Ms Bond'all those Palestinians who are not necessarily members of Hamas and may never have been who have been arrested and held without charge'I have no doubt that Israel had good intelligence to suspect these people were a danger to the state and Jews living in it.Let's hope they do not revert to their old habits now they are being released.And at least they were not murdered or raped as was the case of Israeli women, children and elderly attacked by Hamas Palestinians in October 2023. And please don't kid yourself that support for Hamas and what it stands for is the attitude of a minority in the Palestinian Populus.The comments below from Stephen Daisley in the Spectator 30 September 2025, are worth reading."Do Palestinians want Hamas gone?"'Palestinians voted for Hamas, an openly genocidal terrorist organisation, in the 2006 legislative elections, a ballot that monitors from the Jimmy Carter Centre certified as ‘peaceful, competitive, and genuinely democratic’.Well-meaning liberals assure us that many Palestinians alive today have never had a chance to vote, the implication being that they would vote for parties other than Hamas.It might be a persuasive argument if Palestinian opinion polls didn’t exist, but alas they do, and they underline the gulf between the Palestine that exists in the minds of western policymakers and commentators and the Palestine that exists on the ground in Palestine. The most recent polling from the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, conducted in May, asked Palestinians how they would vote in an election to the Palestinian Legislative Council. Hamas came out on top with 43 per cent, 15 points clear of its nearest rival; among voters in Gaza, support was 49 per cent. Asked whether they would support the disarming of Hamas ‘in order to stop the war on the Gaza Strip’, 85 per cent of Palestinians in the West Bank and 64 per cent in Gaza were opposed. Asked whether they endorsed expulsion of some Hamas terror leaders from the Strip in exchange for Israel ending its military operations, 65 per cent were against it. The Palestinians would seem to do anything for peace except make it.It’s not that Palestinians have particular affection for Hamas. There is deep discontent with the party, its management of the terror campaign against Israel, and the state of the economy and social provision in Gaza. But Palestinian nationalism is first and foremost about opposition to Israeli nationhood, and Hamas is perceived as strong on that issue. This point cannot be emphasised enough. Palestinian Arab national identity as we understand it today was a reaction against the rise of Palestinian Jewish national identity in the early 20th century. It is a fusion of Arab supremacism, Islamic imperialism, Soviet-promoted third worldism and fanatical anti-Semitism. That is not to claim that all Palestinians think like this or that no other articulation of Palestinian national identity is possible. There are Palestinians who want genuine peace and co-existence with Israel – a permanent peace, not a holding pattern until Greater Palestine can be liberated – and while some on the Israeli right continue to dispute the idea of Palestinian indigeneity, the plain fact is that there now exists a distinct Palestinian Arab nation defined by a common culture, language and claimed territory.The primary impediment to Palestinian statehood is not the Israelis but the Palestinians. Or rather Palestinian culture and its orientation towards extremism, violence and righteous victimhood. That culture has developed over more than a century, ginned up by one political leader after another, rewarded by societal glory and cold hard cash, passed down from generation to generation, inculcated in school lessons and textbooks, and by the Palestinian custom of celebrating of the murder of Israelis.It is not merely deradicalisation that is required, but the replacement of a destructive Palestinian culture with a productive one, an almighty feat and one unlikely to be achieved by any transitional authority. Necessary to the creation of a viable, enduring Palestinian state is the existence of a country ready to step up to the demands of such a state. That country does not exist yet and constructing it could take generations. Do the Americans have the stamina, to say nothing of the interest, to see this project through?'Well the Donald has thrown down the gauntlet to Palestine and Israel.Let's see which side picks it up.
John Hawkes ● 9d