Even after Sinwar’s death, ceaseless calls for a ceasefire play into Hamas’s bloody hands
Despite the havoc wreaked on Gaza and intense Israeli operations against terror cells, polls have consistently shown significant support by Palestinians for Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.
By Bob Schwartz
JNS
Nov 5, 2024
The death of Yahya Sinwar, the monstrous military and political leader of Hamas in Gaza whose sickeningly twisted mind conceived and executed the horrific events of Black Shabbat on the morning of Oct. 7, 2023, is a cause for celebration.
Yet as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in his address to the nation, the job is not done as long as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have not been completely destroyed, the living hostages have not been released and the bodies of the dead have not been repatriated to Israel (and other nations) for proper burial.
The prime minister is correct. Also important is his offer to provide safe passage for Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip or a monetary reward to any Palestinians holding hostages or who can provide information about the location of hostages to be released unharmed.
An appeal to the Palestinians’ sense of morality and compassion for fellow human beings may seem a waste of time after witnessing their ecstatic displays of bloodlust and bestiality on Oct. 7, gleefully recorded on their cameras and phones. Perhaps an appeal to their venality and instinct for survival might achieve better results. If not, they will pay the heaviest price and receive the severe punishment they deserve.
Yet even before Sinwar’s blood was dry, voices began calling on Israel to “take the win” and start planning for the “day after” in Gaza by agreeing to an immediate ceasefire to bring the hostages back and end the war.
A ceasefire negotiated with whom? Under what terms? Expecting what outcomes?
As noted in a New York Post editorial, “Terrorist killer Yahya Sinwar did not want peace. Not once, not ever. New reporting reveals that as the hunt for him ramped up, this brutal killer gave orders that after his death, Hamas should refuse any concessions Israel might offer. Why? Because, as he saw it, the high civilian casualties of the war increased Hamas’s negotiating power against Israel.”
Can there be any credible expectation that Sinwar’s likely successor, his brother Mohammed—who stepped in to fill the blood-soaked shoes of the late unlamented master terrorist Mohammed Deif, killed by the Israeli military in July—will be any less defiant and intransigent? In what universe would the desperate and decimated remnants of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad leadership be willing to part with any captives?
They understand that the hostages represent the only remaining insurance policy they possess that ensures their survival—even as a diminished force—and preserves their heroic stature in the minds of Palestinians and their supporters around the world. Then, Hamas could emerge as the only “resistance” organization that, after inflicting an unprovoked, vicious attack on Israel, survived the response of the Zionist enemy and lived to fight and kill Jews, which they have every intention of doing “again and again” until the Jewish state and its people are wiped off the map.
The destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure and the sacrificial deaths of thousands of Gazan civilian “human shields” (innocent or not) are a price worth paying from Hamas and PIJ’s perspective.
This assumption is confirmed by every poll taken since Oct. 7 by Khalil Shikaki’s Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. The latest, Poll No. 93, released on Sept. 17, shows some decrease in support for the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, but that is more likely due to Israel’s military success and Gazan Palestinian suffering than diminished enthusiasm for the terror group’s policies and objectives.
Despite the havoc wreaked on Gaza and increasingly intense Israeli operations to eliminate Hamas, PIJ and the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade terror cells in the Judea and Samaria, poll numbers have consistently shown significant support by Palestinians for Hamas’s attack, currently at “54%, compared to 67% three months ago, in June 2024, and 71% six months ago, in March 2024, said it was the right decision.”
The pollsters felt the need to add the following comment: “It is important to note that support for this attack does not necessarily mean support for Hamas and does not mean support for any killings or atrocities committed against civilians. Indeed, almost 90% of the public believes Hamas men did not commit the atrocities depicted in videos taken on that day.”
This obscene denial of well-documented acts might be the most disturbing and infuriating finding in this poll. Perhaps equally offensive is the pollster’s outrageous attempt to whitewash this response as not condoning the inhumanity on display that day. In fact, those heinous acts were the bitter fruit of the poisonous seeds of hate that Hamas and PIJ have sown in the fertile brains of Gazan children through U.N. schools, camps and media for generations.
