"Israel is left worse off than when Hamas managed Gaza, given the sheer power of Turkey (which is increasing).... The deployment of Turkish forces in Gaza and the sale of F-35s to Erdogan are not policy ideas but a method: regional management through personal deals and assurances rather than hard reality. Trump himself illustrated this approach when he dismissed the issue as if it were a neighborhood misunderstanding: Israel 'will be fine' and Turkey 'won't use them against you'. This is not policy; it is a dangerous assumption. In the Middle East, it does not work. — Christine Douglass-Williams, Frontpage Magazine, January 7, 2026.

"Giving Turkey a role in Gaza's future is a strategic mistake that will sooner or later, reborn Hamas or end up with a new militia with Hamas's goals, with another name." — Hamza Howidy, Palestinian journalist, x.com, October 26, 2025.

Erdogan's regime, however, through its continuous support for Hamas, has not brought a lasting peace; it has brought lasting terrorism. Erdogan's own words reveal his intentions.

"In this city, which we had to leave in tears during the First World War, it is still possible to come across traces of the Ottoman resistance. So Jerusalem is our city, a city from us." — Erdogan in an address at the opening of Parliament, October 1, 2020.

"Turkey collaborates with terror organizations on both the ideological and operational levels. Terrorists working on Turkish soil establish infrastructures and plan terror attacks against Israel." — From the report "Hamas' Istanbul Headquarters Has Directed Hundreds of Terror Attacks Against Israelis and Laundered Millions of Dollars," JFCA, December 30, 2021.

"Turkey is a base for the Muslim Brotherhood. There are networks there that help Hamas with funding, support, religious rulings, and logistics. Turkey has become a reception point for Brotherhood members." — Michael Barak, specialist at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism on radical Islamist and jihadist movements, JNS, April 24, 2025

"Turkey, under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is one of Hamas' most important strategic allies, especially since the violent events of the Mavi Marmara flotilla in 2010. Turkey hosts senior Hamas figures, some of whom have received Turkish citizenship, and provides political, diplomatic and propaganda support, as well as economic and humanitarian assistance." — From the report "Turkey as a Center for Hamas Activity," Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, March 2025.

It would not be surprising if Turkey wished for nothing more -- apart from F-35 fighter jets -- than to help bring "peace" to Gaza. As soon as Trump leaves office, Erdogan would be exquisitely situated to target Israel in a pincer operation: from Syria in the east -- helped by Erdogan's protégé, Ahmed al-Sharaa -- and from Gaza in the West.

Anyone investing in the rebuilding of Gaza, in which a role is played by Turkey, Qatar, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority, Bangladesh or the UN (which just allocated a budget of $100 million for targeting Israel) -- in short, a bouquet of countries that have long wished for Israel's demise -- should probably expect their bid for a "Gazan Riviera" eventually to have a disappointing return on investment.

It will be easy for these longtime adversaries of Israel to join the Abraham Accords and enjoy the benefits as long as they can – just as it was to sign the Oslo Accords – then, at the earliest opportunity, tear them up, especially after being so deliciously positioned to attack Israel when Trump is no longer in office.

No wonder Erdogan and the others must be licking their chops at the prospect of bringing "peace" to the Gazan chicken coop.

"The evidence confirms that NGOs in Gaza do not operate independently or neutrally," NGO Monitor found. "Rather, they are embedded in an institutionalized framework of coercion, intimidation, and surveillance that serves Hamas' terror objectives.... NGOs – both local and international, including ones operating under the auspices of UN projects – are not permitted to provide services or operate projects in Gaza without Hamas' approval."

On an everyday basis, NGOs need permission from Hamas to do their work in Gaza.

Hamas also inserted "guarantors" – local Gazans approved by Hamas, or themselves Hamas members or affiliates – into high positions in the respective NGOs to serve as points of contact between Hamas and the NGOs. Hamas required its "guarantors" to be placed at the highest administrative levels of the NGO, such as director, deputy director, or board chair.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), for instance, an Oslo-based NGO operating in Gaza, among other places, chose to simply ignore concerns from a Gazan that his floor was collapsing because of a terror tunnel being built underneath.

