From: The Guardian February 21, 2025
Mohammed bin Salman wants an alternative to Trump’s Gaza plan – but one that most benefits Saudi Arabia

The crown prince sees Hamas as a regional threat, and may propose a deal that risks sidelining Palestinians

Saudi Arabia has suddenly experienced a diplomatic awakening after lukewarm engagement with the conflict in Gaza.

Today, leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will gather in Riyadh to discuss Donald Trump’s proposal for a US takeover of Gaza.
(Keen to be viewed as a global deal maker, Saudi Arabia will also be hosting negotiations over Ukraine this week.)

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was alarmed by Trump’s outrageous “Riviera plan” to reconstruct Gaza following eviction of its people to neighbouring countries.

Alongside Arab leaders, he hopes to propose an alternative plan with the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem, its capital at its core.

The crown prince has insisted that there will be no normalisation of Israel without a Palestinian state.

In the short term, he may succeed in preventing the eviction of Palestinians from Gaza and their proposed resettlement in Egypt, Jordan, and even Saudi Arabia.

The summit promises to raise enough funds for reconstruction while leaving Palestinians in temporary shelters on their own land.

The urgent and more challenging item of the summit’s agenda will be finding an alternative power to replace Hamas as the government of Gaza.

Prince Mohammed is a sworn enemy of several Islamist movements, but his disdain for Hamas is more profound.
He considers it responsible for derailing his plan to complete normalisation with Israel after 7 October 2023

The crown prince’s determination to normalise relations with Israel springs out of domestic interest.
Saudi Arabia would like to see the transfer of Israeli technology, military equipment, intelligence and develop closer trade relations.

More importantly, he hopes such a move would lead to closer security ties with the United States.

In the long term, Prince Mohammed is unlikely to be successful for two reasons.

First, Israel will prove a major obstacle, given that Benjamin Netanyahu unequivocally refuses to accept Palestinian statehood and sovereignty.

Second, an alternative plan that completely sidelines Hamas has very little chance of succeeding.

The political organisation may give up governance in Gaza in return for reconstruction, but it will not simply vanish.

Unlike in 1982, when the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) under Yasser Arafat was pushed out of Lebanon to Tunisia after the Israeli occupation of the south of the country, Hamas is fighting on its own land.

The subsequent Lebanese Christian massacre of Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila after the departure of the PLO is still alive in Palestinian memory.

Hamas will not accept any plan that will bring about an end to Palestine as it is imagined by several generations of Palestinian exiles around the world and the people of Gaza who endured more than 16 months of slaughter.

The Saudi alternative plan is driven by pure self-interest, namely, to mitigate against the destabilisation of several Arab regimes, itself included.

Forced eviction of Palestinians will inevitably spread Hamas, its fighters and political Islam – mainly the Muslim Brotherhood – into countries that have been deliberately and successfully suppressing such ideology.

None of the Arab regimes want to see Hamas fighters and their extended communities living in their countries.

The Muslim Brotherhood ideology invokes governance according to Islam, but at the same time talks about democracy.

It is a global movement that appeals to many young Muslims, including Saudis, aspiring toward some kind of Islamic democratic rule, according to their own interpretation of both Islam and democracy. As such it immediately threatens monarchical rule.

Prince Mohammed has focused on economic and social liberalisation, both of which included suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood variant of Islamism.

Any attempt to evict Palestinian Hamas will definitely revive political Islam.

Moreover, should Palestinians be forced to leave their territory en masse, Prince Mohammed fears the reaction of the Saudi public and being portrayed as the Arab monarch who “sold Palestine”.

Saudi citizens have more solidarity with Palestinians than their regime as the latter had been indoctrinating them to be leaders among Arabs and Muslims when it suited the monarchy’s interest.

Prince Mohammed has since pivoted to adopting slogans echoing Trump and hoping to divorce Saudis from regional and global Muslim causes, such as
1. “Saudi Arabia for Saudis”
2. “Make Saudi Arabia Great”,

However, Saudis have already internalised their religious duty to side with Arabs and Muslims.

So far, Prince Mohammed has pushed to repress solidarity by jailing those who openly support or call for demonstrations on behalf of Palestinians.

It is still unclear what the governance of Gaza will look like.

Despite the destruction, neither Prince Mohammed nor other Arab countries can successfully decide the fate of Gaza without engagement with the Palestinians themselves.

