Source: Patriot Post | VIEW ORIGINAL POST ==>
Since the recent ceasefire went into effect, Israel has received seven of the promised 33 hostages, with another five to be freed by Saturday. Hamas has disclosed that eight of the remaining prisoners are dead.
This would be a good moment to remind the world that these terrorists stole a nine-month-old baby, Kfir Bibas, along with his older brother Ariel, who is five, and their parents. Kfir is listed as one of the hostages to be released. He’s never celebrated a birthday because, during his first two, he was being held prisoner by these monsters.
It’s also worth reminding the world that Hamas delighted in the murder of Israeli babies and children on October 7, even sticking one in an oven and then turning that oven on. This is something the world in general and the radical leftists in particular want us all to forget. They continue to deny that it happened, even though there is video proof of these atrocities.
In exchange for these hostages, Israel has released 290 Gazan prisoners. Should Hamas hold up its end of the deal and release all the promised hostages, they will receive just under 2,000 prisoners in exchange.
While this phase is tenuous and could break at any moment, hopeful family members are waiting with bated breath for their loved ones to come home. Phase I is slated to end in early March.
In the meantime, President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he would release the weapons that former President Joe Biden was withholding from Israel for political reasons. Israel had already paid for them, yet Biden refused to ship them.
Trump made an additional foreign policy move on Saturday. He suggested that the nearly two million remaining Gazans take temporary shelter in Jordan or Egypt. “It’s literally a demolition site right now,” he said. “So, I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations, and build housing in a different location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”
Indeed, the Palestinians have demonstrated no interest or even ability to live as sovereign neighbors in the Gaza Strip, whose land Israel ceded to them out of goodwill. Moreover, critics have long believed that it makes more sense for the Palestinians to be absorbed by other Arab nations, of which there are plenty. Yet Trump’s proposal presents several challenges. The first is persuading King Abdullah of Jordan and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to accept Gazan refugees. Jordan currently houses over two million of these refugees already. Egypt has flatly refused to let any Palestinians into the country and has held that position since the beginning of the Israel/Hamas war. Neither country would welcome more.
Even from a national security standpoint, Jordan has historically had to evict Gazan refugees because they have a destabilizing effect on the country. They are extremely radicalized, which puts Jordan in a precarious position should they accept more. Egypt, which is dealing with its own radicalized group of terrorists (i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood), is uninterested in these refugees for similar reasons.
Both countries would also have a hard time bearing the economic burden of this influx.
The “far-right” contingent in the Israeli government is very much in favor of the plan. Itamar Ben Gvir, who was serving as Israel’s minister of national security but resigned in protest of the current ceasefire deal, gave Trump’s plan his approbation. “Encouraging immigration is the only thing that will bring a solution of rest and tranquility to the State of Israel and to the residents of Gaza,” he stated. “I call on the Arab world to reach out to the residents of Gaza, let them immigrate.”
According to The Wall Street Journal, a former U.S. official bemoaned the fact that Ben Gvir threw his support behind the plan. “The idea of Egypt and Jordan accepting a significant number of Gazan Palestinians is a nonstarter,” he lamented. “These were red lines for both countries before the Gazan crisis and they remain even sharper red lines now.”
The Journal suggests that should Trump and his team lay down ironclad guarantees that the Palestinians would return to their homes by a certain time, this might be acceptable to the Arab nations involved.
Diplomacy in this region is complicated. One thing that’s pretty certain is that a two-state solution isn’t feasible because of the radicalization of the Palestinian people and their marriage of convenience to Hamas. They don’t want their own confined state. If they did, they had the means of doing so starting back in 2005, when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip entirely. Instead, they elected a terrorist group to lead them and began letting those terrorists profit from foreign aid and build terror infrastructure inside their schools and hospitals. Ideologically, Hamas wants the Jewish state wiped off the map.
The question of peace in the Middle East may require some out-of-the-box thinking. Perhaps Trump’s idea is a step in that direction. After all, Trump facilitated peace in the Middle East in his first term via the Abraham Accords. Perhaps he can do it again.