The mainstream media has largely refused to acknowledge that, as reported in a recent study by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, 60% of the "journalists" killed during the fighting in Gaza were Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives or affiliates.

No legal system could anticipate all imaginable cases of an illegal action. That can be done only if and when an act contravenes a clearly defined law that also envisages a clearly defined punishment. Neither of those caveats applies to the foggy notion of national sovereignty, let alone to the foggier concept of international law.

Leaving aside virtue-signalers and blame-America cabals attacking the US, the truth is that international law is as exposed as the Wizard of Oz was at the end of Dorothy's journey.

Perhaps the most accurate description of Operation Absolute Resolve came from Beijing, with the term "hegemonic act". True, the US acted as a hegemon, that is to say, a power capable of enforcing its laws against foes.

The late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called Maduro "my bus driver". Maduro drove the Venezuelan bus into a ravine and made himself easily kidnappable. Venezuela doesn't cry for him.

President Donald J. Trump has emerged as the first leader to stand decisively, openly, and courageously with the Iranian people themselves — against the dictatorship, against repression, and in favor of genuine freedom, democracy and peace.

What distinguishes Trump's position is not rhetoric, but resolve. For years, Western leaders have issued statements of "concern" while avoiding any action that might inconvenience their diplomatic calculations or economic interests. President Trump broke from that spinelessness.

More importantly, Trump sent a direct warning to the Iranian regime: if it continues to kill innocent protesters, he will "rescue" them: the United States will not stand idly by. This is the opposite of a call for war; it is deterrence in the service of peace -- a warning designed to prevent bloodshed, signaling to all violent regimes that massacres will not be tolerated or ignored.

Thank you, President Trump, for standing with the oppressed, for choosing people over tyrants, and for reminding the world that peace is not achieved by silence in the face of evil, but by courage in defense of individual freedom. May the Iranian, Venezuelan, Gazan and Cuban people -- and others held hostage by cutthroat leaders -- achieve their long-denied dream of freedom, democracy, and peace. God bless you, President Trump.

According to critics, this framework [the European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA)] effectively forces American platforms to act as "speech police" on behalf of the EU, under the constant threat of severe sanctions. In doing so, the DSA produces extraterritorial effects that extend well beyond Europe. This point is crucial: any American user of X, for instance, can be sanctioned by X for expressing opinions on the platform. In practice, the DSA is thus applied to all Americans. This requirement constitutes a clear instance of the normative imperialism that has characterized the EU for the past 20 years.

The only conceivable technical alternative would be the creation of separate platforms — an X-USA and an X-EU — which would amount to a denial of the very idea of a global network and of the internet itself.

The US House Judiciary Committee has denounced this system as one of "organized censorship," in which the EU effectively "arms" NGOs to compel American technology companies to remove content that is lawful in the United States but deemed "problematic" in Europe.

Fines could reach up to 6% of a company's global turnover, amounting to potentially billions of euros for firms such as Meta or Google. In cases of non-cooperation, platforms even face the possibility of a temporary ban within the EU.

This environment of stringent enforcement strongly encourages platforms to over-moderate content in order to minimize regulatory risk, leading to the removal of content that is perfectly legal. We are speaking here of approximately eight million posts deleted per month in the European Union, not including complete bans, such as those imposed on Russian media outlets.

Illegal content is treated as the top priority. Defined by the EU and national legislation, it includes hate speech (such as incitement to violence based on race or religion), terrorist content, child sexual exploitation material, counterfeit goods, and dangerous products.... Yet the central problem remains: "hate" itself is never defined in law.

It must be stressed that disinformation itself is not illegal. The DSA therefore mandates the active censorship of content that is lawful -- but merely displeasing to the European Princes and their legions of censors.

American freedom of speech cannot survive a "Big Brother" DSA.

Trump's plan may have ended the Israeli-Hamas war, but it has not stopped Hamas from waging its own brutal campaign against its own people.

Since the ceasefire went into effect, Hamas has turned hospitals in the Gaza Strip from terrorist command centers into terrorist interrogation and detention centers.

