Secretary General Guterres Should Demand that Hamas Lay Down its Arms

While France held the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council for the month of April, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot chaired the UN Security Council’s quarterly open debate on April 29^th regarding the Middle East. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres led off the meeting with his usual warning that “the promise of a two-State solution is at risk of dwindling to the point of disappearance.” He pressed the international community to "take irreversible action towards implementing a two-state solution" between Israel and the Palestinians prior to an international conference to be held in June, which France and Saudi Arabia will co-host.

Making only glancing references to the hostages still held by Hamas in horrendous conditions and the continuing rocket attacks launched by Hamas against Israel, Mr. Guterres spent the bulk of his speech excoriating Israel. He claimed that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza was Israel’s fault. He condemned Israel for denying “the legitimate national aspirations of the Palestinians” in violation of so-called international law. Again and again, Secretary General Guterres latched on to the “two-state solution” as the only way to a secure peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

But the two-state solution is dead for all intents and purposes, especially following Hamas’ genocidal rampage against civilians within Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan that have endured. But no sane Israeli can ever accept an armed Palestinian state on its borders full of terrorists determined to annihilate the Jewish state and kill as many Jews as possible.

While most of the other speakers at the Security Council meeting echoed Mr. Guterres and cast Israel as the villain perpetuating the war in Gaza, Dorothy Shea, the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires, spoke the cold hard truth. “Fighting could end tomorrow if Hamas released hostages and laid down its arms,” she said. “Their reckless decisions have caused enough bloodshed. Hamas must leave Gaza forever.”

Amen!

Ms. Shea noted that “Hamas, a brutal terrorist organization, continues to violently suppress organic protests against its barbaric rule and demonstrate its lack of regard for the Palestinian civilians it purports to represent.”

Indeed, Palestinians who took part in demonstrations in Gaza earlier this year against Hamas risked their lives to make their voices heard loud and clear. “People are fed up with Hamas’ attempt to use their bodies, their lives, as a tool to make political and even financial gains from this war,” one protester said. “These protests were very openly and obviously asking Hamas to step down, get out of the political and military picture in Gaza.” Another Gazan protester said, "We came out to demand that Hamas stop the war and hand the ruling to any merciful body so that God may have mercy upon us."

Even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is finally beginning to hold Hamas to account. Calling the terror group “sons of dogs” during a speech he delivered late last month at the opening of the PLO Central Council meeting, President Abbas told Hamas to “release those you’re holding and put an end to this story.” And this Palestinian leader, an anti-Semite who is certainly no friend of Israel, went further. He said that “Hamas must end its control over the Gaza Strip” and “refrain from carrying arms.”

Guess who hasn’t called upon Hamas to lay down its arms. The answer is UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres! The Secretary General had a chance to do so while delivering his remarks during the April 29^th Security Council meeting but punted the issue of disarming Hamas instead.

I asked the spokesperson for the Secretary General why Mr. Guterres did not do what even Abbas had done – tell Hamas to “refrain from carrying arms.” The spokesperson ducked my question. He said only that “we recognize the Palestinian Authority is the legitimate authority overall, whether it’s the occupied Palestinian territory or Gaza.” Obviously, what the UN wishes it will not get so long as a fully armed Hamas continues to be a force to be reckoned with in Gaza.

H.E. Riyad Mansour, the Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the UN, delivered one of his usual long-winded victimhood speeches to the Security Council at the April 29^th meeting. He denied that the Palestinians want to destroy Israel. All the Palestinians have wanted, he claimed, is their own independent state “living side by side with Israel” in accordance with “the very United Nations resolutions on which the State of Israel was established with the partition of Palestine.”

Mr. Mansour spun yet another outrageous yarn to paint the Palestinians as the blameless victims left behind with no state of their own. In truth, the Jews at the time accepted the UN’s 1947 partition plan, which left them with far less land than was allocated to the Arabs. But the Palestinians and their fellow Arabs in neighboring countries not only rejected the partition plan. They set out to destroy Israel and exterminate the Jews as soon as Israel declared its independence in 1948. But even though the Arabs lost this war, Israel did not annex all the land that the Arabs would have been able to use to forge an independent state of their own under the UN’s partition plan they rejected.

It was Jordan that took over and annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Jordan held on to this territory for nearly two decades without making any offer to give the Palestinians living there the land to create their own independent state. Instead, Jordan made the mistake of attacking Israel in 1967, joining Egypt and Syria in yet another Arab attempt to wipe out the Jewish state. They lost again. Israel assumed control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan as well as Gaza from Egypt.

Only after Israel gained possession of these territories following its victory in the1967 Six DayWar did the clamor begin for an independent Palestinian state. And only after Palestinian terrorists started murdering Israeli civilians inside Israel with suicide bombs and other instruments of death did the Israeli government react by building a security barrier and taking other security measures to protect its own citizens.

Despite the Palestinian terrorists’ continuing violence against Israeli Jews and the Palestinian leaders’ rejection of generous Israeli offers to peacefully settle their long-standing conflict, Israel unilaterally withdrew all its soldiers and civilians from Gaza in 2005. There were no preconditions. However, instead of building a self-governing prototype state in Gaza to demonstrate Gazan Palestinians’ capability and willingness to live side by side peacefully with Israel, they chose the Hamas terrorist organization to rule them. Hamas used Gaza as their launching pad to attack civilians living in Israel with thousands upon thousands of rockets aimed at population centers over nearly two decades. But even that was not enough for these genocidal Islamist fanatics.

Hamas broke its ceasefire agreement then in place with Israel when, on October 7, 2023, the terrorists invaded Israel and slaughtered more Jews on that one day than on any other day since the Holocaust. Hamas also abducted more than 250 hostages, some of whom the terrorists have since murdered in cold blood.

Hamas is solely responsible for the war it unleashed and its aftermath. Hamas is the cause of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza by continuing to use Palestinian civilians, including women and children, as human shields, refusing to release all remaining hostages immediately, and refusing to lay down its arms. Until Hamas and all its fellow genocidal terrorists are uprooted and eradicated once and for all, UN Secretary General Guterres’ vision of a “two-state solution” is nothing but a pipe dream.