Hamas Reasserting Its Authority in Gaza

"It became clear, and we can see this from the Gaza City incursion, that Hamas largely abandoned confrontation with the IDF in favour of strengthening its foothold internally for the day after: saving weapons, preserving manpower and planning reprisals against clans who either co-ordinated with Israel or threatened Hamas during the war."

Shlomo Mofaz, director, Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center

 

"How many families have received threats from Hamas? Now these families are demanding weapons to defend themselves."

"This is the expected scenario in a few weeks: civil war."

Tawfik Tirawi, former head, Palestinian Authority Intelligence Service 

 

"Are they obtaining new cards for bargaining after the hostages are handed over? Perhaps."

"Hamas could manoeuvre on this issue and say, 'We are present, we are indispensable for imposing control'."

Mustafa Ibrahim, political analyst, Gaza 

 

"[Hamas is comfortable with the guarantees provided by mediators that Israel will not restart the war, but the] gangs are an issue in Gaza."

"[Hamas's argument is that negotiators] should differentiate between weapons that can still be held for personal protection, while heavier weapons should be given up." 

Rashid al-Mohanadi, fellow, Middle East Council on Global Affairs, Qatar

 

"[The Sahem {piercing arrow, special unit of Hamas} are] commanders, intelligence people, drug enforcement captains -- all of them experienced." 

"They are scattered around Gaza, usually in plainclothes, holed up in hospitals or in tent-cities among the refugees." 

"The [captured injured Hamas fighter] gave us names, locations, directives and showed us the two separate communication lines used for unit operations." 

Ali Mujaida, senior Mujaida clan leader

 

"[Most Mujaida clansmen] are not affiliated with Hamas and indeed many lean toward Fatah."

"Hamas feared that, either of their own accord or else in co-ordination with the PA, these families would revolt against their rule, and so Hamas needed to nip this in the bud."

Anwar Rajab, Palestinian Authority security official

Hamas-affiliated security forces have been deployed across Gaza to oversee the transition following Israeli withdrawal    Anadolu via Getty Images

 

Byzantine, a labyrinthine as the tunnels that Hamas built under Gaza, are the competing, adverse, historically suspicious family clans with their regional power bases and antipathy toward one another. When Hamas first entered Gaza in 2007 it was two years after Israel's unilateral decision under Ariel Sharon to leave Gaza as a conciliatory gesture to the Palestinians. At that time the Gaza Strip was under Fatah (Palestinian Authority) control. A time during those two years when family clans' vendettas and criminal activity was rampant. Hamas's entry soon changed all that; the group brutally challenged Fatah and brought order of a kind to the Strip, installing their brand of Islamist rule and policing gang activity.

 

Ordinary Palestinian citizens in Gaza were impressed, as gang violence decreased and order -- of a totalitarian nature, acceptable and expected in Palestinian society -- prevailed. Some of the clans sided with Hamas and accepted their rule, and some retained their animosity toward Hamas, but forbore from challenging them, daunted by their formidable power. Since the Israel Defense Forces invasion of the Gaza Strip following the terrorist horde's incursion into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, eliminating Hamas leaders and commanders in the Strip, the clans have grown restive and their hatred of Hamas has resulted in violent armed clashes.

 

Hamas has responded with brutal efficiency, tracking down and killing their opponents, and executing them in the streets. Israel had armed some of the Hamas-opposing clans. Hamas in confronting them as the terrorist group seeks to reassert its commanding control of the territory, condemns them as traitors, rounds them up, and executes them in the streets. The Astal militia whose leader co-ordinated with Israel, taking up arms, were among those targeted by Hamas.

Satellite imagery over Sabra in Gaza City taken earlier this month.  (Planet Labs PBC)

 

A family clan, the Mujaida, diminished following a violent gun battle decided to pledge fealty to the 'government' of Gaza -- Hamas. In the ceasefire agreed to, Hamas has grasped the opportunity to launch a campaign of violence in reasserting its control over the local families in Gaza, along with the militias challenging its power throughout the years of the war since 2023. Gaza City has seen public executions, and armed raids have been carried out in the central Gaza Strip, Hamas sending its message of return to authority.

