Extradition to the U.S. Can Ensure That Released Palestinian Prisoners Don’t Return to Terror

Yesterday, Arab news outlets reported that Jordan has informed Hamas that it must find another home for Ahlam Tamimi, who coordinated the 2001 Jerusalem Sbarro bombing—which killed sixteen people and injured dozens more. Tamimi was one of hundreds of terrorists released in exchange for the captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011, and has lived in Jordan since. She is wanted by the FBI for her role in the killing of two American citizens in 2001 and, if the reports are correct, Jordan is threatening to extradite her to the U.S. if she doesn’t leave.

The Tamimi case points to a way to address one of the biggest drawbacks of the current cease-fire deal with Hamas: namely, the release of scores of Palestinians prisoners. Joseph Frager writes:

David Applebaum, and his daughter, Nava, on the eve of her wedding, were brutally murdered on September 9, 2003, during the bombing of Cafe Hillel in Jerusalem. Applebaum was chief of the emergency room and trauma at the Sha’are Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem. One of his killers, Ahmad Obeid, received seven life sentences for his part in the bombing.

Obeid has been or will be released as part of the present exchange for Israeli hostages. His accomplice, Mari Abu Saida, who received eleven life sentences, is also being released. Both should be extradited to the United States and face justice for the cold-blooded murder of U.S. citizens. It would send a message to the world that Americans are protected and fought for with everything in our arsenal. Khalil Jabarin, who murdered the American Ari Fuld, a resident of Efrat, on September 16, 2018, is also set to be released as part of the hostage deal.

The recidivism rate for the terrorists who were released in the Shalit deal was 82 percent.

And there is every reason to think the trend will be similar with more recent prisoner releases. On Saturday, the IDF struck terrorist cells in the West Bank, killing, among others, one of the prisoners released during the November 2023 cease-fire with Hamas. This, of course, is another effective way to solve the problem created by the mass release of convicted terrorists.

Read more at JNS

More about: Gaza War 2023, Palestinian terror, Second Intifada

Donald Trump’s Plan for Gaza Is No Worse Than Anyone Else’s—and Could Be Better

Reacting to the White House’s proposal for Gaza, John Podhoretz asks the question on everyone’s mind:

Is this all a fantasy? Maybe. But are any of the other ludicrous and cockamamie ideas being floated for the future of the area any less fantastical?

A Palestinian state in the wake of October 7—and in the wake of the scenes of Gazans mobbing the Jewish hostages with bloodlust in their eyes as they were being led to the vehicles to take them back into the bosom of their people? Biden foreign-policy domos Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken were still talking about this in the wake of their defeat in ludicrous lunchtime discussions with the Financial Times, thus reminding the world of what it means when fundamentally silly, unserious, and embarrassingly incompetent people are given the levers of power for a while. For they should know what I know and what I suspect you know too: there will be no Palestinian state if these residents of Gaza are the people who will form the political nucleus of such a state.

Some form of UN management/leadership in the wake of the hostilities? Well, that might sound good to people who have been paying no attention to the fact that United Nations officials have been, at the very best, complicit in hostage-taking and torture in facilities run by UNRWA, the agency responsible for administering Gaza.

And blubber not to me about the displacement of Gazans from their home. We’ve been told not that Gaza is their home but that it is a prison. Trump is offering Gazans a way out of prison; do they really want to stay in prison? Or does this mean it never really was a prison in the first place?

Read more at Commentary

More about: Donald Trump, Gaza Strip, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict