Tear up Witkoff's paper and throw it in his face.

Hamdi Farag

It is a grave mistake to hold the resistance responsible for the continued Israeli genocidal killing and starvation that has been ongoing for six hundred days, day and night, summer and winter, with the daily death toll reaching approximately one hundred people, most of them women and children. An even graver mistake would be for the resistance to agree to what cannot and cannot be agreed to, or to reject what cannot and cannot be rejected.

Many believe that by rejecting the Witkoff paper, Hamas is contributing to the continued killing and starving of the people, and that by accepting it, it is contributing to stopping this killing and starvation. This is a blatant mistake, based either on childish innocence or malicious political pretense. The resistance has previously agreed to two American papers brokered by Arabs in two important Arab capitals, the first in November of last year during Biden’s time, and the second in January of this year during Trump’s time. Despite Hamas’s commitment to the terms of the two agreements, the war has continued, and perhaps even increased in ferocity, killing, brutality and barbarism.

There is no indication from the leaders of Netanyahu's government that they are about to stop the war. Rather, they confirm that they will continue it until its goals are achieved: first, eliminating Hamas, which would be more accurate, eliminating the people of Gaza; second, freeing the hostages, which would be more accurate, killing them and getting rid of them.

An objective review shows that the resistance's agreement to the two previous truces was hasty, there were international and Arab guarantees that the war would stop, there were hundreds of detainees, not just a handful of twenty, there were open crossings, albeit limited, for food, medicine and fuel, there was the entry of 600 trucks daily, and 200 caravans, there was a comprehensive ceasefire throughout the two truces, a halt to surveillance and reconnaissance flights, there was a complete withdrawal, then redeployment. All of this evaporated and ended in Witkoff's new paper.

The requirement to hand over half of the prisoners, living and dead, within just seven days, and the rejection of the proposal to release half of them on the last day of the supposed 60-day truce, means that the resumption of the genocidal war and the violation of this truce will not take long beyond seven days. Therefore, Ben-Gvir did not submit his resignation, and Smotrich did not threaten it as he did during the previous truce. With the resumption of genocide and mass starvation, "a grain of wheat forbidden to enter" was withdrawn. Israel is not only throwing the grain of Gaza into its mill, but also the grain of the West Bank. Can it grind the resistance of a people raised on the rope and experienced confrontation and struggle for a hundred years or more? The resistance, at the very least, must not respond to Witkov, because a lack of response is a response.