 

Hamas is thus engaged because President Donald Trump who engineered the ceasefire in a triumph of muscling regional Arab countries into agreeing that Hamas must be disarmed and its dominant role in Gaza broken for good, charging Qatar, Turkey and Egypt to work out the details (all three of which have supported Hamas as a legitimate opposition to Israeli 'occupation' of 'Palestine). In the interim, while the 20-point plan is worked on and implemented with all players in discussion and coordination, allowing Hamas the time to reassess their situation, rearm, reposition themselves, recruit and reclaim their power base.

Armed groups clash in what is claimed to be the Sabra neighbourhood, Gaza City. (Supplied)

 

That may not have been the intention of the U.S. negotiators and President Trump, but what they recognize as a ceasefire is in fact in the parlance of the region, a 'hudna'; a temporary ceasefire allowing the aggressor terrorists time to reorder its priorities. For the moment those priorities are to confront and murder those Palestinians whom they regard as opponents of their ongoing rule of Gaza. 

 

While publicly Hamas 'officials' claim their willingness to relinquish Gaza governance, they contend as part of the social fabric of Gaza their administration should continue as a rebranded political party. Hamas explains its crackdown on the Palestinian clans as normal, since they have returned to Gaza as the commanding authority. Announcing the appointment of five new governors to administer the Strip's urban centres; they circulated videos on social media of its operatives directing traffic.

 

The Hamas social media accounts describe clashes with rebel clans as a duty to bring criminals to justice. The rebellious clans were accused of engaging in smuggling, gunrunning, extortion and looting of humanitarian aid trucks. A number of factions including a primary tribal council voiced support for Hamas enforcing the law, while condemning those who collaborated with Israel. This is Palestinians being Palestinians, embracing their 'victimhood' and exercising their hatred for Israel, seated on its ancestral land, claimed by Palestinians as their own. 

Armed fighters in Khan Younis, southern Gaza on Monday.   Abed Rahim Khatib / DPA via Getty Images

 

Clan and militia leaders experienced the methodical efficiency of Hamas moving against them. Before the ceasefire was announced, one of the first major clashes erupted on October 3 when hundreds of Hamas uniformed operatives entered a Khan Younis neighbourhood in control of the Mujaidas, a prominent family, historically affiliated with Fatah. Hamas operatives armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades advanced in formation from four directions and an intense firefight ensued. When an Israeli drone noticed the attack it fired on Hamas and they were beaten back.  

"[Hamas is now] cleaning up their own territory, forcing the clans into submission and deterring the public."

"When that is over, they will move into the less secure areas to root out the militias."

"Abu Shabab will be last in line."

Doghmush clan member  

e

 

"It was a pre-emptive strike."

 

 

 

Will The Real Mahmoud Abbas Please Stand UP?!!!

"Despite all that our people have suffered, we reject what Hamas carried out on October 7."

"[The targeting and hostage taking of Israeli citizens does] not represent the Palestinian people [nor] their just struggle for freedom and independence."

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas   

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly via video at United Nations headquarters, September 25, 2025. (AP/Angelina Katsanis)

 

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas lost little time in responding to the 20-point journey to end the conflict in Gaza occasioned by the 7 October 2023 incursion into Israel by thousands of Palestinian terrorists and civilians orchestrated by Hamas on a mission to slaughter Israeli civilians, rape Israeli girls and women, dismember their victims in an orgy of sadistic pleasure, and take children, the elderly, women and Israeli soldiers captive as hostages into Gaza. Hamas and the PA [PLO/Fatah] have always been political rivals, the former leading a secular authority, the latter committed to an Islamist state.

 

When the 20-point plan was released, PA President Abbas announced he was prepared to be enlisted within the plan to provide "a modern and democratic state that abides by international law, the rule of law and multilateralism and the peaceful transition of power". The Palestinian Authority under his rule was prepared to work the U.S. and assigned partners in the implementation of the peace plan; he is "ready to bear full responsibility for governance and security" in the absence of Hamas.