"Hamas has turned all of Gaza's hospitals into MAJOR police, intelligence, and security headquarters, a flagrant criminal violation of international law and humanitarian law and basic decency." — Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, Palestinian political analyst and former resident of the Gaza Strip, x.com, January 1, 2026.

"Hamas isn't hiding its brutality. The hospitals of Al-Shifa, Al-Aqsa and Nasser are not simply medical centers. Hamas has repurposed Gaza's main hospitals as interrogation sites, cages, gulags for perceived 'dissidents.'" -- Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, x.com, January 6, 2026.

"How many of our people need to disappear into hospital basements, interrogation rooms, and 'revolutionary courts' before the pro-Palestine movement stops romanticizing this militia and starts seeing what Gazans have been living under for years?" — Hamza Howidy, Palestinian political activist from the Gaza Strip, now in Europe, x.com, November 30, 2025

Hamas, according to Palestinian sources, has set up a number of armed units whose main mission is to hunt down and silence its political rivals. Some of these Palestinians have been forced to make public "confessions" about their alleged ties to Israel. The videos are then posted on various Hamas-affiliated social media platforms as part of a psychological warfare designed to terrorize and deter the residents of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas wants to go back to the days when the international community, including the United Nations, was providing humanitarian aid and food to the Gaza residents while the terror group was busy building tunnels, manufacturing weapons and preparing massacres against Israel.

Hamas's "political" leaders, living luxuriously in Qatar, are no less dangerous than the terrorists hiding in Gaza's tunnels. There must be no room in the Middle East for terrorists and criminals who continue to commit crimes not only against Israel, but also against their own people. By the time the second phase of Trump's plan begins, the only Palestinians left in the Gaza Strip will be the leaders of Hamas and their supporters.

Pakistan has repeatedly demonstrated its unreliability as a strategic partner.

Pakistan's leadership unfortunately prefers Iran to the United States — not to mention Israel. Unfortunately, the US cannot trust Pakistan — especially in Gaza.

Pakistan has, to this day, never recognized Israel. Pakistan was also the first country to recognize the Islamic Republic of Iran after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini established it in 1979. Iran had been the first country to recognize Pakistan upon its founding in 1947.

The most recent example of Pakistan's close alliance with Iran emerged during the June 2025 Twelve-Day War — a direct armed conflict between Iran and a coalition of Israel and the United States. Throughout the hostilities, Pakistan aligned firmly with Iran, publicly expressing unqualified solidarity with Tehran.

As a recipient of Major Non-NATO Ally privileges, Pakistan should not be regarded as a dependable ally, but as an extremely problematic partner whose privileged status warrants serious reconsideration.

China has never been more trade-dependent in its history. Xi Jinping's only hope for an economy that is probably contracting is to increase exports. He knows — or should know — that he is in no position to disrupt international commerce.

Xi apparently believes that a high degree of tension is in his personal interest because continual confrontation would prevent political adversaries from challenging or even deposing him.... Any incident, therefore, could spiral out of control.

The United States has treaty obligations to defend two likely victims of Chinese aggression — Japan and the Philippines — and has a moral obligation and many practical reasons to defend Taiwan. As a practical matter, once one country in America's treaty network gets attacked, all countries in the network end up fighting.

Iran... will almost certainly retaliate over what it sees as the UAE helping its citizens escape.

If Iran's current instability deepens into a full crisis, Iranians may attempt these crossings by boat. The proximity of Iran to the UAE makes it virtually inevitable.

Once boatloads of people fleeing Iran appear in UAE waters, the sequence becomes predictable. Media coverage will be immediate and global. The UAE will accept refugees. Iran -- regardless of UAE intentions -- will see this as the UAE helping their citizens escape during a national emergency, and most probably retaliate.

The Arab and Muslim countries, including Pakistan, will not disarm Hamas.

Pakistan -- which does not recognize Israel and does not regard Hamas as a terrorist organization –- was the first country to recognize Iran's Khomeini regime in 1979, just as, in 1947, Iran was the first country to recognize Pakistan's independence. Since then, not only has Pakistan had far closer relations with Iran than with Israel, but, after the Gaza War in 2023, has repeatedly called for Muslim nations to "unite against Israel."

