of Trump‘s peace plan in the Gaza Strip called for Hamas to surrender its military weapons and undergo demilitarization or face exile. I sincerely hope that phase two is a success, but I have been increasingly dubious since October 13.
The Hamas indoctrinated 2.1 million Palestinians living in the narrow littoral enclave deserve a much better life than being governed by cruel, unelected Islamo-fascists. That is because Hamas masked gunmen with their kelly green headbands are completely reminiscent of the Nazi German SS Einsatzgruppen.
Since the semi-withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the Gaza Strip on October 10, Hamas has tolerated no political dissent and has engaged in massive summary public executions with no due process.
However, I think that phase two of the president’s 20-point peace plan or ceasefire may soon be doomed to fail because Hamas has neither disarmed nor accepted exile. Then there is the possibility of the war soon resuming if there is not a full return of all deceased Israeli hostages for a proper burial in Israel.
According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, a ceasefire, which occurred in phase one of Trump’s peace deal, is defined as “a suspension of active hostilities.” That means that Israel has neither defeated Hamas nor has Hamas defeated them.
Plus, Israel does not want a repeat of October 7, 2023, in another ten or fifteen years, headed by a new Yahya Sinwar, leading another generation of Hamas terrorists attacking Israel without warning, pillaging, raping, torturing, murdering, kidnapping, and committing other atrocities.
The war between Israel and Hamas so far has ended in a tie or stalemate with the welcome release of twenty hostages and four corpses on October 13, along with three more on October 14 and two more on October 15. At least nineteen deceased Israeli hostages have still not been returned from Gaza.
However, if Trump and Netanyahu had sought an unconditional surrender of Hamas, there never would have been any release of either the hostages or corpses.
However, I fully realize that if Israel had totally defeated Hamas, all twenty hostages most likely would have been executed. Plus, the corpses would have been neither returned to Israel nor recovered because of the inevitable destruction of the terror tunnels and extensive rubble above ground caused by the Israel Defense Forces.
In my opinion, the only realistic way to bring peace to the Gaza Strip is “Hamas delenda est (Hamas must be destroyed.” Israel, if necessary, must emulate Jordanian King Hussein’s annihilation of the PLO during Black September in 1970 or give Hamas a mutually agreeable one-way plane ticket to Tehran.
Unfortunately, Trump’s presentceasefire as of October 13 is analogous to the armistice signed between the Allies and Germany on November 11, 1918, which was later ratified by the flawed Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919. As U.S. General John J. Pershing presciently warned, “There can be no conclusion to this war until Germany is brought to her knees.“
Pershing was 100% correct when Nazi Germany later invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, starting World War II in Europe. Hamas is the Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany of 2025, but potentially more dangerous in the distant future as an Iranian proxy and as long as duplicitous Egypt keeps exporting arms, etc., to Hamas along the Philadelphi Corridor.
I agree with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionist Party), National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu, who all opposed Trump’s peace plan.
In direct violation of the negotiated peace deal on October 9, the New York Post reported on October 14 that “Hamas [has] appeared to renege on key demands of President Trump’scease-fire deal just hours after the world celebrated the end of the Gaza war — with a top official saying the terror group will not give up its arms or control over the Gaza Strip.”
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem, as reported by the Post, stated late on October 13, “Hamas has no need to abide by every word of Trump’s 20-point peace plan, including calls for the terror group to lay down its arms.” He also brazenly and unwisely said that Hamas would not “cede governance over the Gaza Strip.”
This is extremely worrisome.
It increasingly appears that many of the 2.1 million radicalized Palestinians may soon have to be temporarily evacuated to a safe zone within Gaza or southern Israel in the Negev while the IDF carpet bombs most of the Gaza Strip. Israel would also need to use a myriad of U.S.-supplied bunker-busting bombs, et al. to destroy all the terror tunnels.
That is because it is estimated that there are an astounding 350 to 450 miles of tunnels in Gaza, along with 5,700 shafts.
However, organic skunk gas dispersed throughout the vast tunnel network could also be just as effective as bombs in causing the Hamas terrorists to flee their subterranean sanctuaries. I strongly suspect that they do not have enough face masks for everybody to survive the quasi-noxious, sickening gas.
For some unknown reason, before Trump’s peace deal, Hamas was never required to renounce its Charter of August 18, 1988, calling for the complete destruction of Israel. The Jew hating document clearly stated in the Prelude, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
That genocidal sentence is hardly a statement of peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine. The sentence “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” is the primary motivation of Hamas.
Article 28 of the Charter unbelievably and risibly stated that Israel “is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion.” I suppose that Hamas had never heard of Pablo Escobar and his Medellin Cartel in the 1980s, who were mostly responsible for most of the world’s cocaine and illegal drug trade in 1988?
Never once was Hamas forced to renounce its libelous lies in Article 32 taken from the fictitious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was published in 1903, and later used by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf to spread his antisemitic hatred.
Article 32 continued with the lie that the “Zionist plan [of conquest] is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion …. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.”
Hamas conveniently ignored how Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt in 1982 and later gave back the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians in 2005. The myriad of antisemitic lies and propaganda against Israel in the Hamas Charter exist ad nauseamfrom the Prelude to Article 36.
This is why I truly think that Hamas is going to neither disarm nor demilitarize in the next two to four weeks. They are just buying time for one last stand before their futile, delusional death cult ends.
Hamas is extremely similar to the homicidal Nazi SS of World War II and the suicidal Japanese kamikazes of 1945. That is their psychotic mindset. They only want to inflict a cruel, sadistic death on all Israelis, regardless of religion, with little regard for their own pitiful lives.
Amnesty is doubtfully not going to work because it is simply too unheroic and unrealistic according to Hamas’ collective warped view of Sunni Islam. Their only choice is either to accept an Iranian exile or fight to the death because of their unmistakable dehumanized mindset.
I truly hope that Hamas and the 1,950 released Palestinian prisoners, who most likely will defend Hamas to the last man, decide to take a one-way trip to Tehran.
Hamas cannot be allowed to stay in the Gaza Strip. Whoever controls the schools or educational system will determine the next generation of Gaza. Plus, every man, woman, and child must undergo deHamasification similar to the deNazification of the 1940s and 1950s in West Germany, with zero tolerance toward the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, or any other extremist Islamic ideology.
Neither Hamas nor any other fanatical organization can control the Gaza Strip or Palestine if there is ever going to be peace in the Middle East. It strongly appears that phase two of Trump’s peace plan for the Gaza Strip is doomed to fail.
This is a developing story.
Robert L. Maronic
