The caucus, which was established even before Israel's most right-wing Knesset took over in November 2022, debated the topic "How Israel's Victory Will Look at the End of the War." Among the few women around the table were legendary settler leader Daniella Weiss and right-wing commentator Nave Dromi.
While the members of the narrow war cabinet seem to weigh every word – both about the war and the 129 hostages still being held by Hamas – at the caucus meeting Israel's hard right let loose.
Every time someone mentioned the resettlement of Gaza, loud applause erupted in the audience. Moderates were at a premium.
Zvi Hauser, a former center-right lawmaker, said that if Hamas' military leaders remain in Gaza they must be expelled as the heads of the Palestine Liberation Organization were expelled from Lebanon in 1982.
According to caucus co-chairman Ohad Tal of Bezalel Smotrich's Religious Zionism party, "The goal of the war must be full control over the Gaza Strip. Gaza was the State of Israel; it must return to being the territory of the State of Israel."
The other co-chairman, Evgeny Sova of Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party, was much milder. He talked about the heroism of the residents of the Gaza-border communities, the army and Israeli society overall, which "despite the politicians, came together and presented itself in the most beautiful way possible: contributions on the home front." He said that "this caucus was established with one clear goal: for our enemies to understand that we have been victorious over them. When they understand that we've beaten them, they will lay down their arms."
When asked by the Knesset Channel to comment on the other lawmakers' statements, he said he wasn't responsible for them – important was that everyone could express their opinions.
Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel, a relative moderate in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, provided the backdrop.
"The Hamas regime has collapsed, there's no municipal authority, the civilian population is entirely dependent on humanitarian aid from outside, there's a lack of job opportunities and high unemployment, 60 percent of Gaza's agricultural areas will be turned into buffer zones, much of the terrorist infrastructure will have been destroyed," she said. "Thousands of homes are unsafe to live in. The IDF is continuing with its military operations in the Gaza Strip and controls all of Gaza's crossings and borders."
She said the idea of transferring responsibility for Gaza to the Palestinian Authority "is dangerous for Israel. The PA already controlled Gaza and was removed by force by Hamas. Senior PA officials have views identical to those of Hamas leaders and support the October 7 massacre. We didn't fight and pay a heavy price in blood to establish a hostile Palestinian entity."
She prescribed "an interim administration – the Gaza Strip should be transferred to international control led by the United States, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, in parallel with the IDF's military control over Gaza. … In any alternative, a complete disarmament of Gaza is required, implementing a de-radicalization of the entire population and abolishing the perpetuation of refugee status."
According to Gamliel, the UNRWA refugee agency should "create conditions that encourage Palestinians who want to build their lives elsewhere. … With proper diplomatic and communications work, it will be possible to harness the international system toward this."
Limor Son Har-Melech of Itamar Ben-Gvir's Otzma Yehudit party said she didn't like the concept of a "victory picture." She said that "there is only one victory, both against our enemies and also among ourselves, within our people." She then took a dramatic breath and added: "And that is the return of settlement to the Gaza Strip, correction of the sin of the spies, without fear, without hesitation."
The audience applauded, and she continued: "This is the only picture that will define for our enemy, who will stand there, watch and see a settlement and the Jewish children walking in its streets. This is the only picture that will define for our enemy that we have defeated him and that what he planned to do will backfire on him."
After she said that a "voluntary migration plan" had to be considered, she added: "All the enemies are watching today. ... Hezbollah in the north is looking at Gaza, Syria is looking at Gaza, the Arabs of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] are looking at Gaza, the Arabs of Israel are looking at Gaza.
"There is where the battle will be decided, and the clearer and more determined we become, with the help of God, we will see that out of this determination … we will be privileged to see them returning home, and we will be privileged to see the redemption of Israel with kindness and mercy, with the help of God."
