January 3, 2025: Many countries and international organizations have urged Israel and their Palestinian neighbors to make peace and establish an independent Palestinian state. None of these proposals address the Palestinian demands that Israel must be destroyed before there can be peace. This violence has been going on even before Israel was founded in 1948.

As of 2025, the fighting continues with no end in sight. Lebanon and Syria were hostile towards Israel until 2024 when Syria had an unexpected change of government with HST, a former Islamic terrorist group, and its charismatic leader conquering Syria in a week. The Assads, which had been ruling Syria for over fifty years, fled to Russia, along with the remaining Russian troops in Syria. Iranian forces were also expelled.

Iran helped found and long supported Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah. This group dominated southern Lebanon and parts of Syria for decades. In 2024 an Israeli effort to destroy Hezbollah succeeded. This victory took nearly a decade to plan but succeeded. It will take years, if not longer for Hezbollah to be reconstituted. That may not happen because the new HTS government in Syria wants peace with Israel and peace in Lebanon. Israeli is still in southern Lebanon rooting out all the elements who want to attack Israeli and keep the Lebanese government out of the way, Israel will ask for an official or unofficial peace deal with Lebanon over the last sixty years groups of local and imported Islamic terrorists or opportunistic political groups have kept southern Lebanon in chaos. The Israelis recently eliminated the causes of that chaos and are waiting for the Lebanese government and the Hezbollah remnants to cooperate in a new peace deal with Israel. Hezbollah, for ideological reasons, will not deal directly with Israel.

If Lebanon made a deal, as they have done in the past, they can force Hezbollah to go along or be expelled. There’s no nearby refuge for Hezbollah, which has also lost access to its longtime patron Iran. Often forgotten is the fact that Israel has made peace with some of its neighbors. Egypt and Jordan were the first in 1978 and 1994. Now there are negotiations for peace with Lebanon and Syria.

Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza are still the two Palestinian governments and disagree on many issues, but both agree that Israel must be destroyed and Jews expelled from the region before there can be peace. In the meantime, Hamas and Fatah both encourage violence against Israelis and Palestinian civilians comply. Outsiders like the Saudis, EU and World Bank dismiss or trivialize the realities that Israel faces from Palestinian violence. They also assume that Hamas and Fatah can prevent their radical factions from violently disrupting any outside peace efforts. Some foreign donor nations, especially Moslem nations, are aware of the reality of the situation but keep silent. Contradicting the Saudis, EU and World Bank by pointing out the reality of the situation is ignored. What cannot be ignored by Israel is the growing Palestinian violence.

In 2023 there was more violence in the West Bank that required Israel forces to deal with. At first it was armed Palestinian groups fighting each other for dominance while organizing attacks on Israelis or in Israel itself. This led to a degree of fighting in the West Bank not seen since 2021, and might become the start of a new Palestinian offensive or intifada. This would be the third one. The first lasted from 1987 to 1993 while the second one was from 2000 to 2005.

Israel defeated the 2000 Intifada terror campaign by 2005. But as long as Palestinians had free access to Israel, the Fatah Palestinian government urged and encouraged Palestinians to attempt attacks inside Israel. The Israelis responded with tighter border controls which kept the terrorist threat low in Israel. Fatah insisted they had a right to keep trying to kill Israelis and, for over a decade, Arab and Western nations kept providing aid to the West Bank and Gaza despite the fact that more and more of it was used to support and encourage more terrorism against Israel. Some Palestinian leaders tried to describe the violence as an effort to defend Islam. The Palestinians were not very religious and their violence against Israelis was justified by their belief that Israel must be destroyed and Israelis driven from the region.

There were other problems, mainly involving corruption. This has led more donor states, Moslem and non-Moslem, to openly complain of Fatah misuse of aid money. Fatah denied it and continued their corrupt ways. The donors cut their aid, often to nothing. It was not just the Fatah support of terrorism but the growing Fatah corruption which meant a lot of the aid was stolen to enrich Fatah leaders. Palestinians also opposed the Fatah policy and Fatah was forced to tolerate more and more Palestinians renouncing terror to pass the background check and work in Israel. West Bank Palestinian jobs in Israel have become a crucial part of the West Bank economy, even more so than they were back in 2000. Palestinians were barred from those jobs for nearly a year after the Hamas October 2023 attacks against Israelis. Over 100,000 Palestinians depend on those jobs because the 20,000 0r so working in Israel have dependents who are destitute without that income.