In another attempt to somehow justify the Hamas massacre, which also shows the degree to which Palestinians have been brainwashed into believing that their only path forward lies through rivers of blood shed by innocent Israeli civilians, the report contended that: “Support for the attack, however, seems to come from another motive: findings show that more than two-thirds of the Palestinians believe that the attack has put the Palestinian issue at the center of attention and eliminated years of neglect at the regional and international levels.”
Or, as Sinwar himself said in an interview with an Italian journalist in The Wall Street Journal in 2018: “We make the headlines only with blood … No blood, no news.”
Sinwar was talking about the blood of his own people. In the same WSJ article, the delusions of visceral grandeur that drove his warped vision are displayed: “In an April 11 letter to Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh after three of Haniyeh’s adult sons were killed by an Israeli airstrike, Sinwar wrote that their deaths and those of other Palestinians would ‘infuse life into the veins of this nation, prompting it to rise to its glory and honor.’”
The rest of the survey’s results reinforce the mentality of defiance and denial that the Palestinians in Gaza and, especially those in Judea and Samaria, have shown since Oct. 7.
Palestinians anticipate the “resistance” forces’ ultimate victory over Israel (50%) and the continuing Hamas control of Gaza post-war (57% overall). The latter figure is divided with just 37% in Gaza agreeing but 70% in P.A.-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria, where the popularity of Hamas and PIJ has exploded exponentially at the expense of the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas.
Not only do Palestinians expect Hamas to continue to rule Gaza, but they also prefer it to alternative arrangements. Nearly 60% said they “prefer the return of Hamas.” When broken down by area, that total represented 73% of people in P.A.-controlled areas and 36% in Gaza. The remaining results found that “20% chose the Palestinian Authority, 4% chose the Israeli army, and 12% chose to bring the Gaza Strip under the control of international forces”.
These responses fly in the face of the proposed plans for “the day after,” as expressed by the Biden administration through Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. If any further evidence was needed to undermine their unwavering, pious pronouncements underpinning the future governance of Gaza, the opinions of the Palestinians themselves cannot be misinterpreted or ignored. As the results found, “ … when we specifically asked about support for the return of the P.A. to control the Rafah Crossing and the Gaza Strip after a ceasefire, 70% expressed opposition and 27% supported it. … The idea of an Arab security deployment in Gaza to assist the P.A. security forces is opposed by two-thirds of the public, compared to three quarters three months ago.”
In The Washington Post article, “Sinwar’s Killing a Blow but Not a Death Knell for Hamas,” Israel Defense Forces Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yakov Amidror noted, “Hamas today cannot attack Israel. But Hamas has morphed into a guerrilla force and remains strong enough to ‘kill any substitute’ in a postwar scenario.”
Under such conditions, neither the P.A. nor any Arab state will dare risk entering Gaza.
Since the survey was conducted in early September, subsequent weeks have seen the Israel Defense Forces continue to grind down Hamas and PIJ forces and leadership, culminating in the assassination of Sinwar.
Like a bad penny, Blinken has once again turned up in Israel to push Netanyahu to seize an imaginary opportunity for a ceasefire supposedly opened by Sinwar’s death since, in Blinken’s assessment, he was the obstacle to a deal.
However, the defiant statements coming from Hamas officials and supporters stress the futility of continuing to pursue the same dead-end diplomacy and expecting a better result. Nothing has changed regarding Hamas’s modus operandi and objectives. Their maximalist demands remain unchanged. There is no deal to be made.
These patently unacceptable terms amount to nothing less than a demand for Israel’s surrender without achieving any of its declared war aims and at the painful cost of IDF heroes dead and injured. The urgency of the hostages’ return is undeniable, but the selfless sacrifices of Israel’s brave defenders must also be honored by ensuring that they were not made in vain.
There is no alternative to the IDF’s methodical and careful, relentless but expeditious fighting for final victory over Iran’s terrorist proxies in Gaza and beyond.
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