Murder of the Bibas children: The day Palestinianism died
As Israel crushes Hamas and the Palestinian Authority fades further into irrelevance, the Palestinian national project seems doomed.
By James Sinkinson
JNS
Feb 25, 2025
Hamas’s genocidal Oct. 7 savagery forced many Israelis and lovers of the Jewish state to conclude that Gaza was the test of a Palestinian state—and it failed horribly. The few who held out hope for the Palestinians were finally convinced when emaciated, hollow-faced Israeli hostages recently stumbled from captivity resembling Holocaust survivors.
But the final death knell for the Palestinian project was delivered last week with news of Hamas’s murder—with bare hands—of the two red-headed Bibas children and their mother. The barbarity is unspeakable.
Thus, any credibility for last year’s savage attack on Israeli citizens as an act of Hamas “resistance” has crumbled. Nearly all Jewish Israelis—joined by most Americans—agree the Islamist death-cult perpetrators of the brutal murders and kidnappings must be eliminated.
Meanwhile, Arab states like Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are scrambling to get ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s demand that Gazans be allowed to emigrate to neighboring nations in the region.
How will the Arab nations reconcile their 75-year commitment to the Palestinians’ mission of destroying the Jewish state with the sudden, massive pressure from Israel and the United States to adopt a new paradigm? As Israel crushes Hamas and the Palestinian Authority fades further into irrelevance, the Palestinian national project seems doomed.
With the Gaza war’s “day after” drawing closer, the region’s key players face momentous questions. How will millions of homeless Gazans survive in the devastated territory? Who will govern them? Most importantly, who will rebuild Gaza—if at all? Surely, few nations will be willing to throw billions more at the enclave while terrorists threaten more wars. Trump’s solution of allowing destitute, demoralized Palestinians to disperse looks more attractive by the day.
Hamas destroyed any hope for a Palestinian state. When Israel left Gaza in 2005, not a single Israeli remained. Israel turned over the Gaza Strip with no restrictions on the Palestinian Authority. This was the chance for Palestinians to form their autonomous state and liberate themselves from Israeli control.
Unfortunately, Palestinians soon elected Hamas to power, and the Islamist dictatorship in 2007 quickly seized Gaza from the PA. Instead of building a society in which Palestinians could prosper, they began violently pursuing the Arab-Palestinians’ primary project since 1947—destroying their neighbor, Israel.
Israel’s victory, Trump’s proposal and the Bibas’ murders transformed the “conflict.” Israel’s decimation of Hamas creates an opportunity to reconstruct Gaza without terrorists co-opting the rebuild. Trump’s proposal to “clear” Gaza of Gazans changed the entire paradigm, saying what most Israelis never dared: The bad guys must go. We can no longer live with people next door who want to kill us.
Finally, the horror of seeing throngs of Gazans gleefully cheering the coffins of the Bibas children—and learning that the boys had been killed by bare hands—ended any vestiges of sympathy for Palestinian “self-determination.” We understand now: First and foremost, their hate for us is savage and bestial. The raucous coffin scene in Gaza represented the definitive, dramatic end to Palestinianism. No longer will Israelis, and most Jews, tolerate the savage raison d’etre that has dominated Palestinian society for 75 years. The Palestinians must understand unequivocally: Israel will not be defeated. The Jews will not be expelled. The Palestinian project is over.
It’s time to free the Palestinians from confinement in “Palestine” and its jihadi nightmare. Trump’s plan allows Palestinians to do what millions of other refugees have done for years—relocate and build better lives elsewhere, thus canceling their perpetual refugee status. The relocation of Gazans will also mean Hamas can no longer exploit them as human shields.
While Arab leaders initially objected strenuously to Trump’s plan, they now realize their argument for Palestinian “liberation” or even for “two states” is suddenly passé. Thanks to America’s financial, military and political leverage, as wielded by Trump, they will be forced to acknowledge that the Palestinian project is dead. The Reuters headline captures the desperation: “Saudi Arabia spearheads Arab scramble for alternative to Trump’s Gaza plan.”
Arab countries’ huge land mass and populations could easily absorb several million Palestinians. Until now, Arab states refused to host the Palestinians for two reasons: First, the Palestinians have historically caused trouble wherever they landed—Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait. Second, keeping Palestinians boxed in and fighting Israel provided a useful distraction from Arab nations’ own problems. No wonder the Saudis demand a Palestinian state as an impossible prerequisite for normalization. Trump’s relocation demand renders this formula moot.
With strong American support, Israel no longer needs to tolerate a jihad in neighboring territory occupied by Palestinians. Those who cannot find a new home in welcoming Arab (or, perhaps, European) lands will have to choose: Either lay down arms and abandon Palestinianism or continue fighting futilely against Israel to the death, which will come sooner and fiercer than ever before.
The Palestinian territories must be disarmed and the jihad disabled. There will be no peace so long as Hamas and its terrorist allies stay armed. Elements of the jihad must be disabled, especially the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which not only perpetuates the Palestinian refugee “crisis” and makes Palestinians dependent on foreign aid, it teaches jihad in Palestinian schools and allows Hamas to use its assets to hide terrorist infrastructure.
Palestinians who remain and commit to peace should be supported, economically and politically. Palestinians who agree to live beside the Jewish state in peace, and lay down arms and stop the jihad, and who agree that they have no “right of return” to Israel should be allowed to remain in Gaza. Those who seek peace should be welcomed to partake in rebuilding the coastal enclave, just as Germans who renounced Nazism participated in the post-war rebuilding of their country.
End of the line for Palestinianism. The genocidal Palestinian project, supported by radical leftists and antisemites worldwide, is dead. Israel will no longer tolerate living next to people whose goal is to exterminate it, nor will it commit suicide by allowing a jihadi state to exist alongside it.
Only Palestinians who agree to live in peace with the Jewish State of Israel will find comfort in a future Gaza or Judea and Samaria. Talk of a Palestinian state or jihad against Jews has lost all currency.
Originally published by Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME).
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