Dodgy Deals

If it sounds too good to be true, you can guarantee that whatever deal has been touted will likely be doomed to unravel.

Shady business arrangements and dubious political claims have a lot in common. They are designed to entrap the gullible and those seeking quick fixes. Promises of unlimited profits or peace in our time, hallucinations abound.

Those who fall for quick returns on business offers usually overlook obvious pitfalls and end up throwing good money after bad.

Meanwhile, entire countries can fall victim to shady promises of security and fake guarantees.

Israel has experienced its fair share of the latter over the years since 1948. Every time promises were made that giving up land for peace would bring security and boundless love from a grateful world, the opposite has occurred. Like a battered spouse, Israeli politicians kept repeating the same mistakes, and in return, all that actually eventuated were rockets, missiles and terror.

After the 1956 Sinai campaign, the USA imposed a “deal” on Israel whereby it would withdraw from territory in exchange for a guarantee of free shipping transit rights for Israeli vessels through the Gulf of Aqaba to Eilat. That fell apart when Nasser of Egypt reimposed a blockade in 1967, and the American guarantee of unimpeded shipping vanished like a mirage. Egypt expelled the UN peacekeeping forces from Gaza, which consigned yet another deal to the trash can.

After the 1967 War, more deals were touted. All of them had the same purpose of driving Israel out of its Biblical and historical heartland and delegitimising Jerusalem as the country’s capital.

A definition of idiocy is a compulsive urge to keep repeating the same mistakes with disastrous results.

In 1993 and 1995, Israel’s leftist political elite leaders signed the Oslo Accords, which gave a kosher stamp of authenticity to the Palestine Liberation Organisation and its terror leader, Arafat.

According to this “deal of the century”, bringing Arafat and his gangs of terrorists back from exile in Tunisia and planting them on Israel’s doorstep would usher in an era of peace and an age of brotherhood. Giving up land for some amorphous security promise was promoted as something so good that we couldn’t afford to turn it down.

As terror subsequently erupted, this hallucinatory and fatally flawed hellish vision of a “new Middle East” proved to be borne out. Buses were blown up, Israelis were terrorized and death on a large scale ensued. Incredibly, there are still some who look back nostalgically to those days and advocate for yet another such deal.

Another deal that has now come back to haunt us is the disastrous appeasement of the Islamic Iranian regime.

From President Carter to Obama and Biden, the Mullahs of Tehran have been given a free pass to develop nuclear capability and the missile means to deliver them. Appeasing Iran with worthless deals did nothing to stop its clandestine and feverish efforts to develop a programme designed to eliminate the “Zionist entity.”

Israel’s warnings and opposition were ignored as the Iranian march to nuclear blackmail hurtled forward.

The twelve-day war in 2025 and a new incumbent in the White House finally woke up some decision makers. Unfortunately, Trump’s crippling of Iran’s nuclear facilities stopped short of liberating the long-suffering Iranians from the evil grasp of the Islamic jihadists. It also emboldened Iranian sponsorship of terror via their proxies in various other countries.

These kinds of mistakes inevitably lead to worse threats down the line. That explains why we are currently poised for, hopefully, a final round. Will a determined effort by the USA and allies to finally tackle the Iranian threat and save its citizens actually happen? It remains to be seen, but if history is anything to go by, refusing to act will guarantee a bigger disaster in the future.

This brings me to the latest grandiose “deal of the millennium” concocted by Trump with the assistance of Witkoff and Kushner.

Following the 7 October 2023 pogrom by Hamas, which witnessed the greatest murder of Jews since the Shoah, Israel has been engaged in a bitter struggle to rescue its hostages and destroy the infrastructure of terror tunnels in Gaza.

This has resulted in collective worldwide convulsions. Denunciations against Israel and Zionists have swept the world, facilitated by international appeasement and hypocritical double standards.

Emboldened by recognition of a fake “Palestine” by weak-kneed democracies, jihadist supporters believe that all they need to do to achieve their aims is to increase their nefarious activities. After all, if the Hamas massacres can result in the prize of a state in the heartland of Israel, then the sky is the limit.

Once again, as has been so often the case in the past, the urge to replace determined action with illusory deals has surfaced.

The fundamental feature of the situation in Gaza is the jihadist theology of Hamas, which has as its core agenda the denial of any Jewish sovereignty in the region. This in turn leads to terror and an unbridled urge to eliminate any sort of Jewish presence.

The brainwashing of the next generation with lies and libels about Israel, Zionists and Jews ensures that a vast majority of Gaza inhabitants remain indoctrinated with hate and incitement. The eager participation of young men in the 2023 massacres attests to how far the poisonous infection has spread.

One of the main objectives of the Gaza campaign has been the total destruction of Hamas as a viable terror organisation and its terror infrastructure.

Unfortunately, there are some who prefer to leave the job half done, and as a result, we now face a farcical and dangerous situation.

Ignoring the core source of the problem, namely Islamic Jihadist hate, and instead treating the situation as a glorified real estate challenge, guarantees a disastrous future. Trump, Witkoff and Kushner have concocted a deal which envisages a territory filled with high-rise condominiums, casinos, resorts and luxurious malls. It is a vision worthy of Las Vegas and the Riviera all rolled into one glorious playground for the rich and powerful.

Its major flaw, of course, is that it assumes the prospective tenants and inhabitants will be law-abiding and filled with a zealous ambition to live in peace and tolerance with their neighbours. It presumes that instead of dying to become martyrs and murdering Jews and other infidels the citizens of Gaza will miraculously be transformed into tolerant peace loving individuals.

Nobody has explained how Hamas and its army of terrorists will be disarmed and prevented from resuming their murderous activities. Who is going to disarm them and ban them from any part of a new administration?

It certainly will not be enforced by the grandiose “Board of Peace” which is being cobbled together. Qatar and Turkey have been long-time patrons of the Muslim Brotherhood and financiers of Hamas. They have provided them with a safe haven for many years and have been instrumental in promoting their “virtues” to gullible politicians and officials in the USA and Europe.

Russia, with its less-than-pristine record of “peace”, together with China, is another prospective member of this board, as are other nations, either habitually anti-Israel or too terrified to say no to Trump.

Even Netanyahu felt compelled to join this farcical exercise.

A prerequisite for permanent membership is a donation of US$1 billion. I doubt whether there will be a rush to donate, especially when long-suffering taxpayers in some countries have already been robbed in order to finance the corrupt UNRWA agency.

It has not taken long for Hamas to work out exactly how, with the help of its friends, it can extort and corrupt this deal.

Reuters reports that the terror group is demanding that 10,000 of its security personnel be incorporated into any so-called supervising authority that may be established in Gaza.

Hamas has also denied that it will be destroying any terror tunnels.

Anyone with a glimmer of common sense can see that this delusory deal being touted by the White House and enthusiastically embraced by those with nary a clue of reality about jihadist ideology is headed for a dead end. The trouble is that the intended victims of the collateral damage will inevitably be Israel and its citizens.

Donald Trump has claimed he has brought peace to the Middle East for the first time in 3,000 years.

Steve Witkoff has declared that “a new day has dawned.”

Jared Kushner has promised a Gaza paradise on earth.

What could possibly go wrong?

Michael Kuttner is a Jewish New Zealander who for many years was actively involved with various communal organisations connected to Judaism and Israel. He now lives in Israel and is J-Wire’s correspondent in the region.