[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
A Likud MK has just denounced Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner for leading Israel to the “Gates of Hell.” More on this charge can be found here: “Trump envoy and associates ‘leading us to the gates of hell,’ Likud MK says,” Maariv, October
Likud MK Amit Halevi launched a scathing attack against real estate developer and Donald Trump associate Steve Witkoff, accusing him and his associates of endangering Israel’s security on Monday.
“These people are leading us to the gates of hell,” Halevi said in an interview with Army Radio.
The Likud lawmaker emphasized that the Gaza Strip must ultimately come under Israeli control.
“Sooner or later, Israel will control Gaza – there is no other way,” he said.
Control of Gaza does not necessarily mean annexing Gaza. The Israelis don’t want the 2.2 million Arabs in Gaza to become part of Israel. They only want to prevent them from ever again posing a danger to the Jewish state’s security. That means that the IDF will remain not everywhere, but at critical outposts in Gaza to monitor, and deal with, possible threats to security.
Halevi previously called for establishing full Israeli control over the Strip in an interview with 103FM several months ago.
“If you control the territory, then no one else controls the territory,” he said.he said.
In MK Amit Halevi’s zero-sum view, there can be no sharing control of Gaza. Either Israel will control the Strip, or the enemies of Israel will do so. Amit Halevi knows the American negotiators are preventing Israel from asserting control over all of Gaza. After all, in the very first phase of the Trump plan, the IDF was required to pull its troops out of 48% of Gaza — at the time the IDF controlled all of Gaza — leaving it in control of little more than half of the Strip.
Halevi knows, of course, that Israel has a legal right to attack Hamas everywhere in Gaza and to take control of the very territory from which constant assaults on the Jewish state have been made for many years. The apotheosis of those attacks from Gaza was that carried out by 6,000 Hamas members on October 7, 2023, when they tortured, raped, mutilated, and murdered 1,200 Israelis.
Gaza belongs to Israel, just as Tel Aviv does, according to Halevi, because both are within the territory assigned by the League of Nations to be included in the Mandate for Palestine, which in time was supposed to become the Jewish National Home and then the State of Israel.
Under no conditions should Hamas be left standing, even if much diminished in weapons and combatants, in Gaza. Otherwise it will boast of having been “the only Palestinian force capable of standing up against the Zionists.”And such an ending would be a valuable recruiting tool for Hamas in Gaza, as it tries to replenish its depleted ranks. And if it is left battered but intact, it will still command support — both weapons and money — from its chief supporter, Qatar. Little by little, with the IDF no longer in Gaza to monitor it, Hamas will regain its strength. This is not something Israel can tolerate.
The American negotiators — Witkoff and Kushner — want Hamas to be disarmed, and its leaders sent into exile, but they don’t see a role for Israel in Gaza, which they expect will withdraw all of its troops from Gaza once a government of Arab technocrats takes over. Amit Halevi is not the only Israeli who thinks that this will never do.
