In 1936, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the British-appointed grand mufti of Jerusalem, launched a general strike in Mandatory Palestine to protest the prospect of further Jewish immigration. The strike quickly led to violence and riots. After the initial violence had been quelled, Britain sent Lord William Peel to the land of Israel in order to head a commission that would investigate the situation and propose a solution. Oren Kessler, in a detailed look at the commission’s proceedings, describes its interviews with Arab leaders:

In mid-January [1937] the commissioners met Husseini. His appearance before them was short but sharp. The Mandate was illegitimate, he said, speaking through an interpreter. . . . What is more, he insisted, Jewish nationalism imperiled Muslim holy sites. . . . Creating a Jewish home in “an Arab ocean” has no historical precedent, he warned, and would make the Holy Land a permanent backdrop for blood. “It is impossible to place two distinct peoples, who differ from each other in every sphere of their life, in one and the same country.”

He reiterated his core demands: terminating the mandate, abandoning [Britain’s commitment to create a Jewish] national home, ceasing [Jewish] immigration, and prohibiting land sales. Questioned as to the fate of the 400,000 Jews already in Palestine, Husseini ventured only, “We must leave all this to the future.” Pressed as to whether the country could assimilate them, his response was brief. “No.”

In the subsequent days more prominent Arabs delivered testimony similar to Amin’s, berating Britain for the Mandate’s intrinsic inequity. The head of the Istiqlal party, [a hardline group but more moderate than Husseini], said the Arabs could neither forsake “one meter” nor the country handle one more immigrant. He refused to sit at the same table as Zionists, or to touch Mandate stamps because alongside [the Arabic word] Filastin they bore the Hebrew letters alef and yod, [the Hebrew acronym for “the land of Israel”].

In arriving at its suggestion that Mandatory Palestine be partitioned into Jewish and Arab states, the Peel Commission reflected the influence of this rejectionist Arab attitude. This, notes Kessler, “was Britain’s first recorded proposal of partition, of a ‘Jewish state,’ and of a two-state solution to the Palestine problem.”

Robert Clark explains why the resumption of hostilities is both just and necessary:

These latest Israeli strikes come after weeks of consistent Palestinian provocation; they have repeatedly broken the terms of the cease-fire which they claimed they were so desperate for. There have been numerous [unsuccessful] bus bombings near Tel Aviv and Palestinian-instigated clashes in the West Bank. Fifty-nine Israeli hostages are still held in captivity.

In fact, Hamas and their Palestinian supporters . . . have always known that they can sit back, parade dead Israeli hostages live on social media, and receive hundreds of their own convicted terrorists and murderers back in return. They believed they could get away with the October 7 pogrom.

One hopes Hamas’s leaders will get the message. Meanwhile, many inside and outside Israel seem to believe that, by resuming the fighting, Jerusalem has given up on rescuing the remaining hostages. But, writes Ron Ben-Yishai, this assertion misunderstands the goals of the present campaign. “Experience within the IDF and Israeli intelligence,” Ben-Yishai writes, “has shown that such pressure is the most effective way to push Hamas toward flexibility.” He outlines two other aims:

The second objective was to signal to Hamas that Israel is not only targeting its military wing—the terror army that was the focus of previous phases of the war up until the last cease-fire—but also its governance structure. This was demonstrated by the targeted elimination of five senior officials from Hamas’s political and civilian administration. . . . The strikes also served as a message to mediators, particularly Egypt, that Israel opposes Hamas remaining in any governing or military capacity in post-war Gaza.

The third objective was to create intense military pressure, coordinated with the U.S., on all remaining elements of the Shiite “axis of resistance,” including Yemen’s Houthis, Hamas, and Iran.