Gazans got permits to work inside Israel. They came as killers and rapists.
Among the litter of guns, Korans, and maps discarded by the Hamas terrorists whose bodies lie alongside bullet-riddled vehicles and dusty roads are green Gaza IDs with work permits. Normally residents of the Hamas territory can’t enter Israel, but work permits allowed over 20,000 Gazans to enter Israel. When some returned, it was as Hamas rapists and killers.
The Hamas invasion succeeded so well because the terrorists had an intimate knowledge of the communities they were targeting because they had worked there or had intelligence from those who had worked there. The attackers had detailed maps and building layouts. One woman whose husband and son were murdered said that the Hamas terrorists knew the names of the people, how many children they had and even which of them owned dogs.
Last year, Secretary of State Blinken addressed a J Street even and told the anti-Israel lobby that the Biden administration had pushed Israel to “improve the lives of Palestinians” by, among other things, “issuing thousands of work permits for Palestinians in Gaza”.
The number of exits from Gaza into Israel rose sharply under the Biden administration and the left-wing Bennett-Lapid government which handed out an unprecedented number of work permits.
In 2021, there had been a total of only 7,500 exits a month from Gaza, but by July 2022, there had been 35,370 exits.
The massive increase was due to the work permits that the Biden administration had sought and that Bennett, Lapid and Gantz had willingly provided. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett made the decision to increase the number of work permits from 5,000 to 15,000. Defense Minister Benny Gantz assessed the security situation and approved the move which embedded Hamas terrorists into Israel. By late 2022, the number had expanded to17,000.
“We need to make the civilian population in Gaza realize that they can live a different life. To pressure Hamas to stop shooting at Israel. To that end, we have increased the number of permits for working in Israel that are issued to the residents of Gaza,” Prime Minister Lapid said.
The leftist government viewed the work permits as leverage over Hamas to maintain quiet.
“And we are telling our Palestinian neighbors, ‘When it is quiet you will enjoy the economic flourishing.’ That’s the case in Gaza. They have 12,500 people coming to work in Israel. If it stays quiet, I will increase it,” Defense Minister Gantz promised.
When the conservative Netanyahu government took office, it failed to shut down the program because the establishment believed that it was working. Experts and diplomats claimed that Hamas had avoided joining in Islamic Jihad rocket attacks to avoid disrupting the status quo.
In July 2023, a record 67,769 exits had occurred on 22,000 work permits. In August, the Netanyahu government finally stopped handing out new work permits (without revoking the existing ones) after Hamas was caught smuggling in explosives.
In September 2023, Hamas touched off riots at the Gaza border. Explosives and incendiary balloons were launched into Israel. Snipers fired on Israeli soldiers and IEDs were planted on the border wall. Israeli soldiers returned fire and shelled Hamas positions.
Hamas began conducting exercises on kidnapping Israelis and “storming settlements”. The Islamic terrorist group has done this before and it was dismissed as posturing to extract economic concessions. Meanwhile its spokesman told members of the media what they wanted to hear. “Hamas is trying to avoid an escalation. A lot of our sons and daughters would be killed,” Basem Naim, the head of Hamas’s Political Department, toldThe Washington Post.
Rather than escalate further, Israel negotiated with Hamas through Egypt, and its allies in Turkey and Qatar, and came to an agreement to end the fighting.
In late September, mere weeks before Hamas launched an invasion of Israel and massacred over a thousand people, Israel opened the main border crossing with Hamas and allowed Arab Muslims from Gaza to once again enter the country. This was part of a deal with Hamas that increased the number of work permits and allowed more imports and exports, in exchange for peace. The violence stopped and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
Trading work permits for an end to the rockets and riots seemed like it was working.
In reality, Hamas was approaching the end of its two-year plan for invading Israel. The work permits were not forms of leverage that had ended the violence and ushered in stability, they were a vulnerability allowing Hamas to gain detailed intelligence on Israeli positions and targets.