A relative Likud moderate, Danny Danon, added: "Nothing will happen without decisiveness." He said he was appealing directly to the prime minister that "we must show determination and strength, and we must continue on the path we started. Now the cabinet has decided to change the form of the operation and switch to surgical efforts. It's impossible to be decisive this way."
Danon prescribed a "security strip of more than a kilometer; whoever enters this strip will be shot." Regarding "voluntary migration," he said that it is "good for the residents of the Gaza Strip and good for the State of Israel. ... We want to allow the Gazans to leave; we need to talk about it and encourage it. Until the war, they would pay $5,000 for a visa to Turkey. Today the price has jumped to $10,000."
According to Danon, "an Israeli presence" is needed at the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza. "Most of the weapons don't enter the Strip in tunnels but in trucks."
Brig. Gen. (Res.) Amir Avivi, the head of the hard-line group Habithonistim, also known as the Israel Defense and Security Forum, said Israel needed "to sit on all of Rafah in order to control the border with Egypt." He said military control over Gaza wouldn't suffice; this approach would lack legitimacy in the long term, therefore a Jewish settlement was a must. That also received applause.
Simcha Rothman of Religious Zionism said that buffer zones should happen now before reservist battalions were discharged, and that control of the Philadelphi Route – on the Gaza border with Egypt – was needed to achieve the demilitarization of Gaza. He also talked about eliminating Hamas' ability to govern and demanded that Israel control all humanitarian aid.
Oded Forer of Yisrael Beiteinu drew applause when he said that "if we have to explain that we won, we didn't win." He added that "the plan published today to return the residents of the southern Negev and the northern border with Lebanon, with walls and protective measures, is exactly the program that collapsed."
Also invited to the Knesset were Yami and Naomi Weiser, the parents of Golani Brigade Staff Sgt. Roey Weiser from the settlement of Efrat who died fending off Hamas' initial attack. They said Israel should fight until total victory.
"Anything less than this will not achieve the goal for which my son died, which is the defense of the State of Israel," Yami Weiser said. "We have no desire for other parents to go through what we're going through today. This also must be the last war. … It needs to be a deterrent factor."
Eliyahu Libman, the head of the Kiryat Arba municipality in the West Bank and father of 24-year-old Elyakim Libman who was kidnapped to Gaza, added: "The time has come to win once and for all. ... We also want to bring back the hostages, but the goal is that there should be no more hostages forever."
A special guest was Vahid Beheshti, an Iranian opposition figure who lives in Britain. "We must destroy Hamas and Hezbollah," he said, adding that a new Hamas might arise under a new name because the Iranian regime still exists.
According to Beheshti, the Islamic Republic is the main financier of Hamas and Hezbollah. He said the ayatollahs' regime was established 44 years ago with the main goal of destroying Israel, and it is now working even harder at that. He said he was in Jerusalem to convey the message that the Iranian people love Israel and support it, especially after October 7. "We love you, we need you, and you need us," he said, adding that sooner or later the Iranian regime had to be dealt with.
As Beheshti put it: We must not be afraid to attack Iranian bases, and we must not be afraid to attack nuclear sites in Iran, and we must not be afraid to attack the homes of senior Iranian officials. "This is the only language they understand."
the fact that Israel is committing crimes against humanity right now with the material support and blessing of the U.S.?
You quoted from that report - so you read it. And therefore you can answer your question yourself.
In my word, only a jury or a judge or judges decide if someone committed a crime.
Therefore, I will gladly leave the current legal assessment to your special expertise.
I wanted to flag a couple issues in the background of the ongoing Israel-Hamas War.
The first is a potential deal to end the war proposed by Qatar. After I describe that potential deal, I’m going to come back to note that just today Qatar has disputed that it floated such an idea. But I’m not sure we can take that denial at face value. So let’s start by describing the proposal, as reported by numerous sources.
Here’s the proposal.
Israel would, in stages, end its campaign in Gaza and withdraw the IDF from the Gaza Strip. Hamas, in stages, would release all Israeli hostages. Critically, Israel would then allow the top Hamas leadership in Gaza safe passage to go into exile abroad.
