Why negotiate with liars?

(JNS) — The current negotiations between Hamas—an Iran-supported, internationally designated foreign terrorist organization—and Israel, a legitimate democratic nation-state, is a puzzlement.

About 3,800 Hamas terrorists were among the 6,000 Gazans who invaded Israel on Oct. 7 and committed barbaric, inhumane atrocities. Every inhumane act committed, including the taking of hostages and the firing of thousands of indiscriminate rockets into civilian Israeli towns and cities, is against every law of humanity, conduct under the laws of war and many acts of the Geneva Conventions.

Throughout these last 11 months, the Israeli military response has been effective in reducing Hamas’s military abilities. Even though Israel has had to deal with intense and ongoing diplomatic and media pressure, in addition to punitive arms shipment delays, including outright arms contract cancellations from its allies—the United States and Britain. Unfortunately, and desperately, the goals of the hostages’ return (dead and alive), as well as eliminating Hamas’s control of Gaza, still remain. Therefore, Israel is compelled to negotiate with proven liars.

Note on Israeli military effectiveness: When the often-quoted, unsubstantiated claim of 40,000 Gazan deaths at the hands of the Israelis is mentioned, the fact that this statistic includes enemy combatants is omitted. The Israeli military has consistently delivered a civilian-to-combatant death ratio of less than 2-to-1, a historically unprecedented low number, in what analysts describe as one of the most difficult and complex urban warfare operations ever attempted. Let that sink in.

While these tense negotiations are going on, Khaled Mashaal, a top official of Hamas recently urged the resumption of suicide bombings against the innocent citizens of the party they are negotiating with, namely Israel. Read that previous sentence again to let the incredible incongruity set in. (All the while, Israel is suffering from the nearly daily rocket and drone attacks from Iranian-backed Hezbollah and the increasing terror attacks from the Palestinian Authority in Judea-Samaria, aka “the West Bank.”)

That leads us to Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which became the Palestinian Authority after he signed the Oslo Accords. The Oslo Accords was a set of agreements between Israel and the PLO that established a peace process for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Shortly after signing the accords, Arafat gave a speech on May 10, 1994, in a mosque in Johannesburg, where he called for a jihad to liberate Jerusalem (read: destroy Israel and kill the Jews). He suggested that his signing of the peace accords with Israel was only a tactical step that could be reversed. He based this on taqiyya, an Islamic concept that allows lying to confound and defeat enemies through deception.

Here is an excerpt from that speech. The text was transcribed directly from a tape recording of Arafat’s address. “What they are saying is that [Jerusalem] is their capital. No, it is not their capital. It is our capital. It is the first shrine of the Islam and the Muslims.

“This agreement (the Oslo Accords), I am not considering it more than the agreement which had been signed between our prophet Mohammed and Quraysh, and you remember the Caliph Omar had refused this agreement and [considered] it a despicable truce.

“But Mohammed had accepted it, and we are accepting now this peace offer. But to continue our way to Jerusalem, to the first shrine together and not alone.”

The first quote is a bald-faced lie as Jerusalem is considered the third holiest Muslim site and has been the Temple Mount and Jewish capital of Israel for more than a thousand years before Mohamed. The second statement Arafat referred to was an agreement known as “The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah,” which allowed Mohammed to pray in Mecca for 10 years. Two years later, when Mohammed grew stronger, he broke the agreement because he felt the Quraysh supported an attack by one of their allies on an ally of the Muslims. Mohammed subsequently slaughtered the tribe of Quraysh and conquered Mecca. The third statement declares that just like Mohamed accepted and broke a peace agreement, so does Arafat.

Arafat’s modern interpretation of taqiyya exposed his intention to move from the original concept, to lie and mislead in order “to shield oneself,” to the new interpretation of employing this immoral tactic to achieve an ultimate goal by deception. As he said in his own words above, we sign it now but continue to conquer.

It should be noted that the term used for one of the negotiation’s key objectives, “permanent ceasefire,” is a contradiction, as this concept does not end the conflict but merely delays restarting it sometime in the future. Proof can be found by reviewing all the previously broken Hamas-ceasefire agreements, as well as the untenable non-negotiable conditions Hamas is putting forth in the current proposed ceasefire. (Mainly that, Israel should completely withdraw, rebuild Gaza and put Hamas back in power. No accountability.) It could be sarcastically said that “ceasefire” in Arabic means “re-arm.”

The all-important hostage issue is mere leverage from Hamas’s point of view. To Jews, Israelis and other moral people worldwide, the hostages are of utmost concern. Hamas knows this. As does their puppet master, Iran, which controls Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and other regional terrorist groups. (Note: Only an Iranian regime change will bring the potential for permanent peace and stability to the entire region.)

Yes, “negotiate.” But negotiate from strength and on terms that contain ultimatums and consequences. The drawn-out negotiations have been only a Hamas delay tactic to increase the deaths of their own citizens and hostages, whom the terrorist organization uses as human shields, which, in turn, leads to more unfounded international condemnation of Israel. This condemnation emboldens Hamas to reject agreed-upon terms and demand more.

The world, especially the United States, must desist from only pressuring Israel, they must immediately bring strength and support to Israel and specify terms that contain ultimatums and consequences with the end objective to effectively decimate the power of Hamas, as well as any Islamic jihadists’s ability to rise and threaten Israel and Western civilization again. Unfortunately, with the full knowledge that this is negotiating with liars. Can you say taqiyya?