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Israel Cannot Protect Its People if Hamas Survives the Gaza War
Partygoers at the Supernova Psy-Trance Festival who filmed the events that unfolded on Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: Yes Studios
By killing Hezbollah’s Fuad Shukr in Beirut and Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran within a 24-hour span, Israel demonstrated a commitment to total victory over its enemies. But the rest of the world, from the least free nations (China) to the freest nations (the US), seems committed to saving Hamas. Jerusalem must resist these efforts.
Chinese support for Hamas is no surprise. In December, the IDF discovered massive caches of Chinese weapons in Gaza.
In 2014, the IDF disclosed that an enormous Chinese-made tunneling machine with 40 inch blades was used to dig Hamas’s underground city.
China has been hosting “unity talks” between Hamas and Fatah since April. In June, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Webin announced that China supports “all Palestinian factions in achieving reconciliation and increasing solidarity through dialogue and consultation.” On July 23 came the announcement that Chinese diplomacy had culminated in the Beijing Declaration, an agreement to form an “interim national reconciliation government” allowing Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations to survive in the light of day as partners in a government.
The Biden administration’s plan for Hamas’s survival, on the other hand, is more subtle.
Three days after October 7, President Biden gave perhaps the best speech of his presidency, condemning Hamas and guaranteeing that his administration would provide military assistance to Israel. “The United States has Israel’s back,” he said.
Just one week later, President Biden wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post that acknowledged, “as long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a cease-fire is not peace.” It soberly pointed out that “every cease-fire is time they exploit to rebuild their stockpile of rockets, reposition fighters and restart the killing by attacking innocents again.” However, it also claimed that, “Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution.”
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan took it a step further on December 14, 2023, when he said that, “Ultimately, governance of the West Bank and Gaza needs to be connected. And it needs to be connected under a revamped and revitalized Palestinian Authority.”
The administration has since backed away from its October recognition that “a cease-fire is not peace,” and in fact has proposed a ceasefire-peace plan that allows for the survival of Hamas by laying the groundwork for a Hamas-infused PA taking over the Gaza Strip and potentially a sovereign State of Palestine.
In the first State Department briefing after Haniyeh was killed, Vedant Patel, Principal Deputy Spokesman, asserted that the administration was “promoting diplomatic solutions” to the Gaza War. As reporters badgered him about whether Haniyeh’s death made a ceasefire more or less likely, Patel stuck to his script and repeatedly said the State Department was trying to “narrow and close the gaps” between Israel and Hamas in order to “get the deal done.”
If this plan seems familiar, it should. The Oslo Accords allowed Yasser Arafat to pose as a politician while remaining a terrorist as he lied about the “transformation” of the terroristic Fatah and PLO into a peace-seeking Palestinian Authority (PA).
Rebranding the Fatah/PLO opened doors to money and legitimacy, but everyone knew that neither had truly changed. Arafat often spoke about peace in English and jihad against Israel in Arabic.
At the height the Second Intifada, he wore the PA mantle to disguise his terrorist operations, always slyly insisting that the PA was separate from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Tanzim, Force 17, and the other terrorist organizations he controlled. He gave orders for attacks, including suicide bombings, just as Hamas leaders did, but he did so while pretending to be opposed to terrorism. Most of the world, including Israel, went along with his charade.
As Arafat took over the Palestinian educational system and inculcated future generations into terrorists, Israelis experienced violence worse than anything that came before Oslo. As Kenneth Levin wrote in The Oslo Syndrome, Delusions of a People Under Siege (2005), many Israelis took “refuge in delusions of Israeli culpability, the subtext of which is that the proper self-reforms and concessions by Israel can and would suffice to win peace, despite all evidence to the contrary.”
But Israel seems to have learned from the past and seems committed not to repeat past mistakes, such as trusting “the promises of its friends and not the threats of its enemies,” as Elie Weisel put it.
Among Palestinians, if not the rest of the world, today’s PA is indeed viewed as a moribund organization, limping towards oblivion under an unpopular octogenarian in the 20th year of his four-year presidential term. Gone is the sheen of the Arafat days. Many critics attribute the PA’s tarnished reputation to rampant corruption, but Hamas is just as corrupt. Its leaders are billionaires living far from danger, and its operational commanders steal food and use Gazans as human shields.
The PA’s lost vitality and popularity have been transferred to Hamas because of Hamas’ militancy, its commitment to “resistance,” and its rejection of any kind of cooperation with Israel. Every poll shows that Hamas enjoys popular support among Palestinians, with majorities in both Gaza and the West Bank approving of the October 7 assault.
The PA understands that it can only regain its lost popularity and credibility among Palestinians by becoming more like Hamas. As the Palestinian Media Watch points out, the PA has been bragging since October 7 that it has more terrorists than Hamas, more prisoners in Israeli jails than Hamas, and that most Palestinian “martyrs” are from Fatah or the PA security forces (i.e., the Palestinian police).