 

With the support of the peace plan behind him, the man promising a democratic government who has himself ruled the West Bank after an initial election two decades earlier that was never again brought to the polls, assured his Western contacts that his preparedness is there, and Hamas must hand over its weapons to the Palestinian National Authority. The messages he sends expressed in Arabic to an Arab audience fail to quite match the statements of commitment to peace and good order and rejection of violence that the UN heard from him.  

"On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a sudden attack ... killed 1,200 Israelis, abducted 250 others, and took them as hostages."

"This attack shook the foundations of the Israeli entity."

"[The attacks that day] exposed the [false] claims that ... [Israel] has an invincible army." 

Mahmoud Abbas

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa (C-L) listens as Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty (C) speaks at a press conference on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing in Rafah on August 18, 2025. (Photo by Khaled DESOUKI / AFP

 

After the butchery of October 7, 2023, when Israelis were reeling in disbelief and sorrow, Mahmoud Abbas eventually, after a five-day hiatus expressed his sentiments on the massacre during a meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan while in Amman, stating: "We reject the practices of killing civilians or abusing them on both sides", handily glossing over his leading role in producing school curricula for Palestinian children that characterize Jews and Israelis as loathsome colonialists stealing Palestinian land, urging children to contemplate the glory of martyrdom in defiance of Israeli 'oppression', as a cruel 'occupier'.

 

When speaking in June to the PA's daily paper Al-Hayat Al Jadida, Mr. Abbas outright applauded the October 7 massacre for "achieving important goals", attracting the attention of Palestinian Media Watch for translation to English as he celebrated the strategic achievement that Hamas achieved that day. On the other hand in a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman he wrote: "What Hamas did on October 2023 in killing and taking civilians hostage is unacceptable and condemnable and Hamas must immediately release all hostages". 

"As important as the goals that Hamas attempted to achieve through this attack may have been, they are not comparable to the damages and heavy losses that the Gaza Strip residents ... have suffered."

Mahmoud Abbas 

This handout picture provided by the Palestinian Authority’s press office shows Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas applauding as he gives a video address to a UN summit on a two-state solution in New York City, from his headquarters in Ramallah on September 22, 2025. (Thaer GHANAIM / PPO / AFP)

"They [Palestinian leaders] wanted peace. They wanted a state. They wanted self-rule. In fact they got self-rule."

"But this Hamas terrorist organization, which believed, one, that Israel can't exist at all, and there's no compromise, and that, two, Palestine must be an Islamist state, not a secular state. They set about destroying any hopes for that."

"If you're dealing with the same parties and the same actors and the same agendas, then you're likely going to have the same outcome."

"If Hamas is allowed to exist, how then does the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian government succeed in administering its population?"

"Hamas is not going to bow down to that easily. They never have. It is for Hamas, total victory or death."

Terrorism expert Lara Burns, former FBI agent 

 

Indigestible Piecemeal Desserts

"This is the state they will give us. It's like a Swiss cheese, really."
"Who among you [United Nations countries] will accept a similar state and similar conditions?"
"The U.S. cannot be the sole mediator. The situation could implode at any moment. ... We need hope."
"Please do not take this hope away from us."
"It is an Israeli-American pre-emptive plan in order to put an end to the question of Palestine."
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas

"This is not Swiss cheese. This is the best plan that exists for the middle East -- for the Middle East -- and for the State of Israel and for the Palestinians, too."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas attends a U.N. Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters in New York on Feb. 11. Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images

It was actually Mahmoud Abbas who was the architect of the Trump Peace Plan. He may be bleating now about the unfairness of it all, but it is his steering of the PA away from direct negotiations with Israel over a peace settlement that would be satisfactory for both parties that led to this final 'preemptive' design to put an end to the deliberate procrastination in the hopes that Israel would disappear under the weight of world pressure, under threat by combined armies of the Middle East who would, he hoped, finally rid the geography of the presence of Israel.

