JONES: Palestine Needs Real Friends
In Hamas’ brutal terror attack on Oct. 7, over 1,200 Israelis were murdered. It is also estimated that over 11,000 Palestinians have been killed since that day. This death toll is sickening, and policymakers in the West need to think about ways to seriously address the humanitarian crisis.
Step one is for the West to push for an immediate humanitarian pause. We need to evacuate civilians and ensure that innocents escape the crossfire of a war against Hamas. This is one way Israel must demonstrate a more serious commitment to minimizing civilian causalities. Indeed, as public opinion turns against Israel, her campaign depends upon clear evidence of efforts to reduce the rising Palestinian death toll.
Right now, both Israelis and Palestinians need allies. We need to be searching for a peace process that puts a stop to the violence, crushes terrorism, and achieves justice for both sides of the conflict. Unfortunately, few in the West understand the stakes. On one side, banal ideologues call for Israeli victory by any means necessary, and on the other, woke campus leftists march for Palestine to maintain their radical-chic image. And because both groups fallaciously equate the plight of the Palestinian people with domestic culture war issues, nobody is putting the welfare of the people of the region first.
What is even more shocking, however, is the entire Arab world’s abandonment of Palestine. But we shouldn’t be surprised. As China has interned more than a million Muslim Uyghurs, and perpetuated mass rape, sterilization, and organ harvesting, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have maintained business as usual with the communist regime. There has also been nothing but deafening silence from the Arab world as Pakistan works to deport 1.7 million undocumented Afghans, the Iranians brutalize their Hazari brothers in faith, and two million children — mostly Muslim — face displacement from the conflict in Sudan.
However, there is no greater hypocrite than Hamas. They claim to represent the Palestinian people, but in their 2006 election, they never received a majority of the vote and have refused to hold further elections. And since coming to power, they have continually funneled resources — often Western aid — away from economic development and humanitarian relief and toward their terrorist war machine. Worse, since they invited Israeli intervention in Gaza with their Oct. 7 attacks, Hamas’ strategy has been to maximize the number of civilian casualties. Most militaries don’t have headquarters under hospitals.
It’s no wonder, then, that thousands of Gazans have been cooperating with the Israel Defense Forces to hand over the location of Hamas forces, tunnels, and warehouses. Let us hope and pray that this work continues.
Sadly, those Gazans opposing the terrorist regime are not receiving the backing of other Muslims. Iran supports Hamas, which makes it an enemy of Palestine. Lebanon’s Hezbollah works closely with Hamas, so Lebanon too is no true ally to Palestine. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, was close to normalizing relations with Israel before the attacks, leaving most Palestinians feeling abandoned. But by far the most despicable conduct since the outbreak of the war has been from Palestine’s two most immediate neighbors — Jordan and Egypt.
As hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians sought to leave Gaza after Oct. 7, King Abdullah II of Jordan declared that his country would not take a single one. “This is a situation that has to be handled within Gaza and the West Bank … and you don’t have to carry this out on the shoulders of others,” he announced.
Egypt, the only country besides Israel which shares a border with Gaza, has been equally heartless, keeping its Rafa border crossing almost entirely sealed to humanitarian aid, and completely sealed to all Palestinian refugees. President el-Sissi has cynically defended his actions by saying, “It’s important for [Palestine’s] people to stay steadfast and exist on its land.”
It’s time for the Arab world — and the wider world — to stop the hypocrisy and start being real friends to Palestine. The Palestinian people deserve support the way all vulnerable people deserve support. As all major moral frameworks and faith traditions teach us, we should judge the strong by how they treat the weak.
With the war entering its second month, Palestine’s neighbors must now work in concert with all parties involved to secure a humanitarian pause that will allow for innocent Palestinians to be moved to safety. From there, Israel will be free to eliminate Hamas — the true enemy of Palestine. And then, the truly difficult, yet equally essential work must begin: the forming of friendship between Israel and Palestine, as they rebuild their common home in the land they are forever destined to share.
Friendship is necessary for human flourishing, but it is equally essential to a nation’s flourishing. Palestine finds itself without friends because of the twin evils of Hamas and hypocrisy. It’s time the Palestinian people, the West, the wider Arab world, and even Israel herself wake up and start working to eliminate these evils so that Palestine can find friendship — and finally begin to flourish.
Jason Jones is the founder of the Vulnerable People Project. He is a film producer, author, activist and human rights worker.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.