There have been several reports in recent weeks that Jerusalem is on the verge of reaching a long-term ceasefire deal with the terrorist group governing the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, Gazan terrorists fired a rocket at Israel on Sunday, which landed in an open field, causing no injuries. The IDF responded with an airstrike on a Hamas military position. Michael Milstein comments on the situation:

With no strategic alternative, such as the Palestinian Authority’s [taking] control of the besieged enclave . . . or a military takeover by Israel, a long-term understanding over Gaza is an option that must be considered. But in recent months, what has been transpiring on the ground is far from the hoped-for strategic long-term understanding.

It is unclear whether Hamas is prepared for such an agreement, and Israel, which is once again on the cusp of a national election, is unable to make decisions of a strategic nature. Officials in Jerusalem are trying to show they are making progress in the talks, whether motivated by political considerations or by security concerns such as the need to concentrate efforts on the northern front and Iran.

But haste, in this case, may push back three key issues that must be included in any real agreement: Hamas must agree to end its military actions, including those on the West Bank; Hamas must assume complete control of all rogue factions in the Gaza Strip; the bodies of two fallen Israeli soldiers and two Israeli civilians believed held by Hamas in Gaza must be released.

In recent months, Hamas has created a public perception that it is in line with Israel’s efforts to reach a long-term understanding and to combat the rogue factions destabilizing the Strip. . . . Until the key issues are agreed upon, [however], Israel’s government should not claim progress is being made toward any long-term agreement.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.