Hamas Delenda Est? Israel Considers Annexation As UK, France Demand End to War

Should Israel call off the war due to starvation in Gaza? Or should they defeat an enemy who started the war with mass atrocities, and who continues to insist that they will persist in attempting a genocide in Israel?

A few decades ago, Europe had a much different idea about how to deal with genocidal regimes that decided to start wars of annihilation. Back then, the free French and the Brits demanded nothing less than total victory and capitulation against the Nazis and Japan, and the complete destruction of their regimes and ideologies. These days, they’re siding with the genocidal aggressors for ‘humanitarian’ concerns:

Britain will recognize a Palestinian state in September unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the “appalling situation” in Gaza and meets other conditions, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer tells his cabinet, according to a government statement.

The move marks a major diplomatic predicament for Israel, coming days after France announced it would recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September.

Starmer says Israel can forestall the measure by reaching a ceasefire in Gaza, making clear that it will not annex the West Bank, and commit to a peace process that results in a two-state solution.

France’s Emmanuel Macron, who did not offer Israel a way to avoid the statehood move, has been pushing Starmer to follow his lead, as have a growing number of lawmakers in Starmer’s Labour Party, seeing it as a way to pressure Israel amid growing concern of starvation in Gaza.

I use the World War II analogy for a couple of reasons. First off, it fits, and not just in Germany but also in Japan. Both countries only narrowly avoided a massive death event due to famine, thanks to the catastrophic and near-total destruction of their infrastructure. It took massive amounts of Western aid in both countries to avoid those outcomes, especially in Japan, where the surrender nearly came too late to prevent it. 

(Note: I wrote about this two years ago during the eternal debate over using atomic weapons in Japan. The book based on the fully declassified material, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard Frank, lays out the desperate famine situation Japan faced in the summer and fall of 1945.)

Those situations were well-known to all combatants at the time. Yet France and the UK still insisted on unconditional surrender by both regimes before any accommodations for those populations. Why? Because the evil regimes in place would have regenerated with the cessation of hostilities in the spring of 1945, especially in Japan, where radical regime leaders still thought it could win the war even after both of the atomic bombs dropped.

That’s precisely the problem in Gaza with Hamas now. In fact, Israel has been repeatedly forced to stop wars Hamas starts on this same basis, and Hamas has benefited from it every time. For 20 years, intercessions by the West for humanitarian cease-fires allowed Hamas to entrench itself further, exploit civilians as shields to a greater degree, and to allow Hamas leaders to become billionaires through graft and theft while incentivizing even more depraved attacks on Israel. It’s as if Churchill and de Gaulle decided that only Hitler and Tojo could authentically represent their populations in terms of aid and assistance. We’d still be fighting that war under those circumstances while clucking our tongues about their attacks on those around them. 

All of this has had the same predictable effect it has had in other wars Hamas has started. They know they can manipulate Western leaders into blaming Israel for the war and its consequences. Why bother negotiating and offering concessions while France and the UK are fighting Israel for defending itself and trying to end a 20-year war aimed at their annihilation? 

Mike Huckabee blasted Emmanuel Macron over this very point, calling it “basically a reward to Hamas” for refusing to negotiate the release of hostages in good faith:

“We were not there yet. We were moving in the direction [of resolving these issues], and what [Macron] did [last] week blew it all off the table. We’re back to ground zero, and it’s a real setback,” Huckabee says. …

“When Europe and other areas of the world decide they’re going to start telling Israel that it’s got to let Hamas stay in Gaza, or that it’s going to declare unilaterally a Palestinian state, the reaction in Israel is not to surrender,” Huckabee says. “We’ll just get stronger, tougher, and we’ll dig in.”

That’s not the only incentive that the UK and France created with these threats. If the path to recognition leaves out the hostages — neither Macron nor Keir Starmer even bothered to condition their threats on releasing the hostages — then Israel might just as well destroy Gaza and annex it into Israel and put an end to a terror state before it gets a chance to stand up. And that may be what Israel decides to do now:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed partial annexation of the Gaza Strip as a potential course of action if hostage deal talks fail, during a Monday small cabinet meeting, an Israeli source confirmed to the Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

“It was raised as a serious matter, and was debated,” the source said.

This comes after a source told the ‘Post’ on Monday that Israel will have “no choice” but to expand the military operation in some capacity if hostage talks stall.

If France and the UK recognize a Palestinian state in Gaza under Hamas control, then Israel will have no choice but to fully destroy it, just as France and Britain did to the Nazis and the US did with the bushido cult that controlled Imperial Japan. They cannot afford to wait while Hamas forms a recognized terror army and rebuilds for an even more devastating invasion of Israel than the one that took place on October 7. 

If the Gazans want an end to war, they need to take care of business with Hamas themselves. They elected Hamas to rule Gaza, and they celebrated the start of the war of annihilation in October 2023. They have the same choice that Germany and Japan did in 1945: capitulate or face complete destruction. That is the only way to end genocidal regimes and remove any incentives for their rebirth. 

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