So, who should determine Gaza’s future: a doddering old man who, despite being of military age while the United States was fighting in Vietnam, never wore his country’s uniform, or a combat veteran of several actions against the Arabs, serving in the Sayeret Matkal, one of Israel’s top special forces units? Who better knows Israel’s Arab enemies, a man who knows only what he’s been told by a legion of Ivy League graduates, or one who has fought them, face-to-face, and has had to deal with the Arabs for all of his adult life? From The Wall Street Journal:

In Dueling Remarks, Biden and Netanyahu Spar Over Gaza’s Future

Israel’s prime minister says he won’t allow the Palestinian Authority to take over Gaza

By David S. Cloud, Carrie Keller-Lynn, Summer Said, and Andrew Restuccia | Updated, Tuesday, December 12, 2023 | 4:09 PM EST

President Biden and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clashed Tuesday over who should govern Gaza after the war, in a remarkable public display of differences emerging between the two leaders over the conflict.

Speaking during a fundraiser in Washington, Biden made his toughest remarks since the war began about Netanyahu’s government. He suggested that its hard-line stance has prevented Netanyahu from accepting the Biden administration’s postwar plan to have the Palestinian Authority take over Gaza, and that it would also obstruct progress toward political, economic and security arrangements that could spawn a separate Palestinian state—an outcome the U.S. president sees as a long-term solution to the conflict.

If you do not subscribe to the Journal, you can read the article here.

A “separate Palestinian state,” huh? The Arabs had that in hand, at the end of 2000, as President Clinton helped negotiate such a deal with then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yassir Arafat, and Mr Arafat outright rejected it, The agreement would have established an independent Palestine in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. The Palestinian made the further demand of the so-called ‘right of return,’ that being Palestinians being able to reclaim the property in Israel proper that they fled during the 1948 war of independence.

Mr Clinton said, in his autobiography, that this was the best deal the Arabs could ever hope to get.

“He’s a good friend, but I think he has to change…This government in Israel is making it very difficult for him to move,” Biden said, referring to Netanyahu. He called Israel’s government the most conservative in Israel’s history, adding that some in the government oppose a two-state solution. Biden said members of the Israeli government want retribution “against all Palestinians,” not just Hamas.

Biden also warned that Israel’s approach to the war could result in a loss of support around the world. “Israel’s security can rest on the United States, but right now it has more than the United States. It has the European Union, it has Europe, it has most of the world supporting it,” he said. “But they’re starting to lose that support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place.”

And here comes the money line:

Authorities in Hamas-run Gaza say more than 18,400 Palestinians have died in Gaza, two-thirds of them women and children. The figures don’t distinguish between militants and civilians.

And they shouldn’t, because every army, whether traditionally organized or guerrilla forces, depends upon the larger civilian population for food, fuel, clothing, shelter, and concealment. The ‘civilians’ in Gaza are fundamentally indistinguishable from the civilians in Japan and Germany, whom we bombed mercilessly, because they were building weapons, producing munitions, sewing uniforms, making belts and boots, providing fuel and transportation for the Japanese and German armies in the field. Guerrilla forces are frequently in the midst of the larger civilian populations.

Japan and Germany are now our friends and allies, only because we not only destroyed their military, but so savaged the civilian populations, terrorizing and killing the younger boys who would soon grow into fighting age. We occupied those nations, controlling their governments and educational systems, ‘educating’ the population growing up that restarting the wars would be a not just bad, but suicidal idea. Joe Biden’s silly idea would still leave the population subject to an ‘education’ system which tells the people how awful Israel is and that they should work to kill all the Jews.

We had, in Yugoslavia, populations with a lot of ethnic enmity, pretty much forced to live together in peace under Marshall Tito. When he croaked, a ‘rotating federal presidency’ between the various ethnic groups was created, but it didn’t last long, and politicians were able to stir up the old ethnic hatreds that Mr Tito had suppressed for two generations.

Think about that: two generations of people living together still didn’t produce enough good feelings that the hatreds couldn’t be inflamed fairly quickly. Why would anyone think that the Arabs and Israelis could ever live together in peace?