By 2022, in response to Biden administration pressure, there had been more exits from Gaza than at any time since 2005. After the Hamas takeover of Gaza, those numbers fell to the low thousands and mostly involved visits to Israeli hospitals. And that’s how it should have stayed.
But in 2019, work permits shot up from under 10,000 to 16,000 as part of a truce negotiated with Hamas that began after two Israeli soldiers were shot. The agreement negotiated through Egypt, allowed Qatar to deliver millions in cash to Hamas (this has been misrepresented on social media as Netanyahu funding Hamas) and to expand the number of work permits.
The work permits and the money were a trade for an end to the rockets and the riots, but they allowed Hamas to work on its two-year plan of invading Israel while profiting from the truce.
Israel had a secure border, but it was persuaded to open it up in order to appease Hamas. Experts on Islamic terrorism, like myself, had repeatedly warned that a truce in Islam is only a means of maneuvering for advantage. While American and Israeli politicians and generals came to believe that they had gotten a handle on Hamas, bribing it to stop the violence, the Islamic terrorist group was exploiting a political breach in the border in preparation for a full invasion.
After the war there will be a political reckoning. And that reckoning needs to include not only the immediate failure to maintain border security and force strengths in sufficient numbers to respond to a massive attack, but everything that led up to it including the false notion that Hamas could be negotiated with and that a modus vivendi could be achieved with the terrorists.
The work permits that allowed Hamas terrorists to infiltrate and scout targets in Israel with precision and depth was part of a larger strategy toward the Islamic terrorist group. After Hamas took over Gaza, the Bush and Obama administrations tried to maneuver it into a unity government, and when that failed, they relied on backchannel negotiations to reach an understanding without a formal peace deal: all of which led up to one horrifying day.
Israeli communities foolishly allowed workers from Gaza into their homes, grew fond of them and believed all their talk about peace. Then they watched their children be murdered by them.
The myth that Hamas violence was a reflection of conditions in Gaza, and that ameliorating them would reduce the violence filtered down from the U.S. and the EU to some Israelis and led to the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. There’s a lesson here.
Borders only work if you keep them closed. Walls don’t work if you open doors inside them.
The Biden administration wanted Israel to provide work permits to the West Bank and Gaza where 70% of the population supports terrorism. Even though the Oslo Accords had failed to seduce Arafat and the PLO away from terrorism, the same experts believed that they could seduce Hamas away from terrorism with economic benefits. The same strategy that failed with Iran, with North Korea and with the Taliban was used to lull Israel into a false sense of security.
There’s no win-win scenario with Islamic terrorists: there is only a win-lose scenario. Anyone who thinks that they’re in a win-win scenario with those who want to kill them has already lost.
The work permits that cost over a thousand lives were an attempt at a win-win scenario. After the slaughter, it is clearer than ever that either Israel kills the terrorists or the terrorists kill it.
No matter what the White House and the rest of the international community says, it is not Israel’s responsibility to make life better for those in Gaza, but to protect its own citizens. And these competing obligations are incompatible. Trying to negotiate with Hamas and make life better for Gazans cost Israel over 1,300 lives. May these be the last lives lost to appeasement.
James Sang says
Excellent report !
Fitna says
Seconded James!
Just imagine these slimy lizards getting intimate knowledge of these Israeli families, knew their names before the attack…it was all planned from the start.
What I really hope is that Israel sends in special forces or Mossad to target these exact people as they have their IDs and exterminate these terrorists (or helpers of terrorists) and their families (if they’re not dead already).
Terrorism is bad enough, but when you break bread with people, pretend to be their buddies, that’s a really sickening kind of evil and it deserves no less than the same retaliation in response.
Time to take away the carrots from Palis and use only the stick. Lock up the exits, no more jobs in Israel for these invaders, let them fend for themselves.
I don’t know what’s in the hearts/minds of all Palis…I do feel some of them might’ve been genuinely innocent and just want to work and not harm Israelis. If there was a way to weed out the good ones and allow them to live in Israel, I’m for it. I think it’d be sad for them to be punished for what their neighbors did.