Mahmoud Abbas's reward for his patient miracle-waiting, for his diligence in producing school curricula and television programs demonizing Jews and preparing Palestinian children to embrace a future of martyrdom so romanticized that young Palestinians find it appealing to violently attack Jews even when the result may be their own deaths, since they have been convinced that this is their destiny; they have it on the highest authority, those who govern them, trusted Palestinian leaders.

Suddenly the last of the offers that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert bargained for in 2008, guaranteeing the Palestinians all that they insisted upon in an exchange for peace looks appealing to Abbas. The offer that he spurned at the time is the very one he insists now he would contemplate in good faith and reconsider. But too many years have passed to recall that offer. An offer where Israel was prepared to make sacrifices to achieve peace, and the PA adamantly refused to surrender any of their demands to achieve that peace.

Speaking of peace it's a good idea to examine what precisely that would be. A cessation of violence stimulated and fomented by the Palestinian leadership upon Israel and Israeli citizens. The implied threat of Abbas's plea to the United Nations of 'the situation imploding at any moment' recalls intifadas and endless 'days of rage', along with speaking of Jewish feet defiling the Temple Mount, and incitements to Palestinians to 'resist the occupation', supported by the PA's dedication to viewing the murder of Jews as heroic, paying the murderers for their service to the 'cause'.

The cause is the elimination of the State of Israel. The purpose of the Trump Peace Plan is the elimination of all the violence by presenting a fait accompli; after all, 70 years of attempts at mollifying the victimhood status of the Palestinians by dedicating a unique UN refugee support system through UNRWA and extending refugee status beyond the original 700,000 to their succeeding generations has accomplished nothing but dependence and rage. If Abbas now regards the map of the emerging new 'Palestine' as 'Swiss cheese", so be it, he designed it and will learn to live with it.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks at the United Nations in New York. AP

Israel genuinely seeks peace. It prefers conditions to prevail where there is no need for it to be seen as an 'occupying force', which has occurred for the very simple reason of defence from the malicious threats and the very real violence continually perpetrated by Palestinians upon Israelis. Both the Fatah and the Hamas charters, where the West Bank and Gaza are administered by each, state as their goal the elimination through destruction of the State of Israel, freeing up the land on which it stands for Fatah and Hamas to battle one another to the death.

They may do so, just as Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad is doing, just as Libyans are doing, just as the Lebanese are experiencing, as well as Yemen, and Iraq, as long as Israel is left to its own prosperous and life-loving agenda to continue to provide a haven for the world's Jews from an international community that isn't very engaged in respecting Israel's right to self-determination absent constant criticism from corrupt, human-rights-destroying regimes like those that sit on the UN Human Rights Council as a reproach to decent nations.

If Mahmoud Abbas felt compelled to ask United Nations members who among them would accept a piecemeal state, Benjamin Netanyahu is entitled to ask, as has been done with little response countless times before, who among them would enjoy contemplating being surrounded by hostile states, some of which have made no secret of their intention to destroy his country? And the very group the world expects Israel to negotiate for peace with, continues to nurse the intention to overwhelm the state they refuse to recognize as Jewish, with the return of tens of millions of Palestinian 'refugees'.

Where Israel is expected by Palestinian Arab leaders to welcome more than the two million Palestinian Israelis already living an equality existence in the Jewish State, when the reality is that no Jews could live in a Palestinian state which has expressly stated their presence would never be tolerated, and reality demonstrates that should any Jew accidentally wander into a Palestinian enclave his/her life would be immediately forfeit. Quite the partner for peace.

Awaiting Palestinian Acceptance of Peace and Mutual Security

"We see the reaction from the Palestinians, we see the reaction of a wide range of Arab states which have sided with the Palestinians in rejecting the plan."
"This, obviously, makes one think about its feasibility."

Dmitry Peskov Kremlin Spokesman

"We've informed the Israeli side ... that there will be no relations at all with them and the United States including security ties."

