Published in the Jerusalem Post, 28 July 2025
"If a terrorist organization embraces you, you're in the wrong place."
- Israel's Minister of Defense
Can 28 foreign ministers be wrong? That was the number who put their names to a joint statement published on July 21 largely condemning Israel for the continued conflict in Gaza and its attendant miseries.
What were they jointly agreed on?
First that the war in Gaza must end immediately. Next they state as a fact that the
Israeli government is denying essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian
population, and that they regard this as unacceptable.
They condemn the continued detention
of hostages by Hamas, call for their immediate release and state, with no ifs
or buts, that “a negotiated ceasefire offers the best hope of bringing them
home.”
They call on the Israeli
government, taking for granted that what they assert is the case, to “immediately lift
restrictions on the flow of aid and to urgently enable the UN and humanitarian
NGOs to do their life-saving work safely and effectively.”
They condemn as completely
unacceptable “proposals to remove the Palestinian population into a
“humanitarian city” and strongly oppose “any steps towards territorial or
demographic change in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” leaving the impression that this has been declared official Israeli government policy, which is not the case. It is a plan promoted by defense minister, Israel Katz, and has been met with considerable skepticism.
They then turn to the E1
settlement plan announced by Israel’s Civil Administration. If implemented, they say, it would “divide a
Palestinian state in two, marking a flagrant breach of international law and
critically undermine the two-state solution.”
They call for a halt to settlement
building across the West Bank and “settler violence against Palestinians”,
which they say has soared.
Finally they urge “the parties and
the international community to unite in a common effort to bring this terrible
conflict to an end, through an immediate, unconditional and permanent
ceasefire. Further bloodshed serves no purpose,” they say, and end by
threatening to take further action to support an immediate ceasefire and a
political pathway to security and peace.
The name Hamas appears in the statement only once, in a call for release of its hostages. No responsibility for the deteriorating situation in Gaza is assigned to the terrorist organization.
Israel’s response, issued by the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs (MFA), was apt and relevant, but perhaps too brief. It rejected
the joint statement, not just for its content but also for “sending the wrong
message to Hamas” which, in fact, was
quick to praise it. As Israel's foreign minister, Gideon Saar, wryly
observed, if a terrorist organization embraces you, “you are in the wrong
place”.
What Hamas wants above all is a continued presence in Gaza once the war has ended. So the message that Hamas takes from the statement is that international pressure on Israel could yield the result it wants more effectively than agreeing to release hostages. By attributing all the problems in Gaza to Israeli recalcitrance, it gives Hamas a green light to hold out against the latest ceasefire deal - which Israel has in fact accepted - and so prolongs the conflict.
Finally the MFA claims that the statement by the 28 foreign ministers “fails to focus the pressure on Hamas and fails to recognize Hamas’s role and responsibility for the situation. While refuting some of the charges in the foreign ministers’ statement, the MFA response lacks something by way of robust counter-arguments to the unqualified assertions that abound in it.
Throughout the Gaza war,
Hamas-originated propaganda has been absorbed unquestioningly by swaths of
Western opinion. There are, for example,
the highly questionable figures about civilian deaths and casualties. Many Hamas fighters do not wear uniform, so
how many, legitimately killed in the course of battle, have been counted as
civilians? The death or injury of any
child is truly tragic. If only war had
not been forced on Israel by Hamas’s bloodthirsty pogrom of October 7,
2023. But the highly emotive figures
issued by Hamas of children killed must take into account that “child” is
defined as individuals “up to the age of 18”, and that Hamas trains youngsters
aged 15 or younger to participate in fighting the IDF. How many of the claimed children killed were
in fact armed militants actively engaged in the conflict?
The claims in the joint statement about the construction plan known as E1 are not strictly accurate. The E1 proposals envisage connecting Ma’ale Adumim with Jerusalem, and they would certainly have strategic, political, and emotional impact. However, as a glance at the map can verify, the assertion that this would entirely sever the West Bank’s north from its south, is untrue. Palestinian territorial contiguity would be affected, but the entire Jericho corridor would remain open, and north-south access in a variety of ways could remain. Maale Adumim would still be the easternmost Israeli settlement in the Jerusalem area.
The line running from Jerusalem past Maale Adumi is Route 1, currently the main east-west artery for both Israelis and Palestinians. New by-pass roads for Palestinian West Bank traffic are proposed under E1 development plans.
The joint statement claims that E1 would undermine the two-state solution, but ignores the obvious ever-present question: Why wasn’t a Palestinian state created in 1947 based on the UN partition plan; in 1993 and 1995 from the Oslo Accords; from the Ehud Barack offer in 2000; at the 2007 Annapolis conference; from the 2008 Ehud Olmert peace offer; or from US Secretary of State John Kerry’s initiative in 2013-2014?
The Palestinian leadership has in
the past rejected every possible opportunity of achieving a two-state solution,
yet the 28 foreign ministers continue to promote it. Nothing in their joint statement takes
account of Palestinian preferences, or even treats the Palestinians as active
participants in the conflict, whose past decisions have shaped events.
In their calls for
“negotiations” as the only means for liberating hostages, the foreign ministers
ignore the fact that negotiations have been in progress for some time. As the MFA response to the joint statement
notes: “there is a concrete proposal for a ceasefire deal, and Israel has
repeatedly said yes to this proposal, while Hamas stubbornly refuses to accept
it.”
Following Hamas’s bloodthirsty pogrom on 7 October 2025, Israel had
no alternative but to retaliate. Benjamin Netanyahu announced two
war aims: to bring back the hostages seized by Hamas, and to ensure its
total defeat, so that it could never pursue its aim of repeating 7 October
“again and again” as its spokesmen said it intended.
Neither aim has yet been fully achieved, but neither has been
abandoned. The foreign ministers discount the fact that a complete end to
hostilities at this stage would leave Hamas with a continuing foothold in Gaza,
and the certainty of an enemy remaining on Israel’s doorstep, intent on
pursuing its declared aim of eliminating Israel and killing as many Jews as
possible.
Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online, 28 July 2025:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-862329
Published in Eurasia Review titled "How about Hamas?", 1 August 2025
https://www.eurasiareview.com/01082025-how-about-hamas-oped/#google_vignette
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