Meanwhile, it is simply not realistic to assume that the Palestinian terror groups will voluntarily hand over their weapons.

These Arab and Muslim heads of state will only take action against Islamist terrorists when they pose a threat to their regimes, security and stability.

The Gaza Strip does not need peacekeepers and monitors. US President Donald J. Trump himself came up with the solution months ago, as he did this week for Venezuela: "We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. So we don't want to be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years."

Developers would rush in to create Trump's original vision of a "Gaza Riviera": "Gaza would be under U.S. trusteeship for around ten years 'until a reformed and deradicalized Palestinian Polity is ready to step in its shoes.'"

Those Palestinians in Gaza who wish to leave would be able to do so without fear of being threatened or shot. The US could make sure that any terrorists who refused completely to disarm would, as Trump warned about "bad hombres" in Mexico be "taken care of." If there are legitimate concerns about US troops being put in harm's way, perhaps Gaza's neighbor to the east might help out.

Above all, Trump the master builder could oversee the successful development of some of the world's most magnificent real estate, as he said about Venezuela: "We are going to have our very large United States oil companies go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure... and start making money for the country."

Change the word "oil" above to "real estate development" for Gaza, and Trump will have delivered the most far-reaching peace ever in history -- twice -- to two separate hemispheres.

Arab and Muslim countries might object: it ruins their chances of attacking Israel more easily after Trump leaves office. That is precisely why a pervasive US or Israeli presence in Gaza is the only way to ensure the success of peace in Gaza, peace in the rest of the Middle East, and a spectacular future for the peaceful Palestinians who remain.

The second [challenge to the Abraham Accords] is more insidious. It comes from states that speak the language of counterterrorism while enabling movements tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. They denounce extremism while empowering ideologues inside "legitimate" institutions; they praise stability while tolerating and even sponsoring destabilizing networks under the protection of state recognition.

For those states supporting violent Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood, ambiguity must end. Strategic clarity is not moral theater; it is survival logic. One cannot oppose the Muslim Brotherhood while enabling its advance. One cannot fight terrorism while empowering regressive Islamist movements that capture governing institutions. One cannot defend the Abraham Accords rhetorically while eroding their foundations in practice.

Ever since Trump succeeded in implementing the first stage of his 20-point plan for ending the Gaza conflict, Hamas has received widespread backing from its supporters in Ankara, Doha, Islamabad and Tehran for ignoring demands to surrender its weapons.

Hamas's recalcitrance on the disarmament issue, moreover, has been reinforced by the support it has received from its backers in Turkey, Qatar, Pakistan and Iran to ignore the Trump administration's disarmament demand.

Israeli officials believe that Turkey, and Qatar, which does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, are instead working on alternative solutions that would not require Hamas to disarm. The Turks and Qataris have proposed that Hamas either transfer its weapons to the Palestinian Authority (PA), or to some kind of "secure storage under oversight." Behind both proposals lies the aim of preserving Hamas' influence in Gaza and ability to rearm. Israel insists, however, that Hamas must be weapons‑free.

Instead, all of Hamas's backers -- as well as the Palestinian Authority waiting in the wings to displace the group -- continue playing their dangerous double game of trying to be allies of both the Trump administration and Hamas's terrorist leadership at the same time.

In addition, Turkey, Qatar, Iran and Pakistan have never designated Hamas as a terrorist organisation – and believe that it is entitled to continue its "resistance" -- meaning terrorism –- against Israel.

It is commendable that the US president, rather than acting rashly, has continually offered adversaries -- such as Russia, China and Iran -- time to consider his requests. Hamas's allies, however, including the Palestinian Authority in its current form, have little incentive ever actually to comply with Trump's demands.

These missiles – now part of reportedly the largest missile arsenal in the Middle East – can reach not only regional targets but also the U.S. and Europe, a senior Iranian lawmaker has openly boasted. The regime does not just brag about these weapons; it uses them.