While many Arab countries have already signed normalisation agreements with Israel, none have brought peace.
In fact, the opposite has happened, for a simple reason. Palestinians themselves were sidelined.

Only an agreement between Israel and Palestinians that guarantees Palestinian statehood and sovereignty will bring about a long-lasting peace.

The “Saudi awakening” will pass without creating the conditions for this peace if all Palestinian factions, including Hamas, are not sitting at the negotiation table.

including Hamas is rewarding terrorism

From: The Times of Israel February 22, 2025
Rubio: Hamas ‘must release all of the hostages immediately or be destroyed’

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says Hamas must free the remaining 63 hostages it is holding, or face its demise.

Rubio on X
You don't say!

From: Al Jazeera February 22, 2025
Naim: Hamas ready to abandon governance role in Gaza

We have more from Hamas politburo member Basem Naim, who has discussed the rhetoric and actions by Arab leaders and also the US and the future of Gaza.

“We have said many times, even before October 7 [2023] that we are willing immediately to leave the governing position in the Gaza Strip and to allow any Palestinian unity government or a technocratic government or any alternative which is decided by Palestinians within the Palestinian consensus,”

Naim said the group welcomes an Egyptian proposal to form a committee tasked with governing all aspects of life in Gaza in coordination with the Palestinian Authority government in Ramallah.

The official added that Hamas was founded as a national Palestinian resistance movement with clear goals, including
1. “to get rid of the occupation,
2. to achieve the Palestinian genuine and national goals of statehood,
3. and self-determination and the right to return”.

“We will continue our struggle with all other factions and all our people to achieve these goals through all means, including
1. political and diplomatic means
2. and armed resistance.

But to run the daily lives of Palestinians, like health, education and social affairs, we are ready to leave it to a consensus-based solution.”

So the terrorists continue their terror...

Entering an ‘extremely difficult phase’ of Gaza ceasefire deal

Aaron David Miller, a former senior adviser at the US State Department for Arab-Israeli negotiations, told Al Jazeera:
He does not know where the US stands on Israel and Palestine, but he also doubts that President Donald Trump does either.

He said Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, secured the three-phase deal with the Biden administration but Trump has been focused on claiming credit for the deal on an almost “daily basis”.

Miller said:
“The reality is, we’re entering an extremely difficult phase.
Right now, I see absolutely no way that Hamas or Israel is willing and or able to complete what that agreement enjoins them to do,”

So as long as the ceasefire lasts, we’re either:
1. facing a return of Israeli military activity or
2. the extension of phase one for more Palestinian prisoners in exchange for more hostages
3. and the vital surging of humanitarian assistance into Gaza

Here is X Link for the Rubio statement:

https://x.com/SecRubio/status/1893400317036797999

Anti-Israel activists hold funeral event for terror chiefs in NYC
The Times of Israel by Luke Tress 24 February 2025

Extracts:

• Anti-Israel activists hold funeral event for terror chiefs Nasrallah and Sinwar, in NYC

Several dozen anti-Israel protesters hold a funeral event for Hezbollah terror leader Hassan Nasrallah in New York City

The protest takes place in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park on the same day as Nasrallah’s funeral in Lebanon

The protesters chant,
1. “From the river to the sea, Palestine is almost free”
2. “Settlers settlers go back home, Palestine is ours alone”
3. “From New York to Gaza, globalize the intifada”

Several people in the crowd hold photos of terror chiefs Nasrallah and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar

A Hezbollah flag hangs at the head of the group

Please! Trump deport these terrorist supporters, inciting intifada

• pro-Israel counter-protesters

Several dozen pro-Israel counter-protesters blow air horns, wave Israeli and American flags and chant “USA”
“F--k Palestine” a passerby shouts

Unlike most anti-Israel rallies in the city, there appear to be more pro-Israel counter-protesters

Police separate the two groups

Germany and Israel after the Bundestag election
The Jerusalem Post by Eldad Beck 23 February 2025

Extracts:

• Germany and Israel after the Bundestag election: Will realpolitik replace illusions?

