Senior minister says Israel not halting attacks in Gaza as 17 said killed in IDF strikes
Eli Cohen: Cabinet yet to discuss disarmament plan that Hamas agreed to; PMO says it shared ‘concerns’ with US; kids reportedly among dead in Gaza, IDF says it hit Hamas targets
Good riddance to bad rubbish:
Hamas Terrorist Mahmoud Mahadi Afana who killed 10 Jews including 3 newborn babies by roasting them in a microwave was ELIMINATED by IDF when he was hiding in a mosque.
Israeli airstrikes overnight Saturday and into Sunday killed at least 17 people, according to local health officials, and a senior Israeli minister vowed that strikes in the territory will not stop despite Hamas signing a US-backed disarmament plan and earlier reports that Israel agreed to halt attacks.
The US announced Friday that the terror group had agreed to the Board of Peace’s disarmament plan, which envisions Israeli strikes ending immediately once it is in place, as well as the transfer of all weapons to a Palestinian police force under the authority of the new technocratic government in Gaza. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the other main terror faction in the Strip, reportedly also signed off on the plan.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to officially comment on the development, leaving top ministers and anonymous “senior officials” to voice Israel’s disapproval of the plan, despite US President Donald Trump’s assurance that Israel was “very happy” with the deal. Adding to the confusion, a senior Palestinian figure close to the Trump administration said Saturday that Israel had agreed to halt its strikes in Gaza, only to delete the post less than two hours later as Israel stepped up its attacks in the Strip.
The official said that Israel’s intelligence assessment is that Hamas remains committed to rebuilding its military rather than genuinely demilitarizing. He said that the IDF will not withdraw from Gaza — where it controls more than 60 percent of the territory — before Hamas disarms.
“Our assessment is that if we redeploy before Hamas is truly disarmed, it will quickly expand its presence throughout Gaza, rebuild its terrorist infrastructure, once again threaten Israeli communities, and seek to carry out another October 7-style attack,” he said, referring to the onslaught in 2023 that triggered Israel’s war in Gaza.
“Disarming means physically giving up the weapons. Nothing less,” Spielman said.
Joining Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group has also agreed to the disarmament plan, according to Arab sources cited by the Saudi Al-Arabiya newspaper.
Islamic Jihad did not officially comment on the report. The group is closely linked to and funded by Iran, and is smaller and less powerful than Hamas, but still a major player in the Strip.
*****
If Israel had lost the 1948 war, where exactly would a Palestinian state have been?
Most likely, nowhere.
The territory would have been divided between Jordan and Egypt, just as it was before 1967.
How do we know?
Because the PLO’s 1964 Charter explicitly stated that it made no claim to the West Bank, then under Jordanian control, or Gaza, then under Egyptian control.
Its focus was on eliminating Jewish sovereignty.
Hamas’s 1988 Charter was even more explicit.
It called for the destruction of Israel and framed the conflict in Islamist terms, but it never presented the creation of a Palestinian state as an objective.
Literally no mentioning of a Palestinian state.
That’s why I believe the core of this conflict has never been simply about building a Palestinian state.
It has been about rejecting a Jewish one.
Real peace will only become possible when Palestinian leadership and society replaces the goal of destroying Israel with a positive vision for building their own future.