Several months after first announcing their plan to sue Britain over the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the Palestinian Authority’s leaders, far from changing their minds, have continued to attack Israel’s legitimacy. In other words, writes David Horovitz, they’re still fighting not to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza but to destroy the Jewish state:

Polished Palestinian Authority politicians and spokespeople would have the world believe that their objections to Israel are centered on the occupation of the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, and on the settlement enterprise—and that what they seek is an independent Palestine alongside Israel, not in place of it.

The Palestinians’ new campaign to highlight the ostensible illegalities and iniquities of the Balfour Declaration tells a different story. It shows an undimmed hostility to the very notion of Jewish sovereignty anywhere in the Holy Land, and an abiding refusal to accept Jewish legitimacy here.

The 1917 declaration pledged to safeguard the rights of others even as it sought to realize the rights of the Jews. So, too, the UN vote on partition in 1947. And yet here we still are, a century later, with the Palestinian leadership branding as a “crime” the start of a process that, had they accepted it, would long since have given them statehood. For the Palestinian leadership, in 2016, we Jews remain people who don’t belong here, who got something that wasn’t theirs. . . .

In declaring diplomatic and legal war on the Balfour Declaration, Palestinian leaders are telling the world—to their and our enduring misfortune—that nothing has changed in 100 years, that their opposition to our state in any borders remains greater than their desire for their own independent entity. A century later, they are affirming that their refusal to share any part of this land with the Jewish people remains absolute.

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.