Fifteen years after the end of the Holocaust, this public meeting between the leaders of the two nations symbolized the beginning of the reconciliation process

At the entrance to the German conservative Christian-Democratic Union CDU Party’s meeting room in the Bundestag hangs a photo documenting a historic moment of the relationship between Germany and Israel

The picture shows West Germany’s first chancellor Konrad Adenauer meeting Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion in New York’s Waldorf Astoria in March 1960

Fifteen years after the Holocaust ended, this public meeting symbolized the beginning of the reconciliation process between the land of the Nazi perpetrators and the Jewish state, representing many Holocaust survivors

It paved the way for diplomatic relations between West Germany and Israel five years later

Germany and Israel after the Bundestag election
The Jerusalem Post by Eldad Beck 23 February 2025

Extracts:

• German-Israeli relations

In 2025 reunified Germany and Israel are celebrating 60 years of diplomatic relations but not without difficulties

Despite the close alliance, which developed over the years and Berlin officially declaring solidarity with Jerusalem, the Israel-Hamas War estranged Germany and Israel

At long last, young German generations are feeling that the time has come to free their country and themselves from the “shame” that ensued from the crimes committed by older generations and from any “historical responsibility” towards Israel, which many of them wrongly consider as a new “perpetrators land”

CDU leader Friedrich Merz, the projected winner of the German general election on Sunday and the most probable next chancellor, often refers to the 1960 meeting between West Germany’s first chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion when Merz speaks about,
1. Germany’s commitment to Israel
2. Israel's existence and its security

Germany and Israel after the Bundestag election
The Jerusalem Post by Eldad Beck 23 February 2025

Extracts:

• projected chancellor CDU leader Friedrich Merz support of Israel

In a political atmosphere in which standing by Israel becomes increasingly difficult and rare, Merz’s clear and continued support of the Jewish state shines as a light in the darkness

While the last CDU chancellor, Angela Merkel, defined Israel’s existence and security as being part of Germany’s “raison d’état” Merz upgraded this definition

In a speech at the Bundestag in May 2023 on the occasion of Israel’s 75 Independence Day, Merz declared:
During a special debate at the Bundestag commemorating the first anniversary of the October 7 attacks, Merz – as leader of the opposition – attacked the German center-left government of Olaf Scholz for freezing the export of weapons to Israel, forcing Scholz to unfreeze the export

Merz stressed in his speech,
Mertz vehemently criticized what he called,
1. the antisemitic, anti-Israel positions of the German Left
2. expressed especially in art and cultural institutions and events

Merz also insisted that one way to efficiently fight the spread of antisemitism in Germany would be to stop the massive immigration of young men from Arab and Muslim countries

Germany and Israel after the Bundestag election
The Jerusalem Post by Eldad Beck 23 February 2025

Extracts:

• New peace initiative

However in the same May 2023 speech CDU leader Friedrich Merz mentioned the new peace initiative of *former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and the former Palestinian foreign minister and nephew of Yasser Arafat, Nasser al-Qudwa, as a ray of hope to relaunch a peace process

Olmert and Qudwa have been traveling all over Europe in recent months, promoting their “peace initiative” which is based on the generous but failed peace proposition that Olmert presented in 2008 to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas

Abbas never rejected the peace plan He just didn’t react and waited for Olmert to step down

Abbas believing that a two state-solution peace plan, which didn’t work almost two decades ago, can be relevant after the horrors of October 7, 2023 committed by Palestinians and perpetuated by the cruel treatment of hostages – doesn’t reflect a sense of political realism

Germany and Israel after the Bundestag election
The Jerusalem Post by Eldad Beck 23 February 2025

Extracts:

• Palestinians - German defense and finance

The German political establishment, from the Left and Right, has been defending the Palestinians for far too long

Somehow, the strange idea of a German “double responsibility” towards the Jewish victims of the Nazis and the “victims of the victims”
ie: the Palestinians, became a leitmotif of German foreign policy in the Middle East

This allows Berlin not only to interfere in Israeli internal and external politics but also to very generously finance the Palestinians, despite their commitment to the destruction and annihilation of the Jewish state

According to official records, Germany paid Palestinian bodies, including UNRWA €913 million in 2023 and 2024

The Germans have become one of the Palestinians’ main donors however anti-Israeli and anti-peace they are

Such an attitude reflects more irresponsibility than responsibility

Germany and Israel after the Bundestag election
The Jerusalem Post by Eldad Beck 23 February 2025

Extracts:

• Palestinian violence and terror

If CDU leader Friedrich Merz becomes chancellor, Merz should break with this traditional German attitude that has contributed to delaying and avoiding peace instead of promoting it

The Palestinians must understand that there is a high price for their violence and terror

It must be made clear to them that murdering Jews is not a profitable profession
Ending the “pay to slay” mentality and the “denazification” of Palestinian society are two primordial preconditions to any future peace process

