The complex, weak and tenuous ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is already in danger of collapsing and will do nothing to bring lasting peace to the Mideast.
Neither of the principal players — Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and the latest terrorist leader of Hamas — Khalil al-Hayya — would have agreed to it without months of pressure from outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden and incoming president-elect Donald Trump.
Both the Israeli government and Hamas reject a two-state solution — a secure Israel living in peace alongside a viable Palestinian state — which is the eventual but imaginary goal of this ceasefire.
In the real world, the Israeli government, despite the deal, still wants to eliminate Hamas while Hamas still wants to conquer Israel and rid it of Jews.
Having said that, the faint hope that this agreement, if it holds, will help to alleviate the suffering of innocent Israelis and Palestinians shattered by 15 months of war, justifies the need to support it.
This even though the tentative pact makes far more demands of Israel, a democratic, sovereign state that was attacked by Hamas and Iran’s other terrorist proxies, than it does of the terrorists that launched those attacks.
The ratio of kidnapped Israeli hostages — both alive and, tragically, dead — that Hamas is to release under the agreement compared to the number of Palestinian terrorists and other criminals Israel must release is nothing short of obscene.
It is inevitable that this will feed the continuing cycle of wars and ceasefires that have been fought in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, along with other terrorist groups, for two decades.
But it has always been this way in the Mideast, with demands placed upon Israel forever disproportionate to demands placed on the terrorists, as well as disproportionate to what is expected of any other democracy on earth.
This as indicated by the fact that the United Nations General Assembly, infested with antisemitism, routinely passes more resolutions condemning Israel every year than all other nations combined.
This has normalized hatred against Jews everywhere, including in Canada, especially since Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
That is yet another terrible legacy of this latest conflict and the abject failure of Canadian governments, at all levels, to confront it domestically.