"Trump asked that I speak to him by phone but I said 'no', and that he wants to send me a letter ... but I refused it."
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas

Mahmoud Abbas speaks at the Arab League meeting in Cairo on Saturday

(Photo: AFP)

"The experience over the past fifty years has shown that without agreement among all sides, no peace plan has the chance to succeed."

"The U.S. plan challenges many of the internationally agreed parameters: the 1967 border, as agreed by both parties, with a state of Israel and an independent, viable state of Palestine, living side-by-side in peace, security and mutual recognition."

"We share the commitment to a two-state solution and respect for international law."
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrel

An Arab League emergency meeting to discuss US President Donald Trump’s peace proposal, at the league headquarters in the Egyptian capital Cairo on February 1, 2020. (Khaled Desouki/AFP)

Yesterday, the last day of January 2020, the 22-member Arab League of Nations met to discuss the Trump Peace Plan and to hear an address by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. The League saw fit to unanimously reject U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial Middle East plan,are being “unfair” to Palestinians. They felt moved as well to state they would plan “not to… cooperate with the US administration to implement this plan.” 

This, when after decades of negotiations, fruitless every one, failed to move the Palestinian Authority leadership to agree to a plan they would find commensurate with their demands, simply because every time their demands were accepted, they would find fault, and increase their entitlements and when those too were finally met, they declined to validate any such plan as being quite satisfactory enough to influence them to lay down their arms and dedicate time, energy and funding to creating a civil state that would meet the needs of Palestinians while living in peace with their neighbours.

Israel was established as a Jewish state, finally realizing the dream of the diaspora to return to their  heritage and turn desert into an agrarian miracle. This, they did, while at the same time having to establish a military presence capable of defending the state and its citizens from repeated attempts by Arab states to destroy the nation's presence. Each one of those violent efforts failed, each time leaving Israel in a stronger defensive position.

Palestinians burn cutouts of U.S. President Donald Trump, State Secretary Mike Pompeo, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 'day of rage' protests across the West Bank, November 26, 2019. AFP

Arab states, forever at war both externally and internally, riven by corruption, by sectarian and tribal enmity, managed to accomplish little to bring their populations into stable economies outside of those oil states the world economy supported in search of an energy source. The Palestinians, portraying themselves as everlasting refugees on the world stage found support among the Arab States but no willingness to absorb them as citizens save for Jordan which fought a bloody conflict against Yasser Arafat's PLO, driving them out of Jordan and into Lebanon.

Jordan occupies the greater part of what was meant to be portioned to a Jewish State through the Balfour Declaration, which Britain had seconds thoughts of, when it sought to appease the Hashemites of Arabia, after Britain had 'given' the House of Saud control of what became Saudi Arabia. Two-thirds of the population of Jordan is Palestinian, the rest Hashemites from Arabia. What was left was apportioned by the United Nations as a Partition Plan between Palestinian Jews and Arab Palestinians.

Syria and Iraq, two of Israel's deadliest state enemies disintegrated into sectarian violence with no end in sight, creating a monumental refugee crisis, and a greater humanitarian plight with the state murder of hundreds of thousands in a situation where it became problematical in distinguishing the actions of Islamist terrorists with those of state military actors themselves. Lebanon's fractious relations between Christians, Druze, Sunni and Shiites led to its civil downfall and the current situation where the Iranian proxy terrorist Hezbollah now is the tail that wags the dog.

At least 10,000 Palestinian protesters marching against Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip have clashed with Israeli soldiers and border police at the Israeli Qalandiya checkpoint, between Jerusalem and Ramallah.  Picture: AFP/Getty

While Israel continues to flourish in every index of human accomplishments, creating a vibrant and creative society where democratic equality of all its citizens -- Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze -- contrasts sharply with those of its neighbours -- the Arab and Muslim (Iran) communities in the Middle East continue to face moral and civil crises, mired in corruption and violence. Among them the ongoing rise of Islamist terrorism wreaking horrors both there and in the West.

