Three Arab League countries tell Hamas to surrender
What’s up with this?:
Arab nations have taken the unprecedented step of telling Hamas to lay down its arms and surrender control of Gaza.
Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt called for the terrorist group to “disarm” and disband. It is the first time these countries have condemned Hamas and demanded it play no part in the future of Palestine.
The landmark shift comes after Sir Keir Starmer issued Israel with an ultimatum, pledging to recognise Palestine if Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration fails to take steps to end the war in Gaza by September.
The three Arab countries joined 14 other nations, including Britain and France, in calling for the disbandment of the group.
So they’re crediting Starmer for the Arab move? And the plan is to reward the PA, just as bad as Hamas? Apparently:
“Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority, with international engagement and support, in line with the objective of a sovereign and independent Palestinian state.”
And get a load of this:
It comes amid confusion over whether or not the release of remaining hostages is a condition for the recognition of Palestine, with transport secretary Heidi Alexander on Wednesday morning tying herself in knots on the issue, despite Sir Keir saying that it was.
She told the BBC ministers have “always said right from day one that the hostages need to be released”, adding that the UK expects “Hamas to act in the same way as we expect Israel to act”.
Hamas and Israel act the same? What moral inversion.
This may be a hint at what’s motivating Starmer:
The formation of a new left-wing political party, led by Jeremy Corbyn and ex-Labour MP Zarah Sultana last week piled further pressure on the PM to act.
Starmer probably thinks he needs to finesse that by moving further to the left.
As I have pointed out before, there has never been a country named palestine. It’s an imaginary country like wakanda. When they recognize this imaginary country are they going to send an imaginary ambassador?
Methinks yer looking for logic, consistency—and sanity—in the wrong place.
The ONLY thing to really understand is THIS:
there are currently too many Jewish countries in the world.
(And the ONLY thing to ponder is…how might the global Community of Nations(TM) go about rectifying this unendurable, untenable and utterly immoral problem….)
Where is our conservative concerned British troll to give us the double speak explaination of this European perfidity?
om
Where is our conservative concerned British troll to give us the double speak explaination of this European perfidity?
He hasn’t been around for a while, has he?
Batya Ungar-Sargon:
https://x.com/bungarsargon/status/1951326554966868382
Photos of the two starving Israeli captive hostages at link.
Has Starmer ever considered what having a bunch of Scots terrorists living next door would be like? How about a “two-state solution” for Great Britain?
Very maddening. Anti-Israeli sentiment among western leaning nations just prolongs the terror and instability. It’s akin to being for defunding the police here. Sounds high-minded and kind. It’s not.
Scott Adams said yesterday on his podcast that it should not make any difference whatsoever to the U.S. … if other countries like Canada or U.K. decide to “recognize palestinian statehood.”
This is what passes for sophisticated commentary today on the political right.
Pot Luck, does sophisticated commentary on the political left say that the US has to recognize a Palestinian state if Canada or the UK do?
@J. J.Has Starmer ever considered what having a bunch of Scots terrorists living next door would be like?
Both you and Starmer are old enough to remember Irish terrorism.
One thing that is important context here is that within the United Kingdom, they let the terrorists win. Twice. First with Ireland in the 1920s and then with Northern Ireland in the 1990s. Consequently, I think they have trouble understanding why Israel can’t do the same.
The man who oversaw most of the first set of negotiations with terrorists was notorious appeaser Winston S. Churchill. He developed a warm, personal and almost avuncular relationship with Michael Collins though he had no illusions about what sort of man Collins was or what Collins had done. More than one personal friend of Churchill’s was murdered by Irish terrorists both before and after the independence of Ireland.
This is from a letter that Churchill wrote to Collins:
Maybe this approach was right and maybe this approach was wrong, but it was the approach they took. The result was that the terrorists, once given their state, began to kill each other over who was going to rule it. Michael Collins was an early victim in that struggle. One of the hardest of the hardliners survived and became twice President of Ireland and three times Taoiseach, dying in 1975 at the age of 92.
