Editorial Board
WSJ, Dec. 14, 2023
“How can it be that an area isn’t cleared from the air before allowing our soldiers to enter?”
President Biden made headlines by declaring on Tuesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has to change.” As is typical with the President, his subsequent remarks were hard to follow, but many heard them as a call for a new Israeli government coalition willing to jump-start a two-state solution.
It isn’t Mr. Biden’s place to pick Israel’s leaders. Instead, he could try listening to Israelis about the risks of empowering a Palestinian Authority (PA) that has refused to condemn the Hamas massacre. Or he could listen to Palestinians, 72% of whom believe Hamas was right to launch its Oct. 7 attack, according to a new poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. That figure rises to 82% among West Bank Palestinians, who are ruled by the PA, not Hamas.
Mohammad Shtayyeh, the prime minister of the PA, said Sunday that “Hamas is an integral part of the Palestinian mosaic.” The problem is that what he said is true. That’s why no one in his right mind in Israel thinks of creating a Palestinian state today. Hamas doesn’t want a two-state solution; it wants the final solution.
Israelis are focused on defeating Hamas, a goal the U.S. shares. Mr. Biden was right to say Tuesday that “nobody on God’s green Earth can justify what Hamas did. They’re a brutal, ugly, inhumane people, and they have to be eliminated.” He was also right to stand up for Israel at the United Nations, where the international herd demands a cease-fire.
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