Advances in medical research, bioscience, on the defensive military arms front, on technology and food sciences advance the Israeli economy as well as the world order in shared progress such as desalination, agribusiness, medical research and computer sciences. Israel sends out its emergency response teams to give aid to other nations recovering from floods, landslides, wildfires and earthquakes, as well as giving expert aid in arable water solutions and agricultural best-practices.

IDF strikes terror targets in Gaza after rockets fired at Israel

Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia lent itself to nurturing the aspiration so al-Qaeda to attack Western values in symbolic deadly attacks, which culminated in the World Trade Towers aerial destruction. Sunni Islam bred terrorist groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and ISIL and its countless offshoots, while Shiism gave birth to the 'Party of God' which has responded to Iran's orders in Syria and Yemen, destroying lives and creating mass homelessness, where bombing hospitals and suicide-bomb-attacks exemplify the virtues of jihad.

Until countries like Egypt's, Saudi Arabia's and the Gulf States' encounters with Turkish and Iranian hostile threats created sufficient trepidation to slant their perspectives toward the one nation that has proven itself a beacon of hope for the future and whose military is dedicated to its nation's protection and perseverance as theirs failed to. It is Islam that nurtured and created the Muslim Brotherhood, a viral threat both to established Middle East states and the West.

Palestinian women, one holding a picture of Hamas movement chief Ismail Haniyeh, attend a mass rally marking the 32nd anniversary of the founding of Hamas on December 14, 2019, in Gaza city. (AP/Khalil Hamra)

The PLO, Fatah and Hamas share a 'victim' hatred of Israel and all things Jewish; above all the existence of a Jewish state dominating a heritage geography of Judaic historical, Biblical establishment, even while they exude a deadly hatred for one another as regional rivals prepared at any given time to commit the other to the grave while each seek 'martyrdom' for their people. Both boast that they love death for it reunites them with Allah and the Prophet Mohammad, rewarding them with 'virgins'. What they really love is conflict irrespective of whether it leads to victory.

Israel's preoccupation is shielding its population from death, for there is no love there for the Grim Reaper at the behest of Islamist jihadists. The death fetishists of jihad think of death as a gift they prepare as IEDs, wrapped as presents and party balloons to entice the children of Israel to play with them and flirt with jihad-delivered death. Western supporters of the Palestinian 'cause' avoid any censure of those they champion as 'victims' who 'resist' the 'occupation', a narrative that has served the Palestinians well in demonizing Israel.

It is past time for a peace engagement to be introduced free of the now-predictable Palestinian reaction of rejection. One that will be implemented however it comes about, still permitting the Palestinian authorities to engage in its details and ask for changes rather than demand Israel's removal from what they insist is Palestinian territory; a complete reversal of historical and current reality but typified in Islamist ritual of destroying all evidence of the pre-existence of rightful residency and artifacts and portraying them as their own.

Hamas members

(photo credit: REUTERS)

Trump to the Rescue ... ! ?

"The Saudis, Emiratis, Omanis, and Bahrainis aren't exactly besotted with Israel, they just hate Iran more and view it as a serious destabilizing influence and even an existential threat. They see the Israelis, however, as being clever, strong, tenacious, powerful and as close to fearless as it gets. Israel also has quite the knack for technology and security, both attributes of significant value to its Arab neighbours."
"To top it off, many Arab countries are fed up with Palestinian extremism, which has yielded nothing positive for more than 70 years."
Vivian Bercovici, journalist, former Canadian Ambassador to Israel

Trump and Netanyahu announce the peace plan at the White House Tuesday. Photo: Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images

The election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States was hailed worldwide with great acclaim and hopes for a more peaceful future under his guiding hand. So great was that anticipation of his post-racist election victory to the most powerful political post in the world body in the affairs of humankind that before the genial, smiling man of mixed ancestry could prove the expectations were not misplaced, he garnered the distinction of becoming a Nobel Laureate.

As a Democrat, he looked first to ensure that greater equality of recognition and opportunity be apportioned to all those whom he governed, and the long-awaited American universal health care system was introduced accompanied both by praise and censure. Bipartisan relations in Congress were to be healed, but under his administration they grew even more divisive and remote than under the previous Republican administration.

