Hamas Terrorism and the Death of the Two-State Solution

Hamas has never sought peace

Hamas calls itself a resistance movement, but Hamas is not resistance. Hamas is terrorism.

Hamas has never sought peaceful coexistence; it came into being seeking dominion over all of Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank, “from the river to the sea.” There have been repeated efforts at peace via a “two-state solution,” creating two separate countries for two people, but Hamas has long proven a barrier to Palestinian statehood due to their utter unwillingness to accept the existence of the “Zionist enemy.”

Hamas is terrorism; Hamas is not the Palestinian people.

Think back to September 11, 2001. A terrorist group attacked the United States. Do you remember the fiasco with Trump mocking a disabled report in 2015? The issue was over Trump proclaiming that “thousands” of “Arabs” were celebrating in the streets of New York in the wake of 9/11. The reporter, Serge Kovaleski, said Trump completely misread his article in the Washington Post and that no such celebrations took place.

But people are celebrating the recent terrorist acts committed against Israel, which as a per capita death toll represents many 9/11s. People are celebrating this act of terror in the streets, and they’re celebrating on social media. In one example, outside the Sydney Opera House hundreds gathered and chanted “Gas the Jews!” over and over. And people on the far left, instead of seeing the atrocious October 7 attack for the terror it was, cheer it as an act of “liberation.”

The history of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East leading up to 9/11 was … not great. And in the wake of those terrorist attacks, it got a lot worse. The 2003 American invasion of Iraq resulted in the deaths of over 300,000 Iraqi civilians. Even though American imperialism helped give rise to Al-Qaeda, I didn’t see westerners celebrating that terror group’s murder of innocent civilians. Likewise, no one should be celebrating the horrific killing spree by Hamas terrorists of Jewish people. The recent attacks represent the largest loss of Jewish life in a single day since the Holocaust. Read that previous sentence as many times as you need to.

For over two millennia there is nowhere in the world that Jewish people have felt truly safe. They’ve been under constant threat of pogroms, slavery, exile, rape, indiscriminate hate crimes, and genocide. A third of all Jews alive at the time were murdered in the Holocaust, and the subsequent eight decades has not seen the world Jewish population recover to pre-World War II levels. In 2017 in a march on Charlottesville, Virginia, Nazis chanted “Jews will not replace us!” They haven’t even replaced their own numbers that were lost in WWII.

Many disagree with the statement that “Israel has a right to defend itself,” but can they disagree that Jewish people have a right to defend themselves, especially in the face of such atrocities?

Hamas isn’t interested in peace. They are terrorists bent on genocide, a point they’ve made very clear in the organization’s 1988 Charter, which reveals it as an extremist and fundamentalist terror group bent on the obliteration of Israel via jihad, a holy war, saying “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” It also says, “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them.” 

If you’re cheering for that, please reevaluate your life.

The charter justifies the Hamas position with paragraphs of vicious antisemitic tropes that proclaim Jews control the media and the world and destroy societies etc. Co-founder of Hamas, Mahmoud al-Zahar, said in a December 2022 video that Israel was only the first target, proclaiming, “The entire planet will be under our law; there will be no more Jews or Christian traitors.” And in the wake of the recent terrorist attack Khaled Mashal, another founding member of Hamas, called for neighboring Arab nations to invade Israel tomorrow (October 13), and for an international jihad against Jews.

The October 7 attack was brutal in its inhumanity, and yet social media was frequently in denial, claiming the horrors exaggerated. News agencies refer to those committing the atrocities as “militants” and “gunmen,” refusing to use the word “terrorists.”

Regarding a two-state solution, the Hamas charter proclaims the region is sacred to Islam—which hasn’t been around nearly as long as Judaism—and they refuse to give up any part of it: “so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas),” the charter says. “There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad.” Hamas released a new “Document of General Principles & Policies” in 2017 in a likely disingenuous effort to appear more moderate, but it still refused to recognize Israel. It still proclaimed, “There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity” and “that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded … Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.”

Hamas gained political power in Palestine in 2006 in a close election, but were only able to maintain it in Gaza, as the Fatah party in the West Bank ousted Hamas, creating a political schism between the two Palestinian territories. In that same election, exit polls revealed that 80% supported a peace agreement with Israel, and 75% said Hamas should change its policy regarding the existence of Israel. There has not been another legislative election in Gaza since 2006. And most of the Hamas leadership doesn’t even live in Gaza, instead residing in luxury in Qatar and Turkey while ordinary Palestinians languish in extreme poverty.

Hamas is not the Palestinian people, yet a recent survey proclaims much support for it in Gaza. Conducted by the Palestinian Center for Survey and Policy Research last June, it assessed Palestinian opinions in the wake of the 75^th anniversary of the Nakba. Nakba means “catastrophe.” In 1948—immediately following the declaration of the independent state of Israel—Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, and Iraq all attacked the fledgling nation. The war was vicious, with thousands of soldiers and civilians killed on both sides, but after six months Israel not only won the war but expanded its original borders in the process. This was achieved at the expense of Palestinians, with approximately 700,000 of them fleeing or being expelled, creating a refugee crisis.

The recent survey asked Palestinians what the most positive development since the Nakba was. In Hamas-ruled Gaza, 38% said it was the rise of Hamas / Islamic Jihad. It’s worth noting, however, that many Gazans live in fear of Hamas’s authoritarian rule, daring not to voice any dissent or face reprisals and death. In the West Bank, support for Hamas and jihad was only 16%. Alas, support for a two-state solution had dropped. Over 50% of Palestinians surveyed proclaimed armed action was the best way to end the occupation, whereas only 28% support the two-state solution.

The two-state solution involves the creation of two separate states, a Jewish one for Israel and an independent Palestinian one for the West Bank and Gaza. Support for the two-state solution has dwindled not just because of Hamas’s refusal to recognize Israel. Israel under the leadership of Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition has become more oppressive and less interested in pursuing Palestinian statehood, in turn creating a sense of increasing hopelessness among Palestinians that has been exploited by Hamas.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank, protected by Israeli troops, means that Palestinians in the region are living under military occupation with only limited self-governance. Israel evacuated 9,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza in 2005 and there was a vicious backlash among right-wing elements in Israel. There are 400,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, and another 220,000 in East Jerusalem, which is considered part of the West Bank under international law. Politically, giving up those settlements seems like a recipe for how to lose an election.

It's easy to armchair quarterback the Israeli occupation of the West Bank or closing the border with Gaza from the safety of being a secular westerner. Israel is surrounded by enemies that have called for its destruction, and the state’s unwillingness to compromise in terms of securing defensible borders can be difficult for a lot of people to understand. With the ongoing failure to reach peaceful accommodations, and ongoing Hamas terror attacks, liberal politicians in Israel favoring a two-state solution have seen support wane, whereas those on the right who wish to maintain the status quo or just totally annex the West Bank have seen a surge in popularity. Decades of animosity made the two-state solution become less and less likely, and Palestinians and Israelis alike continue to suffer.

Realistically, the creation of two separate states was always going to be complex and involve a lot of concessions and cooperation by both sides. Hamas being committed to the destruction of Israel meant it was never going to happen while the former remains in control of Gaza. And now, with the recent horrors committed against Jews in Israel by Hamas terrorists, the possibility of a such a solution seems increasingly bleak.

For there ever to be a free Palestine, it must first be free of Hamas.

Photo: An Israeli soldier at the grounds of the Supernova music festival, three days after Hamas terrorists killed 260 people and kidnapped over a hundred others at the site.

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