Why has President Biden decided to follow in the footsteps of so many of his predecessors, going back to Jimmy Carter, by trying to come up with a scheme to create a Palestinian state? Michael Oren points to a revealing anecdote:

Shortly after entering office, in 2009, President Barack Obama’s national security advisor, Lt. General Jim Jones, made a startling pronouncement. “If God had appeared in front of the president and said he could do one thing on the planet,” he declared, “it would be the two-state solution.” That is, not eliminate global hunger, end the civil wars then raging across Africa and parts of the Middle East, not even find the cure for cancer. No, the one goal the White House sought above all others was the creation of an independent Palestinian state which would live side-by-side in peace with Israel.

Behind this obsessive focus is a theory known in foreign-policy circles as “linkage.” Oren explains:

Linkage meant, simply, that while the Middle East was rife with violence of every stripe, the core conflict was not between Sunnis and Shiites, Iranians and Arabs, and even among the Arabs themselves, but between Israelis and Palestinians. Solve that—so the advocates of linkage held—and all the region’s other disputes would cease. And the core cause of the Israel-Palestinian conflict was not Palestinian rejectionism and terror, but rather Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and Gaza, and the expansion of Israeli settlements.

Forget, too, that the signing of the Abraham Accords without the creation of a Palestinian state definitively disproved linkage. That dogma, defying all logic and flying in the face of 30 years of facts, calls to mind another irrational, myth-based belief: Jew-hatred.

For what is anti-Semitism but the insistence on saddling the Jews with the responsibility for all of society’s ills, plagues, and wars? Similarly, by regarding the Israel-Palestinian conflict as the nub of all Middle Eastern violence, and the Jewish state as that conflict’s core, linkage is itself linked to the world’s oldest hatred.

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.