This trajectory should deeply concern the United States, Europe, and other democracies. A regime that openly calls for the destruction of Israel, supplies weapons to violent proxies, and supports Russia's war effort against Ukraine cannot be allowed to expand such a missile capability unchecked.

Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and other armed groups aligned with Iran have all benefited from Iran's "beneficence."

With the weapons it is supplying to Russia, Iran's drones and related technologies are already devastating Ukraine. This alone should dispel any illusion that Iran's ballistic missile program is a purely regional issue.

Increased sanctions, unified pressure, and a clear willingness to keep all options -- especially a military one -- on the table are not acts of aggression. They are measures of responsibility in the face of a growing and irrefutable threat.

"[T]he Baqt treaty ... imposed an annual payment of 360 slaves on the Christian kingdom of Nubia [based along the Nile river].... By 1877, when there were said to be upwards of 6,000 slave-traders operating in the region, the British government estimated in a report to the Egyptian authorities that around 30,000 slaves per annum were being sent across the Red Sea from the East African coast to the Arabian peninsula alone." — Justin Marozzi, British historian, in his 2025 book Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World.

"For Arabic-speakers along the Nile Valley, both the terms Nubi (Nubian) and Sudani (Sudanese), meaning black, were synonymous with 'slave.'" — Justin Marozzi, Captives and Companions.

"A lasting and painful irony...is that the northern Arab Sudanese do not consider themselves black, reserving that pejorative term for their dark-skinned Sudanese and South Sudanese compatriots, in addition to Africans from further afield, who for centuries they enslaved." — Justin Marozzi, Captives and Companions.

Then followed the disgraceful betrayal of the black Africans of Sudan by the government of the African National Congress, with Cyril Ramaphosa both as deputy president (2014-2018) and as president, up to today.

"By the dying years of the twentieth century... slavery was once again thriving in Sudan. For the National Islamic Front of Omar al-Bashir, the then president of Sudan (in office 1993-2019), it was an effective weapon of war against his black southern Sudanese compatriots." — Justin Marozzi, Captives and Companions.

"When the country split in 2011, it was estimated that over 35,000 South Sudanese people remained enslaved in Sudan. In Darfur the Janjaweed militia ran amok, committing numerous atrocities. One eyewitness, Neimat al Mahdi, recalled how the Janjaweed would enter the village of an African tribe, kill all the men and rape the women, mocking them afterwards with the age-old racial slur: 'You should celebrate, you slave. You are going to give birth to an Arab.'" — Justin Marozzi, Captives and Companions.

"Whichever way you looked across the nineteenth-century Dar al Islam ["Land of Islam"], slavery coolly returned your gaze." — Justin Marozzi, Captives and Companions.

Sadly, in the Qur'an, slavery is condoned and used as a justification for rape, male control of women, and other abuse.

[T]he Iran-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas is planning to elect a new leader for its political bureau and replace many of its members who were killed during the fighting with Israel. Hamas's goal: to show the world that it is not going anywhere; that it now, because it holds an internal election, should be considered a legitimate, respectable government, and that it solidly intends to maintain its control of the Gaza Strip, in violation of US President Donald J. Trump's 20-point peace plan.

The terror group has simply exploited Trump's ceasefire plan to rearm, regroup and consolidate its civilian and military control in areas of the Gaza Strip in which Israeli forces are not present since the ceasefire agreement took effect. For Hamas, Trump's plan is just another temporary ceasefire that allows it to entrench its position and restock its military capabilities.

"Hamas understood that overt control of the Strip would deter the international community from transferring the funds required for reconstruction, delay the rebuilding of the Strip and could spark civilian unrest, and therefore signaled its willingness to transfer the civilian administration to a Palestinian technocratic government, while refusing to disarm." — The Meir Amit Terrorism Information Center, November 3, 2025.

Here is what the Trump administration needs to understand: Hamas, like ISIS, as a deeply committed terrorist organization, has no right to exist. Its military, civilian, and political infrastructure needs to be completely dismantled and destroyed. Unfortunately, this is the only way to achieve security and stability in the Middle East and prevent another October 7-style massacre against Israel.