Bring Hamas to trial like the Nazis in Nuremberg

After decades of conflict, Western democracies, with the exception of the U.S. – which vetoed a joint declaration by the UN Security Council proposed by Norway, China and Tunisia – do not seem to possess a very clear picture of the situation in the Middle East.

For a diplomatic solution, there must be diplomacy. Nazi Germany, for example, had diplomacy. It entered into an agreement with the European powers committing to respect the sovereignty of Czechoslovakia and quickly subjugated it. Then, it made an agreement with the Soviet Union only to invade Russia later.

Hamas outplays the Nazis. Their regime in Gaza wastes no time with diplomacy. It is of little importance to know the name of Hamas’ foreign minister, he will sure be less autonomous than Ribbentrop was in the Third Reich. This controversial reality does not drive only Israel’s foreign policy. The kerfuffle gnaws away the Palestinian Authority as well: When Nuri al-Maliki wanted to seek dialogue with Christians during Christmas, he had to turn to the good offices of the international community because no one in Gaza would listen to him. Hamas does not want Christians any more than it wants Jews in its midst. Hamas are fanatical fundamentalists who are set on pursuing martyrdom not diplomacy.

On the contrary, the PA is willing to deploy diplomacy, it has tried to build one for decades. Unfortunately, it counts nothing outside Ramallah.

The PA has been an empty shack since Yasser Arafat signed the Camp David Accords and was contradicted by his own people. Since then, Hamas has been firmly in power and cares nothing about the Palestinian state.

The concept of Statehood is purely European. It first came to the Arabs through British domination and was later picked up by Gamal Adb el-Nasser to support pan-Arabism. The last Marxist exponent of Nasserism in Palestine was Fatah, as the Ba’ath party was in Syria and Iraq. Today, only the Syrian Ba’ath party exists and it struggles to stay afloat.

The irony of the story is that Israel ends up defending the old Arab states that fought against the Jewish State for decades. If Israel were destroyed, Hamas would immediately attack Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

The idea that there could be a Palestinian state extended from Gaza to the West Bank would make even the old Tunisian President Habib Bourghiba laugh in his grave. “Jordan is just a name for a river, Palestine is Palestine,” he said. There is no greater affront to an Arab than dissolving Palestine into two states, each of them smaller than the third, Jordan, and excluded from the fourth and fifth, Syria and Lebanon. This is the Palestinian issue framed in its proper geopolitical perspective. The ‘two states for two people’ rhetoric is the last fictional remain of the Sykes-Picot Agreement.

Hamas thrives internally and finds support externally, because it promises an Islamic land ruled by its raging g-d of war. This is the real asymmetry. Israel eliminated the first Hamas leader, then arrested the second to try to convince him to negotiate. Hamas immediately found a third and a fourth. Terror governance contemplates no particular shortage of men, and none of them is any important, except the founder who has been dead for twenty years. Hamas leaders are all blind, paralytic and bloodthirsty like Sheikh Yassin, the role model for his progeny.

There is only one solution to achieve peace in the Middle East: Fight Hamas, eradicate terrorism from Gaza and bring their leadership to trial, as the Nazis in Nuremberg. Only then, the PA will have political capital to spend and settle for its own smaller Palestinian state in the West Bank.