Another one is the dissolving of all “Palestinian refugee camps” in the Middle East and erasing the artificial Palestinian refugee status

Instead of opposing US President Donald Trump’s attempts to think outside the box to solve the Middle Eastern conflict, Germany should mobilize itself to help him, rethinking its attitude

Sixty-five years have passed since West Germany’s first chancellor Konrad Adenauer meeting Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion, in New York

Remembering history is important but forming the present day for the sake of a better future is much more important

Merz is right to follow Adenauer but Merz should show that he is no less a leader. Realpolitik should replace illusions

Germany's Perennial Support for Israel
Haaretz by Vera Weidenbach and David Issacharoff 16 January 2025

Extracts:

• Germany's Perennial Support for Israel May Intensify With Likely Next Chancellor Friedrich Merz

Friedrich Merz, opposition leader and head of the CDU is the clear front-runner in Germany's February election

Merz's vocal support for Israel will be put to the test once in power: will Merz's government,
1. enforce the ICC's arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu or
2. bow to Israel's interests?

Could Benjamin Netanyahu set foot on German soil without facing arrest for alleged war crimes?
Even his staunchest supporters in the country, poised to take power after the general election set for February 23 hesitate to provide a clear answer

The Real Winners of Germany's Elections?
Haaretz by David Issacharoff 24 February 2025

Extracts:

• The Real Winners of Germany's Elections? The Far Right – and Israel's Netanyahu Government

Provision results show Germany’s opposition conservatives CDU/CSU has won the national election, putting leader Friedrich Merz on track to be the next chancellor, with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) coming in second, its best-ever result

While the world's attention will be on the shock of a fifth of Germans supporting the far-right AfD
the Netanyahu government's focus will be on who they'll be doing business with: the center-right Christian Democrats

As Germany shifted sharply to the right on Sunday, delivering its highest result for the far right since the 1930s
Israel's Netanyahu-led government will also emerge as a quiet winner of these elections

Sure thing Merz's vocal support for Israel will be put to the test once in power:
Merz from opposition leader to chancellor -- whole new ball game!

‘A new era’: AfD voters celebrate historic result
Al Jazeera by Erin Hale 24 February 2025

Extracts:

• ‘A new era’: AfD voters celebrate historic result

Here’s how supporters of the far-right party responded to the election outcome

At the party’s headquarters in Berlin, Gilbert Kalb hailed the results
AfD member Mary Khan praised the gains of the party, which entered the Bundestag for the first time in 2017
Bjoern Hoecke, the party leader in the state of Thuringia, said,

• AfD Alternative für Deutschland party

AfD is deeply divided over support of the Jewish state

Since its inception in 2013 the AfD
1. has been plagued by antisemitic incidents
2. and the leadership appears to be split over its attitude towards Israel and the war in Gaza

CDU leader Friedrich Merz set to become German chancellor
Reuters by Sarah Marsh and Matthias Williams 24 February 2025

Extracts:

• CDU leader Friedrich Merz set to become German chancellor

Merz, who has no previous experience in office, is set to become chancellor with Europe's largest economy ailing, its society split over migration and its security caught between a confrontational US and an assertive Russia and China

Merz took aim at the US in blunt remarks after his victory, criticising the "ultimately outrageous" comments flowing from Washington during the campaign, comparing them to hostile interventions from Russia

Merz told a roundtable with other leaders,
Merz's broadside against the US came despite President Donald Trump welcoming the election outcome.Trump wrote on Truth Social,

CDU leader Friedrich Merz set to become German chancellor
Reuters by Sarah Marsh and Matthias Williams 24 February 2025

Extracts:

• Trump "largely indifferent to the fate of Europe"

Hitherto seen as an atlanticist, Merz said Trump had shown his administration to be "largely indifferent to the fate of Europe"

Merz added,
Merz even ventured to ask whether the next summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which has underpinned Europe's security for decades, would still see "NATO in its current form"

• Israel and NATO

Israel is not a member of NATO due to Israel's geographic location:
Israel isn’t in Europe and isn’t in the “North Atlantic” as NATO’s name states

Israel's unique location makes it prone to armed conflict with its neighbours
NATO is in direct contact with Israel and as a partner nation the Middle East country provides updates and overviews of its defense strategy with the US and other member countries

Israel is a major strategic partner of NATO which has strengthened cooperation and increased defense support and infrastructures in the Middle East country

Israel is an active partner with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and in 2017 established a permanent and official mission to NATO headquarters

From: The Times of Israel February 24, 2025
Senior Hamas official: I wouldn’t have backed October 7 if I’d known outcome for Gaza

Moussa Abu Marzouk says:
1. ‘impossible’ to call Gaza war a victory for terror group,
2. voices openness to discussing its disarmament;

Hamas: Words taken out of context, don’t represent us

Senior Hamas politburo member Moussa Abu Marzouk said he would not have backed the October 7, 2023 invasion and onslaught in southern Israel if he had known what the consequences would be for the Gaza Strip, in an interview with The New York Times that was conducted on Friday and published on Monday.