Even though Biden’s latest ceasefire plan doesn’t specifically call for a unified Hamas/Fatah/PLO Palestinian Authority governing a contiguous Palestinian State, that is the goal of the people running his foreign policy and the people they respect.
A unity government is the policy advocated by Thomas Friedman who wants the US and Israel to “rebuild Fatah, merge it with Hamas, [and] elect an Israeli government that can freeze settlements” in the West Bank.”
It is the policy advocated by Jimmy Carter, who fretted after the 2006 Gaza elections that providing aid to the Palestinians would become more difficult and argued that, “there’s a good chance” that Hamas would renounce violence. In 2008, Carter claimed that Hamas had accepted a “Two-State Solution.” In 2015, he said that Hamas leader Khaled Mashal, “Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau,” was committed to peace while Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, was not.
The Biden plan allows Hamas to adopts what Matthew Levitt calls the Hezbollah strategy. Just as Hezbollah participates in the Lebanese government but retains its war-fighting and terrorism capabilities separately, so too “Hamas hopes to exert the same influence and independence with its own movement and militia, neither beholden to nor controlled by a government,” Levitt explains.
The Netanyahu government’s resolve to follow through with the total destruction of Hamas will be tested in the remaining months of the Biden administration.
Israel has already rejected the Beijing Declaration, but it has also signaled willingness to go along with the a “revitalized” or “reformed” PA governing Gaza.
The European Union has sent millions of euros to Ramallah since October 7. It will go to great lengths to save the PA but will exercise minimal scrutiny over Hamas’ involvement in a “revitalized” PA, just as it defends and continues to fund the corrupt UNRWA in spite of Hamas’s involvement.
Any ceasefire agreement that allows Hamas members of any “wing” to participate in either a China-approved interim government or a US-approved “revitalized” PA will lead to more October 7-style assaults.
Chief Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) Political Correspondent A.J. Caschetta is a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum where he is also a Milstein fellow. A version of this article was originally published by IPT.
The post Israel Cannot Protect Its People if Hamas Survives the Gaza War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s Sharaa Says Talks With Israel Could Yield Results ‘In Coming Days’
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks at the opening ceremony of the 62nd Damascus International Fair, the first edition held since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday that ongoing negotiations with Israel to reach a security pact could lead to results “in the coming days.”
He told reporters in Damascus the security pact was a “necessity” and that it would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity and be monitored by the United Nations.
Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.
Reuters reported this week that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach a deal before world leaders gather next week for the UN General Assembly in New York.
But Sharaa, in a briefing with journalists including Reuters ahead of his expected trip to New York to attend the meeting, denied the US was putting any pressure on Syria and said instead that it was playing a mediating role.
He said Israel had carried out more than 1,000 strikes on Syria and conducted more than 400 ground incursions since Dec. 8, when the rebel offensive he led toppled former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Sharaa said Israel’s actions were contradicting the stated American policy of a stable and unified Syria, which he said was “very dangerous.”
He said Damascus was seeking a deal similar to a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a demilitarized zone between the two countries.
He said Syria sought the withdrawal of Israeli troops but that Israel wanted to remain at strategic locations it seized after Dec. 8, including Mount Hermon. Israeli ministers have publicly said Israel intends to keep control of the sites.
He said if the security pact succeeds, other agreements could be reached. He did not provide details, but said a peace agreement or normalization deal like the US-mediated Abraham Accords, under which several Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, was not currently on the table.
He also said it was too early to discuss the fate of the Golan Heights because it was “a big deal.”
Reuters reported this week that Israel had ruled out handing back the zone, which Donald Trump unilaterally recognized as Israeli during his first term as US president.
“It’s a difficult case – you have negotiations between a Damascene and a Jew,” Sharaa told reporters, smiling.
SECURITY PACT DERAILED IN JULY
Sharaa also said Syria and Israel had been just “four to five days” away from reaching the basis of a security pact in July, but that developments in the southern province of Sweida had derailed those discussions.
Syrian troops were deployed to Sweida in July to quell fighting between Druze armed factions and Bedouin fighters. But the violence worsened, with Syrian forces accused of execution-style killings and Israel striking southern Syria, the defense ministry in Damascus and near the presidential palace.
Sharaa on Wednesday described the strikes near the presidential palace as “not a message, but a declaration of war,” and said Syria had still refrained from responding militarily to preserve the negotiations.
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Anti-Israel Activists Gear Up to ‘Flood’ UN General Assembly
US Capitol Police and NYPD officers clash with anti-Israel demonstrators, on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Anti-Israel groups are planning a wave of raucous protests in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the next several days, prompting concerns that the demonstrations could descend into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.
A coalition of anti-Israel activists is organizing the protests in and around UN headquarters to coincide with speeches from Middle Eastern leaders and appearances by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The demonstrations are expected to draw large crowds and feature prominent pro-Palestinian voices, some of whom have been criticized for trafficking in antisemitic tropes, in addition to calling for the destruction of Israe.