Early in the war, I noted that the First Lebanon War (1982) ended after the PLO, including Yasser Arafat, evacuated from besieged Beirut in August and September of 1982. This Qatari proposal sounds something like that. Lurking behind such a proposal is something between a possibility and an assumption that Hamas’s political leadership in Qatar thinks future political control of Gaza may be a lost cause and may have additional interest in sidelining Yahya Sinwar, the dominant Hamas leader in Gaza.
Numerous reports held that Hamas had responded to this proposal by demanding a broad prisoner release by Israel and also insisting it would not agree to any deal that did not leave it in control of Gaza. Absent that, it’s not clear what there is to discuss since ending Hamas’s political rule in Gaza has been Israel’s central war aim from the beginning. More broadly it’s not clear what new there would be in such a deal. It’s been pretty clear that Israel could get its hostages back for some time if it called off its war, retreated entirely from the Gaza Strip and left Hamas in control of the territory.
Adding to the confusion, just today Qatar denied that its current proposal included exile for Hamas’s top leadership in Gaza. So did none of this really happen? Maybe? My own sense is that this was so widely reported from so many different directions that we shouldn’t take Qatar’s denial entirely at face value. Add to that, as I noted, why would they have floated the proposal at all? We should consider the possibility that a global agreement to end the conflict might be closer than many think.
Next, a closely related but distinct issue. Yesterday, Politico EU published an article on what it claims are rising Western suspicions that Qatar had some advance knowledge of Hamas’ massacres across southern Israel on October 7th. According to a top intelligence official of one major European power quoted by Politico, there’s “smoke” but no smoking gun.
On its face this might not sound that surprising. Qatar hosts Hamas’s top political leadership and it’s Hamas’s top funder. Why would we be surprised if they knew something in advance? But Qatar is also the host of a U.S. military base and two years ago President Biden took the extraordinary step of naming the country a major non-NATO ally of the U.S., a designation shared by only 18 countries in the world including Australia, Bahrain, Jordan, Japan, Israel and Egypt.
This gets to the heart of the oddity and centrality of Qatar’s position in the region. They manage to be somewhere between friends and enemies of almost everyone and thus a possible intermediary for almost everyone. Indeed, if it is true that Qatar had some advance knowledge — which we can’t assume — perpetuating this status could have been a reason for allowing the Hamas massacres to happen. A full normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia would have shifted the balance of power in the region in key ways, diminished the value of that intermediary role and left Qatar significantly more isolated.
Yesterday, Politico EU published an article on what it claims are rising Western suspicions that Qatar had some advance knowledge of Hamas’ massacres across southern Israel on October 7th. According to a top intelligence official of one major European power quoted by Politico, there’s “smoke” but no smoking gun.
I’ve been very critical of Israel’s counterattack on Gaza, which appears to have killed a woman or child about once every eight minutes for the past three months. Many of my readers and friends disagree with these columns and are pained by what they see as my unfairness toward Israel.
Too often, opinionated people bypass the most compelling arguments on the other side. Let me instead try to confront head-on the kinds of criticism I’ve received:
Israel was attacked. Children were butchered. Women were raped. So why are you criticizing Israel rather than the Hamas terrorists who started this war?
That’s a fair question. Yes, Hamas started this war with its brutal attack on civilians, and it has been indifferent to Palestinian lives. As someone who has reported regularly from Gaza over the years, I’m aghast at the admiration some American leftists show for an organization as cruel, misogynistic and economically incompetent as Hamas; it’s an echo of the left’s appalling admiration for Mao a half-century ago.
Israel was understandably shattered by what happened on Oct. 7, and I appreciate that trauma and share that sadness. But Hamas’s indifference to human life must never be an excuse for us to become indifferent. It’s too late to save those massacred on Oct. 7, but we can still try to reduce the toll in Gaza this month and this year.
