The Babies Of Gaza
By
Leonard Zwelling
It’s like clockwork. Every evening at 5:30, I can count on Lester Holt and the NBC News team to do an updated survey of the destruction in Gaza including many scenes of injured and starving children. And these scenes are probably real, BUT…
Where are the scenes of the dead children and raped women of October 7?
The world, clambering for a settlement in Gaza, seems to have forgotten how this all started. There was a vicious, sub-human attack on innocent Israelis on October 7 that led to the death of at least 1200, many women and children, and the taking of over 200 hostages, many as yet unaccounted for.
The world just cannot seem to grasp the level of horror endured by the Israeli nation and the unwillingness of Israelis to live next to people who want to kill them simply because they are Jews.
I am well aware of the Nakba or catastrophe that the Palestinian Arabs equate with the declaration of the state of Israel and the ensuing wars since. BUT, just as the United States is not going to cede South Dakota, Oklahoma, or Florida to the aggrieved American Indians, Israel is not going to give back the land it fought for.
That’s not going to happen and now, after October 7, any chance of the formation of a Palestinian state is virtually opposed by all non-Arab Israelis. No Israeli politician could survive if he or she proposed a two-state solution any longer. It will require oversight by a third party to ever see such a state be created now with either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority in charge. A more likely scenario would be finding a Sunni Arab third party to guarantee the absence of weapons in a “Palestinian” state.
Even Israelis who were for a one-state solution have changed their minds.
I do not know what it would take to create a Palestinian state near Israel. The United Nations won’t be able to get it done. They tried that in 1948 and Jordan surely wants no part of that now.
I do not know where the Palestinian Arabs are to go. There are two million who are Israeli citizens who are among the best situated Arabs in the world, but Israel is not prepared to absorb three to five million more. This is a stalemate and the key to a solution is for a Sunni Arab state to supplant Iran as the Arab power in the region and give Israel a real partner with which to work.
If the Saudis are ready for courage, the world is ready for them.
Frankly, I don’t see it any time soon.
Only a brokered deal with the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel with a true Palestinian partner who is neither Hamas nor the PA can work and that partner is not on the horizon.
For now, it is full speed ahead in Gaza until all the hostages are back and Hamas is gone. Nothing else will produce a cease fire no matter what President Biden wants.
He’s no longer a factor in Gaza, in Ukraine, or in Iran.
