Is The End of Hamas Near?

After Hamas savagely attacked Israel on October 7 the Israelis responded by stating that they would eliminate Hamas.

Is the end of Hamas near?

A couple of news items this week suggest that the days of Hamas are numbered.

First, it is being reported that several top Hamas leaders who live in comfort in Qatar have left that country for an unknown destination.

Several Hamas leaders left Qatar for an unknown destination, turning off their phones and not accepting calls, KAN's Arabic language channel reported citing sources in Doha on Tuesday evening.

Additionally, on Tuesday, KAN news reported that Saleh al-Arouri, a senior member of Hamas, left his usual residence in Beirut for Turkey.

I am guessing that they are not heading to Gaza.

It also was probably a good idea to turn off their cellphones as Israel recently stated that they were intent on tracking down and killing top Hamas leaders wherever they were in the world.

The moves come after Israel pledged to track down and kill senior Hamas leaders around the world, and follow a request U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made in October to Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Thani to uproot the terror group's leadership from his country.

“This is our Munich,” Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service said recently in a recording aired on Israeli radio, referring to Operation Wrath of God, Israel’s multi-year effort to wipe out the Black September Palestinian terrorists who killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. 

That campaign was celebrated in the 2005 Steven Spielberg epic “Munich,” starring Eric Bana.

“In every location, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Qatar, everyone,” Bar said in the recording. “It will take a few years, but we will be there in order to do it.”

A Hamas leader in Gaza was also quoted this week saying that the Palestinian terror group could recognize Israel's right to exist. This has not been something Hamas has been willing to do in the past although the rival Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) had done so since the Oslo accords of the 1990's.

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/under-military-pressure-a-top-hamas-official-suggests-recognizing-israel/

Senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk suggests that the Palestinian terror group could recognize Israel for the first time as a step toward Palestinian unity, potentially indicating the pressure it is currently under amid Israel’s military campaign to oust it from the Gaza Strip.

The development comes shortly after Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh said yesterday that he is open to talks for ending the ongoing war and “putting the Palestinian house in order both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,” potentially leading to a “political path that secures the right of the Palestinian people to their independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.”

It was not long before Hamas official Marzouk said he was "misunderstood' and he walked back his comments on recognizing Israel.

He might have been misunderstood but most people can look at these developments and see that Hamas is realizing they are in deep trouble.

I appears that seeing the advances Israel has made in Gaza, the mass surrenders of Hamas terrorists   occurring recently and the flooding of the terror tunnels is providing the leaders of Hamas with new perspective.

Tens of billions of investment in terror tunnels and thousands of trained terrorists are in the process of disappearing. 

It will be a hard path back. It will be even harder if you are not around to see it.

Of course, it is also going to be a hard path forward for Israel. The death, damage and destruction that it has inflicted on Gaza and the Palestinians will not be easily forgotten. It promises another generation of greater hatred for Israel.

The only way around this is for Israel to accept nothing less than for the unconditional surrender of Hamas.

There can be no negotiated peace.

The only answer is the total submission and humiliation of Hamas.

We have seen this before.

We saw it in the Civil War and we saw it in World II with Germany and Japan.

Leaders in those times saw that the only way to move forward in peace after so much death and destruction was unconditional surrender. The enemy had to be defeated and there had to be complete demoralization and submission by the society that supported the enemy leaders if there was to be hope for a future living together peacefully.

This is what occurred with the South in the Civil War and Germany and Japan after World War II.

The will to wage war was completely extinguished in the citizenry.

The same will be necessary with Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel will be under immense pressure in the coming days to negotiate peace with Hamas short of seeking its unconditional surrender.

Over the last several generations we have become accustomed to negotiated peace settlements to end wars. We saw it in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Wars ended with no clear winners and losers.

Israel has pushed back and defended itself each time it has been attacked during the 75 years of its existence but it never sought to completely vanquish its enemies. 

We are in a different time. I hope and trust that Israel understands this.

I have written before about being in The Fourth Turning, the book written in 1997 by Neil Howe and William Strauss. that predicted we would be entering troubling times in the 2010-2030 period.

This is where we are today in Israel, the United States and most of the world.

The Fourth Turning---a season of crisis when the survival of the society will feel as if it was at stake.

Here is what Howe and Strauss wrote about the views on war in The Fourth Turning (page 278).

This is unlike anything most of us have experienced about any wars in our lifetime.

"If there is war, it is likely to culminate in total war, fought until the losing side has been rendered nil--its will broken, territory taken, and leaders captured. And if there is total war it is likely that the most destructive weapons available will be deployed."

The end of Hamas is growing closer.

However, the only hope for some type of peace for Israel for the future is to not stop until the unconditional surrender of Hamas is achieved.