On the international stage he went to Egypt to inform the Islamic world that America was prepared to interact differently with the Middle East and to surrender any vestiges of command-and-control of purely Arab and Islamic fortunes. To hostile Islamist Iran, he extended the hand of friendship, and the Islamic Republic was pleased to slap it away in contempt. When Syrian President Bashar al Assad brought mass destruction of lives and heritage to his own people, President Obama stirred his sense of outrage warning that the use of chemical weapons on Sunni Syrian opposition would bring harsh consequences. None arose.

When Egypt's Arab Spring revolution brought down Hosni Mubarak, its long-time president and ally of the United States, Barack Obama favoured the presidency of Mohammad Morsi, and was content to let Mubarak dangle in the wind. The Muslim Brotherhood was well entrenched in Washington and the White House appeared content with leaving Egypt in their hands. Whereas, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House his treatment was invariably frosty and insulting.

Enter Donald Trump, whose accession to the presidency stunned the international community by the very absurdity of the choice; a crude, egotistical, boastful bully and womanizer, a man of base intellect and baser instincts; the very thought of whose residence in the White House was beyond understanding. His tawdry reputation both as a businessman and a human being was wince-inducing. Then time revealed that where Mr. Obama failed to meet his promises, Trump met his unfailingly.

Where Mr. Obama felt justified in his worldly wisdom in negotiating clandestinely with Iran over its nuclear ambitions, and finally handing over to the Islamist theocracy both trust and treasury for an agreement whose loopholes Iran laughed at and grasped, Mr. Trump wrote the U.S. out of the agreement and reinstituted crippling sanctions. In the time between the transition, Iran was enabled to unleash its malign power and influence in Syria and Yemen and to handsomely fund its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas.

Warm relations striven for with Iran and its vassal state Qatar, and icy relations with Israel. The Sunni Gulf States and Saudi Arabia, threatened by Shiite Iran, found common cause with Israel which Iran directly threatened repeatedly to annihilate. The U.S. Congress had agreed decades ago to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, but no president would take the risk, until Trump did. From Presidents Carter to Clinton, Israeli-Palestine 'peace plans' came to nothing.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Palestinians do not support the US President's peace plan

Palestinian leaders from Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas refused all offers extended by Israel, even those acceding to all Palestinian demands. President Donald Trump has now proffered his own, offering the Palestinians what they claim they are owed, but from the perspective of a history that includes Judaic heritage and Arab belligerence in failed efforts to destroy Israel which retook its historical geography.

The Palestinians are much misunderstood by the world at large, which accepts their narrative of victimhood and eagerness to achieve peace. What is not understood is that peace is consonant with the disappearance of Israel and the Palestinians given free rein to repopulate all of the territory that had originally been Biblical Judea, while excluding amy Jewish presence. For them, the very prospect of a Jewish State is horrifying, though that state has given citizenship to two million Palestinian Arabs and the Palestinian Authority will permit not one Jew to live among Arabs in what they foresee as a Palestinian State.

This is decidedly not the end of the story. Arab-Palestinian intransigence and commitment to belying history and denying Jewish heritage shows no sign of abating. Nor can it, given the reality of fomenting hatred against Jews among Palestinians from birth to death and celebrating martyrdom in the cause of destroying the Jewish presence in the Middle East. Days of Rage interminably mounted. Incitements to violence ongoing. Refusal to countenance a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount, the most sacred site in Judaism, a touchstone of malicious hatred.

In 2008, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made an offer to provide 100 percent of (Biblical Judea and Samaria) the West Bank (with land swaps that would cut out portions for the existence of Israeli settlements in exchange for the Arab towns within Israel's borders), along with an agreement for a divided Jerusalem where each would have their capital. Mahmud Abbas flicked it away, deeming it unworthy of any kind of response whatever.

