The impeccably able Lana Nusseibeh, Assistant Minister for Political Affairs and Envoy of the Foreign Minister of UAE 🇦🇪🇦🇪🇦🇪🇦🇪
UAE minister to Iran: ‘We will not respond to bullying by backing down’ https://t.co/kjO8CRE8tk via @YouTube
Rachel and Jon Goldberg-Polin have issued a new call to action, urging President Trump and his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to push for the release of all hostages held in Gaza "this week.”
"Our plea to you right now is, now that you've done the hard part of getting movement, getting a deal started, let's not think about phase one and phase two and phase three and many months," Jon Goldberg-Polin said. "Let's think bigger and faster."
"All 76 hostages out this week. End of war. Who benefits from dragging it out for so long? Not the people of this region. Let's get it done right now."
It is now clear that the fight over the “Day After” has become @IsraeliPM's line-in-the-sand, the issue on which the current Israel government rises or falls. If the #Biden Administration shifts gears, this is also a far more appropriate issue on which to stand its ground than the operational critique of how (not whether) Israel should dismantle Hamas battalions in #Rafah.
Remember: the premise of “Day After” is #Hamas’ defeat. This is not a debate – as some mischievous observers suggest – over preserving Hamas, saving Hamas or protecting Hamas. Quite the contrary. The “Day After” debate is over #Israel’s practical vision for security and governance in #Gaza in a post-Hamas environment.
The reason to lay it out now is:
a) to give local #Palestinians confidence that there is a realistic post-Hamas future so they don’t have to reconcile themselves to a perpetual whack-a-mole strategy in which Hamas continually lives to fight another day. In that environment, they will never join the fight against Hamas, actively or passively;
b) to give Israeli troops and the nation they represent confidence that there is a reachable objective in mind so they too are not consigned to a de facto “Groundhog Day” mission of returning to Jabalia and Khan Younis time and time again because their government has not defined an alternative;
c) to give Arab and other international actors confidence to invest now in assets and resources to build a reasonable, achievable post-Hamas alternative, a process that itself will feed a desire for real change by local Palestinians;
d) to give American friends of Israel – in the @WhiteHouse, Congress and throughout the US political/policy system – confidence that Israel’s impressive battlefield achievement, which would not have been possible without massive US support, is matched by an inspired political/security strategy whose long-term success will also require massive US support.
Destroy Hamas, as @netanyahu says – that is a legitimate objective that the US should support and assist. But there is no logical reason to hold up defining a real plan for what comes next. @netanyahu’s equation of “Hamastan” and “Fatahstan” is political advocacy, not analytical assessment; as the @IDF will tell you, the #PalestinianAuthority – for all its real and serious faults – has played a key role in ensuring that Sinwar’s goal of expanding the war from Gaza to the West Bank has so far failed. This does not, by any stretch, mean the return of #AbuMazen to Gaza or "replacing" Hamas-rule with PA-rule, as Netanyahu suggested; but it also doesn’t mean that there can be no whiff of connection between the PA and what will emerge in a post-Hamas Gaza.
The US has a strong interest in having a Day After plan proposed by Israel and agreed by Jerusalem, Arab capitals and key international organizations; this requires leadership, creativity, vision and quiet diplomacy. Failure to achieve this risks consigning both the people of Gaza and the soldiers of Israel to endless and sadly unnecessary war.
This isn't pro Palestinian. It's the opposite. Such slogans cause harm to those who r suffering the horors of the war. These slogans should be condemened & stopped. Both pro Palestinians & pro Israelis should raise 1 slong together:"Stop the war in Gaza & release all hostages"