Organizers of the demonstrations have promoted the coordinated events on social media as an opportunity to pressure world leaders to hold Israel accountable for its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, with some messaging framed in sharply hostile terms.
On Sunday, for example, activists shouted at Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.
“Zionism is terrorism. All you guys are terrorists committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Shame on you, Zionist animals,” they shouted.
BREAKING: PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTORS CONFRONT “ISRAELI” AMBASSADOR DANNY DANON AT THE UNITED NATIONS
1/5 pic.twitter.com/4G1VYEMGzV
— Within Our Lifetime (@WOLPalestine) September 14, 2025
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), warned on its website that the scale and tone of the planned demonstrations risk crossing the line from political protest into hate speech, arguing that anti-Israel activists are attempting to hijack the UN gathering to spread antisemitism and delegitimize the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Outside the UN last week, masked protesters belonging to the activist group INDECLINE kicked a realistic replica of Netanyahu’s decapitated head as though it were a soccer ball.
US activist group plays soccer with Bibi’s mock decapitated HEAD right outside NYC UN HQ
Peep shot at 00:40
Footage posted by INDECLINE collective just as UN General Assembly about to kick off
‘Following the game, ball was donated to Palestinian Genocide Museum’ pic.twitter.com/TQ84sgZhKr
— RT (@RT_com) September 9, 2025
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a radical anti-Israel activist group, has vowed to “flood” the UNGA on behalf of the pro-Palestine movement.
WOL, one of the most prolific anti-Israel activist groups, came under immense fire after it organized a protest against an exhibition to honor the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel. During the event, the group chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “Israel, go to hell!”
“We will be there to confront them with the truth: Their silence and inaction enable genocide. The world cannot continue as if Gaza does not exist,” WOL said of its planned demonstrations in New York. “This is the time to make our voices impossible to ignore. Come to New York by any means necessary, to stand, to march, to demand the UN act and end the siege.”
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), two other anti-Israel organizations that have helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, also announced they are planning a march from Times Square to the UN headquarters on Friday.
“The time is now for each and every UN member state to uphold their duty under international law: sanction Israel and end the genocide,” the groups said in a statement.
JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The group argued in a 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians. JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.” Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel
Similarly, PYM, another radical anti-Israel group, has repeatedly defended terrorism and violence against the Jewish state. PYM has organized many anti-Israel protests in the two years following the Oct. 7 attacks in the Jewish state. Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for a federal investigation into the organization after Aisha Nizar, one of the group’s leaders, urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced US military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.
The UN General Assembly has historically been a flashpoint for heated debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous gatherings have seen dueling demonstrations outside the Manhattan venue, with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups both seeking to influence the international spotlight.
While warning about the demonstrations, CAM noted it recently launched a new mobile app, Report It, that allows users worldwide to quickly and securely report antisemitic incidents in real time.
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Nina Davidson Presses Universities to Back Words With Action as Jewish Students Return to Campus Amid Antisemitism Crisis
Nina Davidson on The Algemeiner’s ‘J100’ podcast. Photo: Screenshot
Philanthropist Nina Davidson, who served on the board of Barnard College, has called on universities to pair tough rhetoric on combatting antisemitism with enforcement as Jewish students returned to campuses for the new academic year.
“Years ago, The Algemeiner had published a list ranking the most antisemitic colleges in the country. And number one was Columbia,” Davidson recalled on a recent episode of The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “As a board member and as someone who was representing the institution, it really upset me … At the board meeting, I brought it up and I said, ‘What are we going to do about this?’”
Host David Cohen, chief executive officer of The Algemeiner, explained he had revisited Davidson’s remarks while she was being honored for her work at The Algemeiner‘s 8th annual J100 gala, held in October 2021, noting their continued relevance.
“It could have been the same speech in 2025,” he said, underscoring how longstanding concerns about campus antisemitism, while having intensified in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, are not new.
Davidson argued that universities already possess the tools to protect students – codes of conduct, time-place-manner rules, and consequences for threats or targeted harassment – but too often fail to apply them evenly. “Statements are not enough,” she said, arguing that institutions need to enforce their rules and set a precedent that there will be consequences for individuals who refuse to follow them.
She also said that stakeholders – alumni, parents, and donors – are reassessing their relationships with schools that, in their view, have not safeguarded Jewish students. While supportive of open debate, Davidson distinguished between protest and intimidation, calling for leadership that protects expression while ensuring campus safety.
The episode surveyed specific pressure points that administrators will face this fall: repeat anti-Israel encampments, disruptions of Jewish programming, and the challenge of distinguishing political speech from conduct that violates university rules. “Unless schools draw those lines now,” Davidson warned, “they’ll be scrambling once the next crisis hits.”
Cohen closed by framing the discussion as a test of institutional credibility, asking whether universities will “turn policy into protection” in real time. Davidson agreed, pointing to students who “need to know the rules aren’t just on paper.”
The full conversation is available on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast.