MESOP : WHITE HOUSE = DISARM HAMAS !
White House Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken told NPR on Wednesday that any ceasefire ending the current round of hostilities between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip should include “some form of demilitarization so that [the conflict] doesn’t continue, doesn’t repeat itself,” one of a growing list of statements by U.S. policymakers and observers assessing that any truce between Jerusalem and the terror group should include provisions that disarmed Hamas.
Blinken emphasized that such a scenario “needs to be the end result.” Daniel Nisman and Ron Gilran – respectively the president and the vice president of intelligence at the Levantine Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy based in Israel – had already over the weekend identified Israel’s Operation Protective Edge as “a rare opportunity for a regional arrangement which could ultimately bring an end to the cycle of violence in Gaza” by allowing the Israelis to leverage battlefield victories into a truce under which Hamas would be forced to “dismantle its rockets and those of other fringe groups in exchange for a lifting of the blockade by Israel and Egypt.” The Washington Post‘s editorial board on Wednesday came to a similar conclusion, noting the strategic dangers of Hamas’s attack tunnels meant that “any accord must aim at forging a new political and security order in Gaza,” and more specifically that border concessions made by the Israelis or the Egyptians should be linked “to the return to Gaza of the security forces of the Palestinian Authority, the disarmament of Hamas and elections for a new government.” For his part, top Hamas official Khaled Meshaal, speaking on Wednesday at a news conference in Qatar, declared that “no one will disarm the resistance… we are the victim, despite our victory.”