The October 7 attack — in which:
1. thousands of Hamas-led terrorists burst across the Gaza-Israel border,
2. killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians,
3. and taking 251 hostages,
4. amid rampant acts of brutality and sexual assault —

sparked the subsequent war in Gaza, which:
1. has devastated the enclave,
2. seen tens of thousands killed,
3. and prompted the US president to call for the forced relocation of the more than 2 million residents of the Strip.

The war has also, through fighting on other fronts,
1. significantly weakened Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance,”
2. devastating the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon,
3. and indirectly contributing to the collapse of the Iran-backed Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.

Senior Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk says: I wouldn’t have backed October 7 if I’d known outcome for Gaza -- not Rocket science!


Day 508 Israel and the terrorists have both suffered shattering defeats
Israel has not yet achieved “absolute victory” in Gaza – a fact painfully evident each time Hamas releases hostages in staged propaganda displays.

Abu Marzouk said, asserting that — though he claimed to not have been privy to the exact details of the planned assault — he could not have brought himself to approve it, knowing what he knows now
The statement of regret marked a departure from previous statements by Hamas officials.

A few weeks after the invasion, for example, politburo member Ghazi Hamad publicly declared that October 7 was:
1. just the first time,
2. and there will be a second, a third, a fourth,
3. we are ready to pay” the price,
4. and vowing to continue until Israel was totally annihilated.

And in the weeks since a hostage release-ceasefire deal was reached last month, Hamas and its allies have also repeatedly called the war a “victory” for their cause.

Indeed, Abu Marzouk’s remarks were quickly countered by Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem, who said:
1. “The occupation’s aggressive and destructive behavior is the cause of the destruction in Gaza"
2. The October 7 epic marks a strategic turning point in the Palestinian national struggle.

In a statement issued a short while later by the group itself, Hamas claimed Abu Marzouk’s comments were “incorrect and taken out of context.”

the terror group contended: The interview was conducted a few days ago and the published statements did not reflect the full content of the answers,”

In the interview, Abu Marzouk said Hamas’s survival, despite Israel’s campaign in Gaza, constituted a “kind of victory,” comparing the group, which has been the de facto government of Gaza since taking over from the Palestinian Authority in a 2007 coup, to a regular person who has survived a boxing match with heavyweight champion Mike Tyson — but he said that in absolute terms, it would be “unacceptable” to call the war a win for the terror group.

Abu Marzouk claimed:
1. “We’re talking about a party [Israel] that lost control of itself and took revenge against everything,”
2. “That is not a victory under any circumstances.”

Abu Marzouk says open to talking disarmament

In the interview, Abu Marzouk also said he was open to discussing the potential disarmament of the terror group in Gaza:
1. “We are ready to speak about every issue,”
2. “Any issue that is put on the table, we need to speak about it.”

He declined, however, to answer specific questions about what a compromise on disarmament might look like.

The comments seemed to contradict more hardline statements from other public leaders of late, such as politburo member Osama Hamdan, who said this month that “the weapons of the resistance” were non-negotiable

Asked about Hamdan’s remarks, Abu Marzouk told The New York Times that no one leader could set the organization’s agenda.

Qassem, the Hamas spokesman, also rejected this suggestion, saying:
1. We hold onto our resistance weapon as a legitimate right,
2. and what was attributed to Moussa Abu Marzouk does not represent the movement’s stance.

"Resistance in all its forms is a legitimate right for our people until liberation and return.”

Asked about the ongoing, fragile hostage release-ceasefire deal, which has paused fighting in the Strip as Hamas has freed captives who were mostly abducted on October 7 and Israel has set free over a thousand Palestinian security prisoners, including many terror convicts —

Abu Marzouk said he was open to extending the three-part deal’s first phase, which is currently slated to end on Saturday.