“People out here, they’re actors. They just want a cause. They want to do something about it: ‘Free Palestine.’ But that’s as far as they’ve looked into it. They don’t look past the buzzwords,” Maher concluded.
As a brief history, Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2005, which included removing over 9,000 Israeli citizens living in settlements in the region to the pre-1967 Six-Day War boundary.
In 2006, Hamas won a majority in the parliamentary elections, and the following year the terrorist group seized control of Gaza from the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, which administers the semi-autonomous areas of the West Bank, the Associated Press reported.
As part of the Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1994, Israeli forces had agreed to a framework for Palestinian self-government.
Violent flare-ups followed, causing Israel to go back into Gaza before withdrawing again in 2005.
Hamas used it as a base of operations for missile strikes against Israel and, ultimately, the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, during which they killed approximately 1,200 Israelis and took 250 people hostage.
Maher and Fetterman know the history. It’s not Israel that has impeded peace. It’s Hamas and the Palestinians who support them.
