Five months after Netanyahu sketched his five principles for ending the war, the ones defining “total victory,” it turns out it was all ‘kalam fadi’, empty talk.
Here is the weeping from Israel politicians who want the Gaza genocide to continue and they are mad with Trump and even their own Benjamin Netanyahu. This is their cry of defeat.
Two and a quarter years after that fateful Saturday, two follow-on events are unfolding before our eyes that echo each other in chilling ways.
The fact that the same failure-ridden government now appoints those who will investigate it is not much different from Qatar and Turkey being tapped to help run the Gaza Strip “the day after.”
Turkey, the great patron of Hamas, and Qatar, the one that financed Hamas for generations, hosted its leadership for years, and celebrated October 7 alongside Hamas. If there is a difference between these two events, it is “in favor” of Turkey and Qatar.
The fact that a government that led Israel into one of its worst disasters, whose years-long policy birthed the Hamas terror monster, is now appointing a politically neutered whitewash committee instead of a state commission of inquiry is, morally, even lower than the return of Qatar and Turkey to the scene of the crime in Gaza.
The Qataris can claim credit for their involvement in efforts to free our hostages. The Turks enjoy the trust of President Trump. The government of Israel, by contrast, bears exclusive responsibility for what happened on October 7, and it is the one appointing those supposed to investigate the event. Unbelievable.
Five months after Netanyahu sketched his five principles for ending the war, the ones defining “total victory,” it turns out it was all kalam fadi, empty talk. Thus said Netanyahu: “My government has set five principles for ending the war.
These five principles will ensure Israel’s security. That is the meaning of the word victory. Disarming Hamas, the return of all hostages, living and fallen, demilitarizing the Strip, Israeli security control in the Gaza Strip, and a civilian alternative government that is neither Hamas nor the PA.”
The day before yesterday, President Trump announced the move to Phase B of his peace plan. On the advisory council for Gaza will sit Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, the former intelligence chief, one of the most hostile figures to Israel ever.
Next to him will sit Qatar’s minister for strategic affairs, Ali Al-Thawadi, the one who sat in the Oval Office and oversaw Netanyahu’s groveling apology call to the emir of Qatar after that botched assassination attempt in Doha.
It does not end there. At the head of the “technocratic government,” whose composition was approved item by item by Mahmoud Abbas, sits PA figure Ali Shaath, a former adviser to Arafat. So what do we have here? Hamas has not been disarmed; on the contrary, it is rearming, strengthening, and accruing assets and legitimacy. It controls half of Gaza’s territory and all of its population.
Gaza has not been demilitarized, and one hostage remains
Gaza is not demilitarized, on the contrary. Ran Gvili has not been brought home, although all the other hostages have. Israel does not have security control of the Strip, only over half of it. The Rafah crossing will soon open in both directions. In a word, farce. Not victory, not total.
Why does this matter? First, because of the hypocrisy. It does not take much imagination to understand what would be happening here if Netanyahu were now in the opposition. Consider the gas agreement the Lapid government reached with Lebanon. A very good agreement, under which all Israeli gas fields were recognized by Lebanon in exchange for Israeli recognition of a potential Lebanese gas field.
Israel was supposed to receive a share of that field. In reality, no gas was found there. The Lebanese were left with seawater. We kept the gas. Netanyahu and his acolytes descended on that agreement in a frenzy, yet did not annul it when they returned to power. So, as noted, imagine what would be happening now.
But there is also a practical consequence to what is happening. Think back to the wrenching debate over returning the hostages during the last year of the war.
The opposition, most of the public, and most of the defense establishment believed it was time to bring the hostages home on Israel’s terms. Suspend the fighting for now, make a deal for the return of all the hostages, then resume the fighting with greater force.
Netanyahu, the extremists in his government, and his mouthpieces insisted on pressing ahead at full throttle.
During that time, quite a few hostages were murdered. Why did they insist on continuing? The official reason was the insistence on achieving “total victory.” Remember that grotesque hat on Yinon Magal? The real reason was Netanyahu’s clear interest in prolonging the war as much as possible for political reasons. Well then, here we are, at total victory.
We did not destroy Hamas, it rules Gaza. We did not demilitarize the Strip. We did not disarm Hamas. So why did we forego the hostages?
There is also a strategic outcome. Had we sought to end the war on our own initiative, it would have happened on our terms. We would have extracted from Trump a promise that we could return to fighting if Hamas reverted to form, and that would surely have happened. Instead, we insisted on continuing until Trump got fed up, conjured a ceasefire on his own, and declared it “peace.”
Now we are all bound to Trump’s peace. We ended this episode after eating the rotten fish and being expelled from the city. We lost the lives of many of our brothers and sisters, and we did not achieve the goal for which all this happened. Bravo. A true masterpiece.
Bibi Netanyahu was super excited when Donald Trump took the White House a year ago even though Joe Biden was also very helpful to him in his genocide mission in Gaza which was going very well for him with 170,000 Palestinians slaughtered in Gaza after 2 years of international crimes already taken to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) by South Africa.
President Trump declared that he was going to build a riviera in Gaza and turn it to his new Mara Lago dancing ground for Bibi and him. Netanyahu was in the moon and went ahead to offer Trump the Nobel Peace Prize which ruined Trump’s chances for that when a person actively committing war crimes having killed more than 150,000 Palestinians in Gaza and many more lying dead under the rubbles was giving a Nobel Peace Prize to him.
That was supposed to be Trump’s Gaza Riveira before he changed his mind even after Bibi gave him the Nobel Peace Prize for that great idea.
Israel is coming down to the Trump reality after they have lost the war in Gaza. Trump is a nut case and nothing matters to him other than himself.
Bibi’s scared cabinet are telling him to ignore Trump and take Gaza again and start bombing. They are joking and they will learn very quickly. You bomb Gaza when Trump is there you are bombing Trump and they will face a complete disaster if Netanyahu tries anything like that.
Netanyahu wanted Trump to win the Nobel Peace Prize, good for him because Trump now wants to win that thing by bringing peace in Gaza. What a mess for Bibi and for Israel and Trump really doesn’t care what happens after that. For him it is game time and he is in the field and nothing else matters to the old guy.