When no Agreement is Possible and Peace Eludes

"Today Israel takes a big step towards peace. My vision presents a win-win opportunity for both sides, a realistic two-state solution that resolves the risk of Palestinian statehood to Israel's security."
U.S. President Donald Trump

"[It may take the Palestinians] a very long time [to get an independent state, but] if they agree to abide by all the conditions you've laid out in your plan, Israel will be there."
Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu

President Donald Trump and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu take part in an announcement of Trump's Middle East peace plan at the White House on Tuesday.  Mandel Ngan / AFP - Getty Images

After rejecting the 1947 Partition plan that the United Nations offered, Palestinian leaders and negotiators rejected one offer after another, each offer coming closer and closer to the entitlements that the Palestinians demanded as their right, until the last gave them everything, and they still found fault and had no problem rejecting it. And to this one, which doesn't give them their demands by any means, but places restrictions and responsibilities on the Palestinians a definite response has resulted from PA President Mahmoud Abbas: "We say 'no', and a thousand times 'no'".

 Pres.Abbas, Ramallah. Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2020. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

The only possible 'peace plan' acceptable to the Palestinian leadership, it seems patently obvious, is to give to them what surrounding Arab national leaders before 1948 never considered: agreement on allowing the Arab peoples who now call themselves 'Palestinians' -- co-opting that identity from the actual Jewish Palestinians to match their contentions that all ground historically sacred to Judaism, notable Judaic figures and symbols were really Arab Palestinian -- to declare themselves a nation.

Under the revealed plan that President Trump takes credit for, Israel's sovereignty over all the Jewish settlements in the Judaic heritage region of Samaria and Judea -- which the international community is content to call  the West Bank, ceding it thus to the Palestinians -- is established.  The Jordan Valley, another heritage Judaic region, is also to come under Israeli annexation, to retrieve to the Jewish State geography that was once its and is now again.

The Palestinians are left with areas of territory carved out of Samaria and Judea which roads are to connect for the establishment of their state, connecting to Gaza through a tunnel. Surrounding Arab armies marched on Israel time and again to destroy it and each of those conflicts failed to succeed. Israel's military, at the cost of many Jewish lives, defended its right to exist, and its territory. It took East Jerusalem from the illegal occupation of Jordan, and the Sinai from Egypt.

In any other similar conflict of defence and victory, the victor has always historically absorbed the territory defended and acquired. In Israel's case, surrender of the Sinai came with a peace agreement with Egypt. And Jordan was graciously accorded by Israel control of the Temple Mount, Israel's most sacred Judaic site, whereas under Jordanian control, Jews were expelled from the Old City and never permitted access to Judaism's most holy site.

Now, Trump's plan for peace gives Israel full sovereignty over Jerusalem, the Old City and holy sites, including the al-Aqsa mosque, representing the third holiest site for Islam. Neighbourhoods to the east of the city would be given to the Palestinians and there they are able to establish their capital for a Palestinian state that could be established on meeting conditions including recognition of Israel as a Jewish state; that Hamas must disarm; and Israel maintain military control of the area.

All conditions that can be negotiated further in direct negotiations between the established and the nascent state. President Trump, whom Mahmoud Abbas refuses to meet with, is giving the Palestinian Authority four years to ponder and accept the proposal. In response President Abbas appeared on television announcing his rejection of the plan as soon as it was released. "I am ready to die for the sake of my people", he floridly promised.

Today, the day following the release of the Trump peace plan, Hamas and Fatah, two deadly opposed Palestinian factions, both fully immersed in terrorism, met to coordinate opposition to the plan they have reviled. A "Day of Rage" was called for. Nothing odd or unusual about that. Arab Palestinians have been expressing their rage over the presence of Israel since it declared itself prepared to accept the UN invitation to re-establish its nationhood on a tiny sliver of land, a partial portion of its former, Biblical-era glory.

A masked Palestinian protester sets tires on fire during clashes with Israel forces as they protest Middle East peace plan announced Tuesday by US President Donald Trump, which strongly favors Israel, at Beit El checkpoint, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, Wednesday, Jan 29, 2020 (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)