The 7th of October will be etched eternally in the history books of Israel in grief and sorrow.
The 7th of October showed us – proved to us – how foolishly wrong we were to put our hope and faith into an enemy that had no intention of ever living in peace and prosperity alongside a Jewish State.
The 7th of October exposed Israel’s naivety in peace-making.
Look at what we left the Palestinians when we dragged out every last Jew from Gaza in 2005. Even the dead Jews were exhumed to be reinterred in what was left of a geographically and strategically diminished Israel.
We ceded developed territory to the Palestinian Authority and, as it turned out, to Hamas in Gaza.
We left them a productive agricultural base, including rich orchards and packing stations. We left them a tourism paradise in which we had promoted the natural beauty of the Gaza Strip. We left them modern homes, even synagogues they could convert into mosques.
All sacrificed in a generous but foolish gesture of hope and peace.
And how was that gesture received by the Palestinians?
First, they went to war against themselves. Even with the Fatah-PLO record of murdering Jews, they still lost an election to Hamas, who promised to murder more Jews. Even with their gunmen and suicide bombers, the Palestinian voter found the Fatah-PLO terror organization too docile, so they voted for Hamas.
Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. The implication of that victory proved that the majority of Palestinians, rather than vote for peace, voted instead for the party that promised to kill more Jews and destroy Israel.
Hamas rejects recognition of Israel. Truth be told, so does the Fatah-PLO wing of the Palestinian Authority.
Even as they play a two-faced deception by telling the outside world they wanted peace, they were actively rejecting the notion of a Jewish State … by killing Jews.
Both sides of the Palestinian coin promote deadly terror attacks which they prefer to call “armed resistance.”
But they are not resisting violence. They are “resisting” the very existence of a Jewish State.
After Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in June 2007, a full-scale war broke out across the Gaza Strip proving that when Palestinians are not killing Israelis, they kill each other.
Hamas military units systematically overran Fatah-affiliated security compounds and government installations in Gaza. Days of heavy fighting left over 100 dead. Hamas seized total control of the Gaza Strip.
Mahmoud Abbas dismissed the Hamas-led government in Ramallah, leaving the Palestinian territories politically and geographically divided. Truth be told, in every Palestinian survey held since 2007, Hamas is consistently the people’s favorite.
The last legislative election was held in 2006. Hamas, running as the so-called “Change and Reform List,” won 74 seats and defeated Fatah. Hamas governed Gaza, while Fatah operated in the areas negotiated to them under their minority standing in the Palestinian Authority.
As for Gaza post-Palestinian civil war, Israel allowed Qatar to funnel over a billion dollars in aid money to Hamas in Gaza. Half of the money went into developing the Gaza infrastructure which turned Gaza into an above-and-below-ground terror metropolis constructed by, and with the full knowledge, support and labour of the Gazan population. The other half of the money went into education-indoctrination and military training for the young.
Truth be told, Israel encouraged this money channel between Qatar and Hamas without adequately inspecting to how the money was being spent. Israel also failed to adequately check the involvement of U.N. officials in both the indoctrination and the military preparedness that took place both in and below their various facilities.
This has exposed the naivety of peace-making: You trust your enemy to do the right thing, but they rarely do, especially when they are wedded to a radical Islamic cause.
Israel allowed into Gaza several thousand tons of cement, mainly paid for by Qatari-Gaza money for construction purposes, without the foresight to inspect if that material was not being used to construct the longest underground tunnel system in history with entrances and exits under homes, schools, mosques, hospitals and United Nations facilities.
Israel did not employ a necessary hands-on approach to monitoring the end use of funding. Going forward, Israel must employ a verification approach, even if it accepts a Trump Board of Peace administration.
But one thing is absolutely certain. The deceptive nature of the Palestinian psyche does not allow Israel to rely on trust. Even now I am gathering information on how, today, the Palestinian Authority is still indoctrinating its children to a future with no Israel and the need to take up arms against the Jews. Its police force has, for the last few years, developed into a military-sized army with military-styled attack forces going way beyond the needs of local policing allowed by international conventions.
Today, both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are dedicated to an end game that leaves no room for Israel to survive.
It began with Arafat’s disclosure to a congregation in a Johannesburg Mosque that his signature on the Oslo Accord agreement was a deception – nothing more than the paper Mohammad signed with the Quraish tribe, promising that he would leave them in peace for at least 10 years, but then he returned in force when the tribe had dropped their guard.
One significant outcome of Mohammad’s deceptive behaviour was the triumphant beheading of 700 Jewish men and boys in Mecca.
Yet in Johannesburg, Arafat was telling the Muslim world he was the new Mohammad against the Jews.
The Palestinian Authority has set Nov. 28, 2026 as the date for electing the 132 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, with voting due to take place in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The central question, however, is not simply whether the elections will take place, but whether Palestinians will be free to choose their representatives – including those who promote “resistance,” a positive-sounding term that actually means endless terror attacks against Israelis.
To this end, a Palestinian poll was taken by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip between Aug. 5 and 8, 2026, which found 82% wanting Mahmoud Abbas to resign as Palestinian president.
Although support for Hamas has declined over the last year, it did not swing in favor of the Fatah-PLO block, but to the notorious mass-murdering terrorist Marwan Barghouti, who according to the poll would receive 54% support among likely voters.
Barghouti is the head of the Tanzim terror organisation and founder of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which carried out the largest number of deadly terror attacks killing scores of Israelis and wounded hundreds more, until the arrival of Hamas.
He is serving five life sentences plus 40 years for organizing multiple terror attacks against Israelis.
Under imprisoned Barghouti, Tanzim is preparing to be the Hamas of Judea and Samaria, planning to do what Hamas does – but across our central Green Line which overlooks the Mediterranean coastal plain of Israel.
If anyone is deserving of the new Israeli-approved death sentence for the murder of Israelis, he is the man. Instead, he has become an even bigger hero to regular Palestinians.
As Israel commemorates the national disaster of October 7, Palestinians are even more radical today than they were before their invasion of Israel in late 2023.