I think there’s good reason to think that this approach is not going to work with Israel, but I can see why the British government would think it might, since they have done it before, more than once.
Churchill saw both sides of it. As he wrote,
And there is the big difference with Israel, reasonable people can allege that national self-preservation is at stake, but some think that Israel is not actually facing an existential threat, and I think this is at the root of where the British government is today, and why they’re talking about recognizing the Palestine Authority and not Hamas. They think the PA are the sane ones, who just want power. If so I think they have judged this wrongly.
Yes its not accident that neeson played collins* as rickman played devalera churchill was sort of a hardliner on the irish question, the one behind the black and tans who ordered the bombings in iraq as colonial secretary who was intransigent on india, this prevented him from leadership till 1940 the wilderness did ultimately help him, but the famines that occurred in 43? Did mark his legacy in a negative way.
Ah yes abu mazen who was trained by the soviets at moscow u who raised funds for black september according to abu daoud but reputedly opposed the use of such funds at munich
By ali salameh the architect of terror spectacle along with wadi haddad another soviet agent
*played a much more cynical figure ala gerry adams on miami vice
Dear Kate, As of mid-2025 I am not aware of any sophisticated commentary from the political left — in the U.S. nor anywhere else.
Meanwhile rashid khalidi one of obamas mentor bows out. Can massad be next
I was struck by mark helprins reaction to the moves against old crimson as if anyone had ever tried to do anything against this lefty redoubt
He has taken the never trump position as he did earlier with doge
Compare and contrast:
A brace of commentary from…Commentary:
https://www.commentary.org/articles/the-editors/israel-and-america-say-enough/
https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/jenin-gaza-and-the-suffocating-fog-of-self-deception/
https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/how-should-the-u-s-and-israel-respond-to-europes-palestine-cascade/
…along with several more…
Turley:
https://jonathanturley.org/2025/08/01/the-reveal-the-public-is-finally-learning-how-democrats-pulled-off-the-greatest-political-trick-in-history/
What i was referring to earlier
https://x.com/NizNellie3/status/1951335340754509839
@miguel:its not accident that neeson played collins*
For sure. Collins in real life was a hero, patriot, statesman, murderer, and terrorist. Life is not a comic book. At least some of those he killed were considerably worse than himself. He’s not at all the worst person Churchill struck deals with, that unholy crown is borne by one Joseph I. Stalin.
As for Gerry Adams, I predict that he also, like De Valera, will die in bed at an advanced age. Martin McGuinness has already died in bed relatively young, of amyloidosis.
Ah corbyn the former? Trotskyite who allegedly had ties to stb czech intelligence who visited a shrine to black september fedayeen the heart of the point 4 labourites
Thanks for the details on the Irish -Brit troubles, Niketas C.
We have to keep in mind that both sides were Christian though the differences between Catholicism and the Church of England were a major part of the problem.
In the Gaza – Israel war it’s the difference between Judeo-Christian values and that of fundamentalist Islam. I would say the gulf is deeper than what existed in the British Isles. That said, I can see how the Brits, Canadians, and others might think there was a similarity in possible solutions.
Had the Irish been lobbing rockets at England day and night, and threatening the very existence of England would Churchill have seen things differently? We’ll never know.
@J. J. Had the Irish been lobbing rockets at England day and night, and threatening the very existence of England would Churchill have seen things differently? We’ll never know.
He said in that case it might be different, in the part I quoted. The British outnumbered the Irish something like 15 to 1. Israel outnumbers the Occupied Territories 2 to 1.
Interesting that Khalidi has bluer eyes than a Hollywood starlet. Some Palestinians try to use the diversity of Jews to claim they couldn’t have come from the Middle East. But the gruesome mufti al-Husseini had red hair and green eyes.
@J. J.:both sides were Christian though the differences between Catholicism and the Church of England were a major part of the problem.
Land and civil rights were a much larger part of the problem than the Church of England. What Jews in Israel are accused of practicing, the British actually practiced in Ireland for hundreds of years: Irish land seized and awarded to British settlers, Irish having second-class citizenship and fewer rights, suppression of Irish culture including their religion, expulsion of Irish from areas of Ireland, etc.
