366- Let us Stop the Killings in Gaza and the West Bank

When Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu comes to Washington this weekend following his strategic successes in Iran he will be seeking adulation from Trump and Trump's administrative and Congressional acolytes. He will also seek financial support and arms. He has already persuaded Trump to call for the corruption charges that hang over Netanyahu and drive much of current policy decisions to be dismissed -- a blatant interference in Israeli politics and its judiciary.

By next week Israel and Hamas may even have finally found a way to end the mayhem in Gaza and free the twenty or so still live hostages. Although Hamas is saying that it will not agree to a truce or a peace arrangement if Israel insists on keeping troops in the Strip and administering every part of the territory, their exiled leadership in Doha may help the remaining Hamas guerrillas still in Gaza to be tempted by the prospect of staying alive in Qatar rather than being hunted in and out of Gazan tunnels.

According to an expert observer, "Most [Hamas] leaders in Gaza are dead, and the few that remain have few resources, face a growing opposition of ordinary Gazans outraged at what Hamas has brought upon them, and have been forced to rely on lightly trained fighters. The war continues only in service of the annexationist agenda of the far-right politicians in Israel.”

Netanyahu, for his part, says a ceasefire in Gaza can only happen if Hamas gives up, turns in its arms, and leaves. He is determined, emboldened more than ever by his successes in Iran, to cleanse Gaza the way Israeli intelligence, air power, and ballistic strikes neutered Hezbollah in Lebanon, are keeping Syria from posing any threats to Israel, and killed Iran's top military chiefs -- whether or not Iran's nuclear capabilities have been destroyed.

Presumably, Netanyahu will also be thanking the U.S. military and intelligence services for providing assistance in targeting Iran's nuclear facilities, and then by dropping massive buster bombs on centrifuges and other critical equipment in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.

Netanyahu doubtless assumes that a trip to Washington will help him gain prestige at home, where an election could be triggered if he thinks the Iranian victory has boosted his voting appeal closer to 50 percent of likely voters. Ever since the Hamas invasion and massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, Netanyahu's popular appeal has plummeted. The Iranian bombings may finally have enabled him to recover. If so, he and Likud could win without the backing of the extremist ministers who seek total victory (extirpation of Arabs) in Gaza and the freedom to populate the West Bank with Israeli settlers.

Overlooked by too many policymakers in the U.S. is the destruction Israel is permitting, even abetting, in the West Bank. This is the core of what might be a Palestinian state. About 3 million Arabs live in increasingly squalid and dangerous conditions between East Jerusalem and the Sea of Galilee. So do about 500,000 relatively recent Israeli settlers. Some of the latter are irredentists, seeking to push Arabs out of their olive groves and cities so that Israel can repopulate after 2000 years what was putatively once the land of Zion - Judea and Samaria. The extremist ministers in Netanyahu's cabinet are determined to make Judea and Samaria part of Israel.

Hence this week's lamentable firebombing by Israeli settlers on Arab villagers. In a quiet village at dusk in the West Bank north of Ramallah earlier this week, masked Israelis from neighboring settlements tossed Molotov cocktails setting homes and automobiles alight. Dozens of Israelis, the Israel Defense Force (IDF) acknowledged, had maliciously attacking totally innocent and unsuspecting Arab villagers. This assault was not the first (or likely last) attempt to frighten Arabs into abandoning their increasingly unsafe olive groves. Already in 2025, Israeli settler invasions of West Bank villages have cost 220 Arab lives.

"It is meant," said an Arab mayor, "to make people afraid to live in their homes, to step onto their own land." And to pay in blood for being in the way.

The IDF has made little effort to halt attacks by settlers on Arabs. Sometimes it shoots the defenders, too, not the settlers who are throwing fire bombs.

When Netanyahu is in Washington he should be told to rein in the settlers on humanitarian grounds alone, if not to make geopolitical sense of the makings of a now unlikely Two State solution. But he is unlikely to receive that pushback from Trump or Republicans. Nor will he likely be instructed by Trump to stop the IDF shooting at Gazans seeking food at aid distribution points. No one has ever tried to explain why the Israelis are shooting wantonly at hungry Gazans, over and over. But it is both callous and unnecessary.

Israel has dramatically altered power relations throughout the Middle East. Iran is greatly weakened. The Gulf States and Saudi Arabia are in awe of Israel's capacities to infiltrate Iran and target individuals of import. No one in the region could have imagined such a stunning reversal of fortunes. Now, if Netanyahu had an ounce of compassion, he would halt the totally unprovoked killings of Gazan civilians, and tell militant settlers to stop harassing their Arab neighbors. Now that it is more secure than ever in its history, Israel could become a Middle Eastern peacemaker and influential new state builder if it started to act humanely. Force has its place. But compassion and statesmanlike behavior will now accomplish more for Israel than letting settlers run amok and soldiers keep shooting.