This Washington Post editorial lumps Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu together and calls on Donald Trump to apply pressure on the pair in an effort to bring peace. It states: “If [Trump] wants to be a peacemaker, he must come down harder to get concessions from Israel and Russia.”
The Post fails to acknowledge the differences between Putin’s war on Ukraine and Netanyahu’s war against Hamas. It also ignores the dissimilarity of the peace negotiations in these two wars.
Putin’s war is the product of his aggression. He invaded Ukraine. The Gaza war is the product of Hamas’ aggression. Hamas invaded Israel.
Another difference is that Netanyahu agreed to a complete cease fire and the outline of the peace plan imposed by Trump. Putin has never agreed to a cease fire, let alone a peace plan. He agreed only to stop attacking Ukraine’s infrastructure in exchange for a parallel agreement by Ukraine. (That agreement, by the way, favors Russia because Ukraine’s attacks on Russian gas industry are by far their most effective tool. Russia has many other devastating tools it continues to use against Ukraine.)
A third difference is that Israel is America’s longtime friend and ally. Russia is America’s adversary, though Trump may not understand this. I agree with Ronald Reagan’s approach to foreign policy: Treat your friends well and your adversaries badly.
Why, though, did Israel resume hostilities in Gaza? The Post never addresses this question.
The answer, I think, is that with Phase One of the ceasefire deal — exchanging a group of hostages for a huge number of Palestinian prisoners — over, Hamas was delaying negotiations on Phase Two and using the time to regroup and assert control over Gaza. According to NPR, hardly a source friendly to Israel:
Proposals and counterproposals [for Phase Two] were made. The U.S. and Hamas held secret talks which then stopped when they were leaked.
All the while, Hamas continued to recover. Israel had allowed in a surge of aid supplies. Hamas government leaders in Gaza began emerging from tunnels and hideouts, deploying officials and displaying their control of the territory.
In a Facebook post that was subsequently removed after criticism from Gaza residents, the Hamas-run Gaza City municipality said it was seeking to collect taxes among Gaza residents living amid the rubble of the previous 15 months of war.
Hamas was trying to retrofit unexploded Israeli ordinance from the war for its own weapons stockpiles, according to Tamir Heyman, the head of Israel's leading national security think tank, the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies.
"Hamas haven't read the picture. They thought that they have a huge leverage of the hostages in their hand. And they thought they would get a ceasefire, and not pay anything," said former Israeli military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin in a briefing to reporters. "This was the target of the attack...to tell Hamas, you are going to pay (a) high price for not accepting [Trump administration] proposals."
(Emphasis added)
In short, Israel resumed its attacks because Hamas was stalling and using the time it bought to reassert control over Gaza. In doing so, it (1) jeopardized Israel’s long-term security interests and (2) acted contrary to the Trump administration’s peace plan which contemplates a Gaza that is not run by Hamas.
It would make no sense, therefore, for Trump to pressure Israel to stop its attacks. It’s Hamas, not Israel, that needs to make concessions. It needs to accept that it won’t control Gaza when the war ends.
The Post’s claim that Netanyahu and Putin are similarly situated in this matter willfully ignores all of the relevant context. It’s a particularly disgusting example of the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas stance the Post has taken since the early days of the conflict.
An outstanding blog post. In addition to the inveterate leftist, anti-Israel, pro-Hamas bias of the Washington Post, this atrocious comparison of Putin & Netanyahu speaks to the political illiteracy of the WaPo editorial staff.
Agree on all, but I must say my anger at the WP has been eclipsed by my nausea over Witkoff's comments about Putin. Revolting!