If there was one lesson to be learned from Oct 7, it's don't negotiate with terrorists. But that's the one lesson no one seems to be willing to learn, as David Wurmser notes at the Center for Security Policy:
"A U.S. plan, spearheaded by the diplomatic efforts of the U.S., and led by Amos Hochstein (who negotiated the Lebanon Maritime Agreement) and the French government, is emerging to diffuse tension along Israel's northern border. The U.S. and France appear to propose a plan with three elements. Hizballah withdraws its forces northward. Israel concedes all the disputed areas along the border. And finally, the area between Israel and Hizballah will be filled by the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF)."
The LAF, despite the money we spend on them, just does whatever Hezbollah tells them.
A deal in which Israel concedes more territory to Lebanon in exchange for a proposed Hezbollah withdrawal is less than worthless. Hezbollah can move back whenever it chooses and Israel will be denied the ability to reclaim the territory. The same brilliant minds that thought Hamas could be moderated with money also promised that Hezbollah could be moderated with money by ceding maritime territory to be used for energy harvesting to Lebanon. The insane thing is that these same people are now pushing this.
Islamic terror groups don't moderate. They take whatever you give them and use it to go ahead and kill you.
And yet here we are. Israel is trying to pressure Lebanon to push back Hezbollah so that tens of thousands of Israelis who have been displaced by Hezbollah attacks can go home. (Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been displaced in total. The media is obviously not covering this.)
Israel is proposing a military solution. The Biden administration and France are proposing a land-for-truce deal that would weaken Israel's ability to respond to future attacks from Hezbollah.
It's as if Oct 7 never happened.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
Edward C. Stengel