Qatar to Israel: Have I got a deal for you
Qatar peace negotiators must have taken a page out of Donald Trump’s best-seller, “The Art of the Deal,” because they have floated a deal that they are sure no one can refuse.
According to media reports, “Qatar sought to mediate a ceasefire deal to end the Gaza war in which the remaining 150 hostages would be returned in exchange for the release of a large number of Palestinian security prisoners.”
Let that sink in for a minute. For the price of ending the war, Israel gets back her people – the same ones who were forcibly taken from the comfort of their homes, starved, beaten, tortured, but, nonetheless, the lucky ones who were kept alive, by one pita sandwich a day. As bad as it has been for them, they were not butchered like cattle or set ablaze with their parents and siblings or baked in ovens or decapitated.
Qatar negotiators, just like every Hamas terrorist, know one thing for sure – our people mean everything to us – to the point where we would actually entertain the thought of stopping a necessary war, while we’re making great progress, in order to have all of the kidnapped returned.
This is the depth of evil which we are being forced to confront. Do we err on the side of mercy and save the innocent lives of the remaining 150, whose proximity to the demons of hell led them into the cruel gates of captivity? Or do we continue a war to eliminate those same forces which, in another few months or less, will rearm with weapons and utilize the same gliders which provided entrance into our borders where they would then be able to perform their second act of death and destruction?
Mind you, none of this is speculative, because they told us, and the rest of the world, loudly and clearly that this was their intention – to attack over and over again. So why would we put nearly 10 million residents at risk, not knowing into which area of the country they will descend in order to execute another bloody attack and take more hostages to ensure a swift end of any reprisal?
Lawrence Gelman, a Texas anesthesiologist who buys full-page spreads in newspapers, did so on Nov. 4 in the Jerusalem Post entitled, “Netanyahu, not a Churchill but a Chamberlain.” In it, he said, “Victory in war cannot be achieved when strategy is dictated by the enemy.” Yet, that is exactly what is being done.
The moment that more than 200 people were kidnapped and taken to Gaza, the enemy had the winning hand with the best capital assets in the form of babies, children, mothers, fathers, grandparents and soldiers. Worth more than gold, this was the plan – to extract whatever would be needed by brutal terrorists on their terms.
It's a winning tactic when it comes to waging war on Jews, because nothing is too sacred to sacrifice on the altar of life, where a precious human being is granted the right to continue to breathe the air of another day. And this is upon what they were banking!
Having lived close enough the Jewish state, being permitted to work in our midst and take in our values, culture and our very heart – the enemy figured out that we live for the gift of life, for its beauty and especially for its extension. Nothing is more precious to us, and so that is what was attacked.
By offering up the deal of a lifetime – returning those whose lives have been upended by way of ending their freedom – they believe they can now save their own skin, who would’ve thought, by trading our people for the laying down of our arms. But who believes that the enemy will lay down theirs? This is nothing more than a cat and mouse game, where the moment you complete the deal, a new round of terror begins with the hope that a new batch of Israelis won’t be taken hostage, because if they are, we’re right back where we started.
Hamas gets a reprieve, while they choose others, among their kinsmen to be the martyrs in the dirty work they, themselves don’t want to do – which is why their cowardly leaders are safely tucked away in the safe and welcoming arms of Qatar.
The one exception to this rule, though, is Gaza’s Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar who, according to all accounts, “doesn’t spend most of his time in hiding but maintains a visible presence, not moving between secret apartments or bunkers, unlike Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.”
Surely, someone of Sinwar’s stature must be worth plenty, to his terror group, were we to capture him. Israeli journalist and political commentator, Ben Caspit, says Israel has had the opportunity to do so at least six times over the past few years.
Our own security forces laid out strong, convincing evidence to the prime minister and senior government officials of the perils of continuing to not view Hamas as a clear and present danger in its perpetual goal to wipe out Israel. Why on earth didn’t we heed those dire warnings? Because Netanyahu rejected the idea of neutralizing them, even as their fighter forces grew exponentially stronger. This all flies in the face of a speech given my Sinwar “detailing his plan to overrun Israel like a ‘flood.’”
No crystal ball would have been needed if our prime minister would have just taken Sinwar’s May 26, 2021 “victory speech” to heart. Aired live on Al-Jazeera in Qatar, he said that the rockets launched into Israel in 2021 “were only a rehearsal or a drill to demonstrate what Hamas will do.”
In his great enthusiasm, Sinwar went on to say that West Bank Palestinians will join in the fight, “attacking Israelis at all junctions and bypass roads with a million demonstrators or more, taking to the streets and blocking roads.” Estimating that there would be ‘”at least’ 10,000 ‘martyrdom seekers’ among them, who will carry out stabbing attacks, car-ramming attacks, throw Molotov cocktails and set forests on fire.”
How much more of a threat than those alarming words do you need in order to realize that Sinwar and his gang of savage thugs need to be stopped? We literally find ourselves in the present nightmare we have been living, due to the short-sightedness of a leader who falsely believed that none of what happened on Oct. 7 would become a reality.
So now we are being offered a deal of getting back all of our people on the condition that we end the war which will, give Hamas the restart to do their utmost to deliver on their promise to completely eradicate us.
For anyone who thinks that’s a good deal, as the old saying goes, I have a piece of swamp land I’d like to sell you.
A former Jerusalem elementary and middle-school principal who made Aliyah in 1993 and became a member of Kibbutz Reim but now lives in the center of the country with her husband. She is the author of Mistake-Proof Parenting, based on the principles from the book of Proverbs - available on Amazon.
