RUTHFULLY YOURS

As Iran and its proxies in the Middle East are continuing the jihad (holy war) to murder Jews and eliminate Israel, the Biden administration has not abandoned their dream of creating a Palestinian terror state on Israel’s doorstep. The last thing the Middle East needs is another Iran-dominated terror state that would destabilize security and stability and pose an existential threat to Israel.

In the past few years, everyone has seen how Iran has been working non-stop to export its Islamic Revolution. With the help of Iran’s proxies in the Gaza Strip (Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad), Lebanon (Hezbollah), Yemen (Houthis) and Iraq and Syria (multiple militias operating under various names), Iran’s mullahs have consistently targeted not only Israel and the US, but Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The mullahs in Tehran are using the Houthi militia to attack and block Israel-linked ships in the Red Sea. The Houthis have also claimed responsibility for a number of missile attacks on Israel.

Between 2015 and 2023, the Houthis launched numerous missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia from Yemeni territory.

Last year, four Bahraini servicemen were killed in a Houthi drone attack against forces of the Saudi-led coalition in Saudi Arabia near the border with Yemen.

In 2022, the Houthis fired “a large number” of drones and five ballistic missiles at the UAE’s Abu Dhabi International Airport and oil refueling vehicles.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah has long been operating as a state-within-a-state and has dragged the country into a number of wars that have delivered nothing but ruin to the Lebanese people. In the past three months, Hezbollah, which is armed and funded by Iran, has been using the southern part of Lebanon as a launching pad to fire missiles into Israel, thereby increasing the prospects of another round of fighting.

Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria, which they previously destroyed with war, continue to fire missiles and drones into Israel and US military bases.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have carried out thousands of terror attacks against Israel, including firing tens of thousands of rockets into Israeli towns and cities, and dispatching suicide bombers to murder women, children and the elderly. This campaign of terrorism, mainly funded and armed by Iran, reached its peak with the October 7 massacre of more than 1,200 Israelis.

Were it not for Iran’s financial and military aid, much of which came from the Obama and Biden administrations, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad would not have been able to accumulate so many weapons and build a vast and unprecedented network of tunnels in the Gaza Strip. “We will repeat the October 7 attack, time and again until Israel is annihilated…. Everything we do is justified,” promised Hamas official Ghazi Hamad.

The missile and drone attacks on Israel and on ships in the Red Sea have not stopped, as well as at least 137 attacks on US troops in Syria and Iraq just since mid-October. In addition, there is increasing evidence that Iran has been arming and funding Palestinian terrorist groups also in the West Bank. On January 18, Israeli security forces killed three terrorists near the West Bank city of Nablus. The Israeli authorities revealed that the terrorists had received financing and instructions from Iran, as well as terror groups in the Gaza Strip and overseas.

As Israel is fighting Iran-backed terrorists in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, the Biden administration appears to be searching for ways to reward, rather than stop, the regime of the mullahs in Tehran and their proxies.

According to the Biden administration, the current war in the Middle East is the result of Palestinians not having a state of their own. “Creating a pathway to a Palestinian state is the best way to stabilize the wider region and isolate Iran and its proxies, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said,” during his recent tour of the region, according to the Times of Israel.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Blinken said the region faced two paths, the first of which would see “Israel integrated, with security assurances and commitments from regional countries and as well from the United States, and a Palestinian state — at least a pathway to get to that state.”

The other path, Blinken added, “is to continue to see the terrorism, the nihilism, the destruction by Hamas, by the Houthis, by Hezbollah, all backed by Iran. If you pursue the first path … that’s the single best way to isolate, to marginalize Iran and the proxies that are making so much trouble — for us and for pretty much everyone else in the region.”

In Israel, Blinken repeated the assumption, which actually is false in the extreme, that ending the violence and tensions could be achieved “through a regional approach that includes a pathway to a Palestinian state.”

By continuing to obsessively stick to the creation of a Palestinian state, the Biden administration is actually sending a message to Iran and its terror proxies that terrorism pays – that if they inflict more pain and casualties on Israel, the Americans will reward them with a state of their own next to Israel to facilitate their mission of continuing their Jihadist murder spree against Jews and finally obliterate Israel.

One does not have to be an expert on Palestinian affairs to know that a future Palestinian state would be controlled by Palestinians who reject Israel’s right to exist. The most recent public opinion poll published by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed that since the October 7 massacre, Hamas’s popularity has increased. According to the poll, support for Hamas has more than tripled in the West Bank compared to three months ago. Support for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction has dropped significantly, with the demand for Abbas’s resignation rising to 90%.

The poll further showed that if presidential elections were held today, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would receive 78% of the vote, as opposed to only 16% for Abbas.

The poll found that 64% of the Palestinians oppose the idea of a two-state solution, while 53% support a return to the “armed struggle” against Israel.

All polls conducted by the same center have consistently shown that a majority of the Palestinians believe that Hamas is more deserving of representing them than the PA. This means that if and when a Palestinian state is established, as the Biden administration is hoping, it will be ruled by Hamas and its masters in Iran. It means that Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would be overlooking the few miles from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv and Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport. It would mean copy-pasting the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip to the West Bank, bringing the danger to the center of Israel.

The idea that creating another Arab state alongside Israel would “isolate” or “marginalize” Iran and its proxies is as wrong as it is dangerous. In reality, the establishment of a Palestinian state on any part of the West Bank or Gaza Strip would incentivize Iran and its clients to escalate their Jihad against Israel: it would send them the message that the more Jews you murder, the more land you get. This is in addition to the likelihood that the new Palestinian state would be used as a launching pad to attack Israel.

The mullahs and their proxy terrorists must be laughing as they listen to Blinken and other US officials discuss the need to establish a Palestinian state. Such talk makes Americans look utterly oblivious to the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, namely that this conflict is not about a settlement or a checkpoint or Jerusalem, but about Israel’s right to exist in any form in the Middle East. What Blinken and the Biden administration seem unable to grasp is that there are still too many people among the Palestinians, and many other Arabs and Muslims, who have yet to come to terms with the right of a nation that is not Islamic to remain in its home in the Middle East.

Blinken is suggesting not a pathway to peace, but a prize to Hamas and the Palestinians for committing genocide.

Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East.