Op-Ed: Bonnie Glick: President Trump's 20 Step program for the Middle East doesn't start with enabling terrorists
Hamas lost the war. Now they are making all of Gaza lose the peace. This should not be rewarded with aid of any sort, especially food aid that is not needed in the first place, Bonnie Glick writes.
President Donald Trump made history by ending the war in Gaza that was, lest anyone forget, brought on by the Gazans themselves through their murderous bloodlust of Israelis on October 7th, 2023. The president’s multi-step plan was designed to force behavior on both the Palestinians and on the Israelis.
On the Gazan side, the Palestinians, along with assurances from Qatar, Turkey, and other Arab countries, promised to release the 48 Israelis and other nationals held hostage for over 2 years. Among those hostages held are the dead bodies of two American citizens, Omer Neutra and Itay Chen, who were murdered by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza and whose bodies are cruelly being held as bargaining chips. Additionally, there are 11 more corpses, all murdered by Palestinians, being held by Hamas and their partners.
The international community, including Israel, lined up behind President Trump in support of his historic efforts to end a brutal war. However, some of America’s allies, predictably the progressives in Europe and Canada, are calling for Israel to speed up the timeline and resume operations that allow food aid to enter Gaza, despite Hamas not even successfully completing step one of the peace agreement.
Israel should not cave to these demands. It has been proven, whether the United Nations and its enablers choose to accept facts or not, that there was never a famine in Gaza. What was proven is that Hamas terrorists have had control over UNRWA shipments into the Gaza Strip for the past 20 years.
By exerting control, Hamas terrorists have diverted aid, sold it on the black market, and built up weapons, drug, and laundering operations that would make a mafioso blush. The world saw the fruits of Hamas thievery and diversion, along with its collusion with the UN, UNRWA, World Food Program, UN Women, the Red Cross, and other so-called aid organizations on full display for the past two years. Hamas’s massive tunnel networks — miles of underground links for arms manufacturing, smuggling, and hiding hostages, are now being dismantled by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
The world should thank Israel for its efforts to defeat anti-civilization forces that are arrayed not just against Israel but against the free world. Instead, the calls to feed (fake) starving Gazans have resumed. While Hamas terrorists eliminate opposition movements within Gaza, executing Palestinians in broad daylight for all to see, Israel is blamed for declaring that Hamas, not the IDF, broke the ceasefire.
America is too smart to buy what Hamas is selling. There is no famine in Gaza. Hamas must return the bodies of hostages immediately, and there should be no further relief delivered into the Gaza Strip. The United States partnered with Israel earlier this year to set up operations for food delivery in the Southern Gaza Strip through a new NGO, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) which operates without any UN involvement. It is run by Americans and secured by Israelis, and it has delivered over 250 million meals to Palestinians in Gaza. By all accounts, the GHF’s efforts have been wildly successful.
However, it has stopped meal distributions during the ceasefire in a concerted effort to wind down the need for its existence. If life in Gaza is to resume, however slowly, there will be no need for food aid from America. Our Arab allies will begin the process of rebuilding operations to provide basic services to Palestinians in Gaza.
Among those services should be the right to emigrate. For over 75 years, UNRWA has not allowed Palestinian Arabs to leave its “protective umbrella” in Gaza. The UNRWA model demands that Palestinians remain in a permanent refugee status until they are able to topple the Jewish state’s government in Jerusalem and take over by making the state of Israel Judenrein. The war along with a little bit of daylight cast over UNRWA’s operations have cast doubts on the corrupt UN’s ability to carry out its mission.
This is, perhaps, where GHF can play a new role. The true humanitarian issue in Gaza is that Palestinians who want to leave are unable to do so. GHF should be mobilized, instead of UNRWA, to help Palestinians who want to move to a third country to resettle in such a place. Buildings and homes have been destroyed through two brutal years of war, all because Hamas has built an underground central command throughout tunnels in Gaza. If Palestinians want to build a new life abroad, they should be allowed to do so.
The UN High Commission for Refugees is the UN body that resettles people from war-torn countries into new homes in other places. But UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres will not extend UNHCR’s mandate to Palestinians — he demands that only UNRWA be allowed to address the issues of Palestinians, thereby making those Gazans’ ability to emigrate all but impossible.
What to do?
If the United States feels compelled to remain engaged in the humanitarian relief operation in Gaza, it should fund GHF with enough money to help Gazans leave. Surely there are countries that are willing to bring in Gazans — we already know that they are excellent builders (remember, the tunnels). They can be resettled in multiple countries where their industriousness could be rewarded and channeled into peaceful endeavors.
For now, however, two years after Hamas began a brutal war, it falls to Hamas to take the steps to end it. That begins with step one of the 20-point plan. Release the hostages. Until that happens, Israel and America should do absolutely nothing to address the plight of Palestinians living in Gaza. Hamas lost the war. Now they are making all of Gaza lose the peace. This should not be rewarded with aid of any sort, especially food aid that is not needed in the first place.
Bonnie Glick is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and served as the Deputy Administrator of USAID from 2019-2020.