Convinced that their region has suffered as much Obama administration meddling as it can possibly stand, Israel and Egypt took the extraordinary step earlier this week of jointly rejecting requests by US Secretary of State John Kerry to involve himself in ceasefire talks with the terrorist group Hamas.
Israeli and Egyptian diplomats both claim Egyptian efforts to mediate a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas collapsed as a direct result of Secretary Kerry’s announcement he was prepared to join the talks. He apparently made the announcement without first consulting either of the parties. The diplomats are convinced that their own ceasefire discussions might have born at least some fruit if Kerry had either stayed out or at the very least kept his mouth shut.
Hamas, these Israelis and Egyptians claim, took Kerry’s attempted intervention as a sign they could win far better terms from him than they were being offered by the new united Egyptian-Israel alliance; (itself a remarkable consequence of America’s regional meltdown). Now, they claim, Hamas mistakenly thinks it doesn’t need to agree to any cease fire because President Obama, who continued his remarkable criticism of Israel on Thursday, will, in the end, stay Israel’s hand.
Israeli officials claimed Kerry furiously tried to get himself involved in the talks, personally making multiple calls, even to lower level Israeli and Egyptian officials begging them to ask him to come to the region to help adopt a cease-fire.
So convinced were they that any Kerry involvement would doom chances for a sustainable cease fire, Egypt and Israel both ramped up their efforts to pressure Hamas to accept a deal before Kerry arrived to scuttle it.
Egypt and Israel both seem so intent to keep John Kerry as far away from the Middle East as they can because they see today’s Israel-Hamas war as direct and totally predictable consequence of Secretary Kerry’s last disastrous involvement in the region-- the recently collapsed nine month effort to impose a two-state solution upon Israel and an emboldened Hamas upon Egypt and the Arab world.
As Caroline Glick’s uncannily well timed new book “The Israeli Solution” meticulously spells out Every major American push to impose a two state solution upon Israel and the Palestinians has not just failed to deliver a two state solution, it has delivered either mass waves of suicide terrorism against Israelis or outright terrorist wars against Israel.
Egypt’s new President not only wanted to reassert his country’s direct interest in the conflict by isolating Hamas from early cease fire iterations it feared anymore US involvement would prove counterproductive by providing more cover for Hamas. Egypt’s interest is in protecting Egypt which means helping Israel help itself by weakening Hamas.
Lifelines and breathing space should be the very last thing offered to terrorist war criminals, especially at the very moment they may have pushed themselves to the brink of their own doom. Of course Hamas understands that enabling John Kerry to embark upon yet another of his fool’s errands would provide them with just that.
The way to defeat Hamas is to target its leaders, destroy its infrastructure and politically isolate it. John Kerry’s offer to “mediate” an ‘urgent cease fire’ would do the opposite. It would not isolate Hamas. It would embrace it.
Any offer to ‘mediate’ a cease fire between Hamas on the one hand and Israel and Egypt together on the other, is an acceptance that Hamas has at least some causes, claims or grievances that deserve a hearing.
Insofar as Hamas proclaims itself committed solely to the goal of destroying the State of Israel and murdering all the Jews in it, is it now the official position of the United States that proud and self-proclaimed practitioners of genocide have certain causes, claims or grievances that deserve to be heard by the Secretary of State of the United States of America.
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