Addressing the United Nations last month, Barack Obama declared that “Israel cannot permanently occupy Palestinian land,” presumably referring to the West Bank. This statement, argues Moshe Arens, is built on a number of faulty assumptions about both the problem at hand and its possible solution:

Was it Palestinian land that Jordan annexed after the conclusion of the armistice with Israel? Nobody made that claim at the time, or during the following eighteen years when Jordan held that area. Did it suddenly become Palestinian land only after Jordan joined Egypt and Syria in their war against Israel in 1967 and was forced to withdraw from the area? Or was it Palestinian land all along, [but] the Palestinian claim was left in abeyance as long as Jordan ruled the area and sprang to life only after the Jordanian army was defeated? . . .

[Be that is it may], much of the United States—California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Texas—is territory captured during the Mexican-American war of 1846-48. . . . [Likewise], President Obama surely knows that his birthplace of Hawaii, once an independent nation, had been taken over by the United States in an 1893 coup, becoming the 50th state more than 60 years later in 1959. So who is the “occupier”? Can “occupation” lead in time to a peaceful accommodation as it did in California and Hawaii?

[By contrast], Obama himself was the commander in chief of an occupying army when he inherited the American occupation in Iraq. He decided to pull out and damn the consequences. The victims of the American exit from Iraq were the people of Iraq and the rest of the region, not the American people.

Some would suggest that Israel follow the same path. Get out of the West Bank, end the “occupation,” and damn the consequences. But Israel cannot exit the region like America; Israel is here to stay. And the first victims of an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria would be the Israeli people, who could expect rockets to rain down on their cities.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.