The post-2000 ban on Palestinian workers was unpopular with many Israeli employers, but the threat was so great that Israeli employers had to pay more to import and hire non-Moslem foreigners for as long as there was a threat that Palestinian workers were likely to try and kill Israelis. Both Israel and the former or potential Palestinian workers knew that a growing number of those Palestinian workers could be trusted to work in Israel. Those who violated that trust faced prison or worse if they played any part in an attack. Anyone associated with these untrustworthy Palestinians had a more difficult time getting permits to work in Israel. The growth in the number of trustworthy Palestinian workers was something neither Israel nor Fatah wanted to publicize lest the Islamic radicals declare war on Palestinians working or seeking to work in Israel. This might trigger a civil war in the West Bank, something Fatah did not want but the radicals were less opposed to. There are Palestinian factions that believe chaos in the West Bank would spread to Israel and weaken Israeli power. This is a minority belief that ignores the Israeli ability to organize effective responses to Palestinian violence. Life inside Israel is peaceful. Most Palestinians wish they had a similar situation, and they would be correct if not for the endless supply of radical factions insisting violence is the solution.

For example, Hamas does not care about any form of collateral damage from forcing Palestinians working in Israel to cooperate with terrorists. Most Palestinians recognize that Hamas is hard-core about attacking Israel, which is why Hamas has had a hard time gaining political traction in the West Bank. Palestinians know that Hamas policies produce more poverty and casualties for Palestinians. The only thing that got Hamas control of Gaza during the last Palestinian elections in 2007 was the belief that Hamas would be less corrupt than Fatah. That was true in 2007 but became less so ever since. Hamas forbids working in Israel and punished anyone who protested about Hamas corruption.

West Bank violence between Palestinians and Israelis living in the many Jewish settlements has been on the increase for over a decade. The upsurge in violence is the result of the Palestinian leadership calling for another intifada uprising in 2013. This was a side-effect of the rebellion in Syria and the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions in general. While some Palestinian leaders call for another intifada uprising, most Palestinians, especially those over 30, fear the economic consequences of that and warn the pro-intifada radicals that there is not a lot of popular support for another round of violence. Israel has shown they know how to handle this at little cost to themselves and great cost to the Palestinians.

All this is complicated by persistent American efforts to achieve a negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The Palestinian peace talks never made much progress. The talks were held at the insistence of the U.S., which threatened to cut aid if the talks did not happen. American leaders are aware of Palestinian attitudes on peace with Israel but the U.S. still assumes that a peace deal is possible if you keep trying. That’s one definition of insanity, continuing to make the same policies work and failing. For years Palestinian leaders have agreed to give peace talks a chance approach when speaking to Western leaders and reporters but they then turn around and tell their followers that, of course, Israel must be destroyed and that there is no other solution.

For most Western leaders the disunity, corruption and general chaos within the Palestinian community is seen as a larger problem than a peace deal. That may be true, but without a positive attitude towards a peace deal, there won’t be any peace. Despite all this, for over a decade many Palestinians have been talking about a Third Intifada as if more civil disorder will change anything. Peace is not on the agenda. Most Israelis and Americans agree. Even without a new intifada, casual violence in the West Bank kept increasing. This usually takes the form of young men throwing stones at Israeli soldiers or civilians. Israeli women and children are the preferred targets because they are the least likely to shoot back if the rocks begin to inflict injuries. Palestinian propaganda praises those who kill children just as much as those who killed soldiers or police. All are heroes of the Palestinian struggle to destroy Israel. This is becoming embarrassing for some Western nations when it was pointed out that their aid money was being used directly for some of this propaganda.

The recent West Bank violence was the result of Israeli security forces shutting down a major Palestinian effort to recruit, train and arm hundreds of Palestinians to carry out attacks against Israelis living in the West Bank as well as in Jerusalem and Israel in general. The Palestinian terrorism operation was real as Israeli troops encountered armed resistance as they approached locations where weapons and munitions were stored, and newly recruited Palestinians were trained and armed. These operations were shut down, but only after fighting between Israeli troops and armed Palestinians. Once the fighting is over the weapons and munitions are disposed of and the Israeli troops withdraw, taking Palestinian suspects with them. Israeli troops are wounded and at least one has been killed in these operations. This sort of thing had not been seen in the West Bank since 2002. Until recently Palestinian security forces kept the peace in the West Bank. The current growth of terrorist activity in the West Bank can be attributed to Gaza-based and Iran-supported terror group Hamas. There have been increasing Hamas efforts to establish operations in the West Bank. Most West Bank Palestinians want no part of this because similar activity in Gaza has brought nothing but poverty and trouble to the Palestinians living there.

The disruptive impact of small groups of radicals is a long tradition in the Middle East, especially after Islam was introduced over a thousand years ago. Islam is the only major religion whose scripture mandates continuous violence against non-believers, who are called infidels. The Islamic scriptures make it clear that the mere existence of infidels is a threat to Islam and these infidels must be attacked, no matter what the cost. Most Moslems ignore this aspect of their religion, at the risk of being declared a heretic if conservative Moslems near them decide to get violent and go jihad and make war on any Infidels within reach.

Many Moslems, including Gulf oil state Arab governments are openly seeking a way to reform Islam and eliminate this flaw which has been crippling Islam and killing Moslems for over a thousand years. This is a serious effort and one reason for making peace with Israel. The Islamic militants in Gaza and the West Bank oppose efforts to give peace a chance.