For the rest of them, no more tolerance, we win they lose.
James Lincoln says
Fitna says,
“Time to take away the carrots from Palis and use only the stick. Lock up the exits, no more jobs in Israel for these invaders, let them fend for themselves.”
Correct.
Forward, not a single muslim should enter – or live in – Israel.
Any muslims already there should be deported immediately.
Gourdhead says
That worked out well, didn’t it? Sounds like our morons and the southern border fiasco.
Jack Reynolds says
Toronto has North America’s largest Muslim community. The day when some form of Apartheid will be necessary in CANADA is not that far off.
Fitna says
True Jack, Canada will suffer the same way that Europe has suffered these last few decades from this evil population.
We need leaders to get ahead of the game and start removing Muslims from western nations.
Kesselman says
The fate of Israel can easily become the fate of the West. – Remember, Israel is world’s canary in the mine.
ME Infidel says
I’m certainly no security expert, but I was in Israel in June and when I learned about these work permits, I intuitively thought that might not be such a good idea. Leave it to the hack enablers in the Biden administration and the Leftists in the Bennett-Lapid government to facilitate this total debacle. It’s just a matter of time with our open borders for another reckoning to happen here.
James Lincoln says
Yes, ME Infidel.
There are certainly jihadists already here in the United States – planning attacks.
Norman Gardner Gardner says
We have seen the Jihadists already, the twin towers, Ft. Hood, Bernardino, attacks on recruiting centers, attacks on gays and the leftists in the universities, the Holy Land Foundation funding terrorists and more.
Eva says
Stupid, treacherous leftist politicians!!!
What was the kickback for bennett, gantz and lapid? And old joe, of course.
HOW MUCH JEWISH HISTORY HAS TO BE REPEATED FOR THEM TO GET THE MESSAGE???
When an enemy swears they are going to kill you, you LISTEN!!!! And you ACT!!!
This has to be the end. No more gaza. No more terrorists, and that includes the p.a.
If Israel doesn’t act in the whole country and finish it forever, there won’t BE an Israel.
Clifford Fodor says
That’s an interesting comment: You listen. And you act!. How do you act? Do you kill the guy for threatening you? Or do you stay up all day and all night with a gun?
ME Infidel says
One way to “act” is for our political hacks and useful idiots in the media, academia and propaganda groups such as the SPLC to actually study Islamic doctrine (the actual, not the sugar coated versions) from the likes of people such as Daniel Greenfield and others. Then, we’d know their sympathies weren’t from ignorance but were deliberate.
I remember when Robert Spencer was fired by the counter-terrorism training division of the FBI for teaching about the threat of Islam and the sanctification of violence well over a decade ago. Hamas-linked CAIR, Brennan, Clapper, Mueller specifically (and likely Obama himself) ordered his removal. That action wasn’t for the benefit of our country’s security and we’re now seeing the fruit of their treasonous moves play out.
jewdog says
Leave it up to those scumbags to weaponize everything, even friendly gestures like offering jobs. This was a hard lesson, but really, it’s not like it had no precendent, such as the Oslo concessions, the Gaza withdrawal followed by suicide bombings, and the Gaza greenhouses which were turned into launch sites. There are many other examples. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. What’s fool me dozens of times, but the conclusion that the Israelis are hopeless fools.
rubiconcrest says
Good to ask of people calling for the end of the ‘Oppression of the Palestinian people’ and how to alleviate it is this:
When and for how long have Muslims ever honored peace treaties?
Isn’t oppression in Islam merely living as a minority in a non Muslim nation?
VictorMc says
Simple really. Israel a fast-growing prosperous country needs labour mainly for building/farm works or similar. From what I read the daily numbers have grown steadily over the past years.
Shame about their kids and families NOW!!
OLD GUY says
Israel should just take Palestine and push the islamic loving muslim Palestinians off the land. Get it over with or this fight will continue for another 1400 years.
Paul Spector says
Let’s hope Biden has finally gotten òut from under the baleful, useless, self serving dissembler Obama.