Long before the Church of England was a gleam in Henry VIII’s eye, Ireland was being run by corrupt cronies of English kings for the benefit of English nobles and English gentry. Scots got into the act as well after the accession of James I and VI, seizing 75% of Ulster with half awarded to Scottish settlers and half to English.
FOAF. When the Muslims ruled the Mediterranean they raided Southern Europe as far west as Scotland and Ireland for loot. The big prize that could be sold for a high price was a young woman with red hair and green eyes. I wonder how many were in the Grand Mufti’s family tree?
What Neo wrote:
“the UK expects
Hamas to act in the same way as we expect Israel to act”.
Hamas and Israel act the same? What moral inversion.
Disagree vehemently. It’s a call for Hamas to be like Israel.
Cicero:
I disagree.
She doesn’t say “as Israel acts.” He says “as we expect Israel to act.” She expects Hamas to release the hostages, apparently – to act in a moral way. There is nothing moral about the actions of Hamas. There is no moral equivalence.
Irish terrorists wanted the English out of Ireland.
Islamic terrorists want the Israelis off the face off the earth.
@richf:Irish terrorists wanted the English out of Ireland.
Islamic terrorists want the Israelis off the face off the earth.
One of the many potential points of difference that would make terrorism against Israel unlike terrorism against Ireland.
What a lot of people in what you might call the “global Deep State” or the “Davos crowd” or the “Sir Humphreys” think, though, is that while rank and file Muslim terrorists might want to eliminate Israel, their leaders and funders want money, land, and power, and if that were given to them, Muslim terrorism might dwindle away to a few fanatics without any meaningful support. But they are not betting the lives of their own people on this reading of the situation.
And there are lot of people who just think that if Israel stopped occupying the Occupied Territories the problem would go away. They think this despite that Gaza was not occupied for about 20 years, and they still perpetrated terrorism. So they have to wave that away somehow, and they have more than one rationalization for how Gaza was still “occupied” even when there were no Israelis in it.
At any rate, it is probably tempting and easy for British government officials to mentally substitute “Palestinians” for “Irish” and use that as their model for understanding and responding to terrorism.
well he have already proved this point with the Gaza emirate, with the Palestinian authority as well as the Hezbollah vilayet, which is Lebanon, they not only consume the people’s sustenance but also direct it toward weaponry, a similar thing seems to involved the Khamenei kleptocracy, anchored by the Revolutionary Guard which have become the lead power brokers, most of these have been tamed to some degree, not by diplomacy but by tactical uses of force and a little deception like the Pager affair,
It’s pretty good that some Arab countries are calling on Hamas to surrender, that’s among the things most likely to end the war sooner.
More people should be calling for Hamas to surrender.
Israel should be preparing to control how Gaza is ruled after Hamas is beaten.
Annexation is bad because it means either bad ethnic cleansing, or a bad big increase of Arab Muslim “Israeli” citizen voters.
Better to occupy Gaza and copy Chinese style control while pushing hard for fast capitalist wealth creation with massive work programs. There are no good solutions , only some less bad ones.
https://x.com/EylonALevy/status/1951668818167681329
Hard yet necessary to watch. Hamas’ propaganda at its most essential representation.
Gaza is an odd artefact, it was the Southern most vilayet most tied to Egypt as they conquered it in ’48, there really is little cultural significance, because they were point of entry in the ’67 war, from Nasser’s perspective they were occupied, with each successive war, 73, and 82, and the aftermath of the Gulf War, they expanded, the Authority was put in charge in 94, and held out until the fratricide of 06, when they ultimately took power, some of the leadership from there, settled in Dubai, that would be Jibroul and Dahlan, notably there hasn’t been another election in the Authority in 20 years, can’t risk them sweeping the board, the residents there, really don’t want to be assimilated by the surrounding powers or the Gulf States, they have enough trouble with their own small contingent,