Palestinians: Israeli Concessions Are a Sign of Weakness
by Bassam Tawil • September 21, 2023 at 5:00 am
On the 18th anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the Iran-backed Palestinian terror groups are still talking about the need to step up attacks against Israel until the "liberation of all of Palestine," from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
These groups still see Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip not as a humanitarian gift to allow the Gazans to build the "Singapore of the Middle East," as former Israeli President Shimon Peres put it, but instead as the beginning of the Palestine Liberation Organization's 1974 "Ten Point Plan" (also known as the "phased plan") for the "comprehensive liberation" of all the land stretching "from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea" -- a euphemism for the elimination of Israel. The Plan essentially states that the Palestinians should take whatever land they are given and use it as a launching pad for getting the rest.
Hamas and other Palestinians never saw the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as a sign that Israel seeks to live in peace and coexistence with its Arab neighbors. On the contrary, they saw the withdrawal as an Israeli retreat -- a defeat in the face of a massive wave of terrorism.
The message the Palestinians came away with was not that the Israelis had given them land in the hope of peace, but rather: "We were shooting and they ran away, so let's keep on shooting and they will keep on running away!"
The Palestinian terror groups are trying to drive Jews out of the West Bank through drive-by shootings, stabbings, rockets and car-rammings. They want to turn the West Bank into another launching pad for attacking Israel the same way they did with the Gaza Strip.
To this day, many Palestinians, not only in Hamas, continue to view the Israeli disengagement as a direct result of terrorism. They use the Arabic term indihar -- defeat -- to describe the Israeli withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip.
Hamas arch-terrorist Mohammed Def recently reminded everyone that as far as his group is concerned, the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip marks the beginning of the first "phase" toward destroying Israel.
For the Palestinians, acquiring the Gaza Strip, was, it seems, merely a taste. In their words, they want the West Bank, Jerusalem and the whole of Israel. They want all "settlers" removed not only from the Gaza Strip, but also from the West Bank, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and all of Israel. In their view, "all of Israel" is just one big settlement.
The Biden administration and other international parties that continue to promote the idea of a "two-state solution" are simply empowering Iran's Palestinian proxies and encouraging them to pursue their "phased plan" to increase terrorism, destroy Israel and replace it with yet another Islamist state.
The Iranian government recently set up a new airport "for terror purposes " in southern Lebanon, only 12 miles from the Israeli border -- presumably to make it easier for Iran's terrorist proxies there, such as Hizballah, to launch aerial attacks against Israel.
If Israel withdraws from the West Bank, the area will, without doubt, fall into the hands of the Iranian regime and its Palestinian proxies.
Those who are promoting the idea of a Palestinian state seek to expel Jews from the West Bank through false promises of peace and coexistence. It is time for decision-makers in Washington and other countries to trust what the Palestinians are saying: that they perceive Israeli concessions not as gestures of peace, but as gestures of surrender.
The ability of the Iranian regime soon to have unlimited nuclear weapons, funded largely by the Biden administration... will doubtless make their hegemonic vision easier to achieve. Not even a shot will need to be fired to persuade its victims to agree to whatever the mullahs wish; the threat will be enough.
No one is stopping them.
Creating an Iran-backed Palestinian terror state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip poses a destabilizing and existential threat by Iran not just to Israel but to the entire region and beyond: to Saudi Arabia despite a thaw that may well be temporary; to the Gulf States, Egypt, North Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States.
On the 18th anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the Iran-backed Palestinian terror groups are still talking about the need to step up attacks against Israel until the "liberation of all of Palestine," from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
These groups still see Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip not as a humanitarian gift to allow the Gazans to build the "Singapore of the Middle East," as former Israeli President Shimon Peres put it, but instead as the beginning of the Palestine Liberation Organization's 1974 "Ten Point Plan" (also known as the "phased plan") for the "comprehensive liberation" of all the land stretching "from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea" -- a euphemism for the elimination of Israel. The Plan essentially states that the Palestinians should take whatever land they are given and use it as a launching pad for getting the rest.
The Plan in brief:
