A great deal of conventional wisdom—inside Israel and outside it—holds that the country’s most serious problems are due to its “occupation” of Palestinian territories. As Stephen Flatow points out, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has itself admitted that this term no longer applies:

The PA recently submitted a request to UNESCO to recognize the city of Jericho as a “Palestinian heritage site.” In its description of the history of the region, the PA’s request refers to “the time of Israeli Occupation (1967–1994).” Thus, the PA has acknowledged, in writing, that Israel’s occupation there ended in 1994.

The same phrase appears in another PA–UN document. . . . The [2008] report surveyed the history of tax collection in the area, so it was forced to acknowledge the changes between the years that Israel occupied Palestinian Arab cities and the years after the occupation ended. Thus, on page 49, we find Section 6.1, which is titled “Taxes in the occupied Palestinian territory–Israeli Occupation (1967–1994).”

Of course, anybody who visits any city in the PA-governed territories can see with his own eyes that there are no Israeli soldiers. No Israeli military governor. No Israeli military administration. Prime Minister Yitzḥak Rabin withdrew them all, three decades ago.

Thanks to Rabin’s solution, it is the Palestinian Authority, not Israel, that occupies 98 percent of the Palestinian Arabs. The streets of their cities are policed by the Palestinian security forces. Palestinian principals and teachers run the schools. The courts have Palestinian judges. . . . Pretty much the only thing the Palestinian Authority can’t do is import tanks, planes, Iranian “volunteers,” or North Korean missiles.

Robert Satloff has some harsh words for the U.S. government in this regard, words I take especially seriously because Satloff is someone inclined to political moderation. Why, he asks, have American diplomats failed to achieve anything in their endless rounds of talks in Doha and Cairo? Because

there is simply not enough pressure on Hamas to change course, accept a deal, and release the remaining October 7 hostages, stuck in nightmarish captivity. . . . In this environment, why should Hamas change course?

Publicly, the U.S. should bite the bullet and urge Israel to complete the main battle operations in Gaza—i.e., the Rafah operation—as swiftly and efficiently as possible. We should be assertively assisting with the humanitarian side of this.

Satloff had more to say about the hostages, especially the five American ones, in a speech he gave recently:

I am ashamed—ashamed of how we have allowed the story of the hostages to get lost in the noise of the war that followed their capture; ashamed of how we have permitted their release to be a bargaining chip in some larger political negotiation; ashamed of how we have failed to give them the respect and dignity and our wholehearted demand for Red Cross access and care and medicine that is our normal, usual demand for hostages.

If they were taken by Boko Haram, everyone would know their name. If they were taken by the Taliban, everyone would tie a yellow ribbon around a tree for them. If they were taken by Islamic State, kids would learn about them in school.

It is repugnant to see their freedom as just one item on the bargaining table with Hamas, as though they were chattel. These are Americans—and they deserve to be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.