Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. The outrage over President Donald Trump’s announcement on his vision for Gaza misses the repeated failures of the “international community” and the Palestinians themselves over the years:
- Pushing Israel to withdraw from land in Lebanon, the Judea and Samaria, and Gaza.
- Watching terrorists build arsenals, attack Israel, and raise generations of people to believe violent death is holy as long as it also kills Jews.
- Pouring in “aid” and money, which the Palestinian Authority (PA), Hamas, and Hezbollah steal while the agencies feed the people, perverting the idea of productivity, earning power, and self-determination.
- Watching terrorists fire rockets at Israel and demanding a ceasefire when Israel fires back.
- Being sympathetic when individual Israelis are killed in terror incidents, but blaming the lack of “progress” on Israel’s unwillingness to concede a Palestinian state.
- Rinse and repeat.
The response to Trump’s plan also misses the progression in the president’s own pronouncements regarding the future of Gaza. The first came in January 2020 at a meeting in Washington with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to introduce his “Vision for Peace,” in the presence of three Arab ambassadors. Several months and much negotiation later, the Vision became the Abraham Accords.
The Vision was 180 pages long and meticulously detailed. The high points are these:
First, the complicity of Arab countries in the miserable situation of Palestinians. “It is time,” the President said, “for the Muslim world to fix the mistake it made in 1948, when it chose to attack instead of to recognize the new state of Israel. The Palestinians are the primary pawn in this adventurism, and it is time for this sad chapter in history to end.”
By recognizing that the Palestinians were left hanging by their Arab brothers between 1948 and 1967, he made the solution to the Palestinian plight the Arab states’ responsibility, as well.
That showed up again this week.
Second, while he was extraordinarily sympathetic to the Palestinian people — particularly young people whom he lamented are “growing up with no hope” — he said that there were things the PA did that are unacceptable to both Israel and the United States. He did not mention Hamas at the time, but the point holds.
Those claiming the President is advocating “ethnic cleansing” now, or something worse, aren’t paying attention — and don’t want to.
Third, he offered recognition of “Palestine as the nation-state of the Palestinian people” with a capital in Jerusalem (which would remain undivided and under Israeli sovereignty), “where the US will proudly open an embassy,” plus massive international investment. In exchange, the President told them to “meet the challenges of peaceful coexistence.”
- Adopt laws ensuring basic human rights and protecting against financial and political corruption.
- Stop malignant activities of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
- End incitement against Israel; and
- Permanently halt financial compensation to terrorists.
Let’s face it, these constitute a very low bar for any decent and humane society.
Giving up those unacceptable things before the US would support the Palestinians’ desire for an independent state is what some people call “preconditions.” Yes — that’s precisely what they are. Said the president, “It is never too late. It is time to rise up and meet the challenges of the future. If they do it, it will work.”
Except they didn’t.
The PA is an active sponsor of terrorism. It also steals from its own people and represses them politically and — for Christian Arabs, religiously. In Gaza, Hamas did that and more.
Rather than suggesting yet another ceasefire and hoping to work that into a “two-state solution,” or giving the PA control in Gaza, or giving terror-sponsor Qatar the right to redevelop the devastated places by hiring its Hamas buddies to do the work and steal the money, Trump looked at it another way.
The US will do it. There are details to be parsed here — and they will be — but the most important point is, actually, the one Palestinians and their international enablers have been making through their tears — that Gaza is their home; they are Gazans. A Gaza journalist, Tariq Dahlan, apparently told BBC reporter Alice Cuddy, “People in Gaza, like all in the world, are deeply connected to the place where they were born, raised, and have been living all their lives … Every one of us is deeply connected to our homes and we would reject any eviction. We will stay put on this land even though there is death and destruction.”
But if it’s their land and their government — and they are currently situated there — how can they continue to be refugees? The answer is that they are not “refugees.” (Goodbye UNRWA.)
Now, there is a conversation no one wants to have. Except, perhaps, President Trump.
In 2020, Palestinians chose not to participate in The Vision, which became the Abraham Accords by the end of that year. In 2025, the deal is different. Less favorable to the Palestinians in the short term, perhaps, but that’s the price of losing the war they started.