I’m also aware that my tax dollars have helped underwrite the bombings that have ended up killing and maiming children in Gaza — the world’s most dangerous place to be a child, according to UNICEF — and this American complicity creates its own moral responsibility to speak out.
What do you expect Israel, or any country, to do after such a barbaric attack? It’s tragic how many Palestinian civilians have died, but what could Israel possibly do but hit back?
I think it’s a fallacy that the Israeli military has a binary choice: either to level Gaza or to do nothing. I’d like to see Israel dial way back on what is always a continuum.
For example, Israel had dropped 29,000 bombs, munitions and shells by mid-December, while the United States dropped 3,678 munitions in Iraq between 2004 and 2010, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The Biden administration itself has repeatedly answered the question of what Israel should do. It sent military leaders to Jerusalem to offer advice and it regularly counseled using greater efforts to spare civilians — instead of Israel’s pattern of what President Biden termed “indiscriminate bombing.”
You call for restraint — but what restraint did America show in Hiroshima or in Dresden? Why do you now insist that Israel behave by very different rules?
Yes, I live in a glass house. And, yes, I want Israel to play by different rules. It was revulsion at the horrors of World War II, including those in Hiroshima and Dresden, that helped lead to the 1949 Geneva Conventions creating rules of war to protect civilians from such mass slaughter.
In any case, two academic researchers using satellite imagery have found that at least 68 percent of buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged, which according to The Financial Times is a higher proportion than were damaged in Dresden.
The killing in Gaza is very sad, but we can’t stop halfway. We have to eradicate Hamas and re-establish deterrence. That’s the only path to ensure security for Israel.
Let me push back: Does leveling parts of Gaza truly make Israel more secure? As Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has suggested, large-scale killing of civilians can result in a tactical victory but strategic defeat.
Wars have a quite imperfect record of achieving their aims: Going into Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq did not enhance American security, and Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon did not boost Israeli security.
The longer this war goes on, the greater the risk of a conflagration involving Israel and Lebanon, an uprising in the West Bank, a greater crisis in the Red Sea or even a war with Iran. None of that would make Israel or anyone else more secure.
That’s one of my prime concerns about this war: To me, it’s not clear that the enormous bloodshed, public health crisis and risk of famine actually advance security, or that Israel has a workable plan for what follows the fighting.
More than 100 hostages are still held by Hamas, and they may be suffering unimaginable abuse. The war must continue until we get them back.
Negotiation and exchanges have done a much better job liberating hostages than bombardment. So far Israeli troops have killed more hostages than they have freed (one, at the beginning of the war).
If Hamas had organized an attack on America comparable to the one on Oct. 7, Americans wouldn’t be preaching restraint. The United States would be invading Gaza.
Yes, perhaps. Indeed, we did something similar after Sept. 11, 2001, in both Afghanistan and Iraq. I write my columns today about the Israeli war in Gaza in the same spirit in which I wrote innumerable columns two decades ago warning against invading Iraq. Sadly, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to be repeating in Gaza the mistakes America made after Sept. 11. (Except that Israel appears to have killed far more Gazan women and children in three months than were killed in the entire first year of the war in Iraq.)
The attack on Oct. 7 was particularly savage, and no doubt my perspective would be different if I had been on the receiving end. But I believe that in the aftermath of a terror attack, we must guard against the way fear makes us lose our bearings so we despise and demonize the other.
Some Gazans tortured, raped and murdered Israeli citizens on Oct. 7 because they saw the world through a bigoted prism and stereotyped and dehumanized Jews. We should not reciprocate with our own version of collective guilt that leaves vast numbers of Gazan children wrapped in tiny shrouds.
But I believe that in the aftermath of a terror attack, we must guard against the way fear makes us lose our bearings so we despise and demonize the other.
Some Gazans tortured, raped and murdered Israeli citizens on Oct. 7 because they saw the world through a bigoted prism and stereotyped and dehumanized Jews.
