New Hampshire’s senior U.S. senator has endorsed a Biden plan for the Israel-Hamas conflict that allows the terrorist organization to remain — and possibly govern — in Gaza. Shaheen also reiterated her support for a “two-state solution” to bring to an end the “ongoing conflict” that’s been ongoing “since the Israeli state was created.”
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) told a WGIR radio host Monday the ceasefire deal President Joe Biden announced last Friday was “an excellent effort to try and bring the hostages home to put in place a ceasefire that provides humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.”
Biden’s three-stage proposal begins with a six-week ceasefire, a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the release of some of the hostages. Stage two would be a “permanent end to hostilities” and the release of remaining hostages. Stage three would be the rebuilding of Gaza.
None of the stages include eliminating the Hamas terrorist organization from Gaza, allowing it to fulfill its pledge to continue to carry out future attacks like the one on Oct. 7, 2023. That attack left some 1,200 Israelis dead, thousands more injured, and involved the use of rape as a weapon against Hamas’ victims.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said the destruction of Hamas in Gaza and the elimination of that future terrorist threat is a goal of Israel’s military action that he will not abandon.
“Israel has not changed its conditions to reach a permanent cease-fire. That will only happen after our objectives are met including destroying Hamas’ military and governing capabilities,” an Israeli official told NBC News Monday.
Shaheen insisted Israel must accept the Biden proposal.
“I think we need to continue to push the Israeli government because they can’t continue this war forever,” Shaheen said during Monday’s radio interview. “And what they’re doing sadly, is creating a whole other [sic] generation of Palestinians who are going to going to look for alternatives to Israeli governance.”
In fact, Israel has not governed Gaza since 2005, when then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered IDF soldiers to remove more than 9,000 Israeli citizens from settlements in Gaza and withdrew to the 1967 Green Line. Hamas has governed Gaza since 2007.
Shaheen’s stance is significant because she is a senior member of both the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees.
Shaheen acknowledged Israel “is a country that has the right to defend itself from that horrific attack on Oct. 7 when Hamas killed over 1,000 innocent Israelis in cold blood.” But she also said Israel had to accept a two-state solution.
“We need a separate Palestinian state so that this doesn’t become an ongoing conflict that happens again and again and again, as we’ve seen, since the Israeli state was created,” Shaheen said.
Suggesting that the creation of Israel provoked the violence its citizens have suffered from terrorists smacks of “blame the victim” Middle East policy, critics say.
“There is a terrorist group and there are its victims – blame should be assigned to the terror group, not the victims,” said Richard Goldberg, senior advisor at the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.
“Never mind that President Biden said he was presenting the offer that Israel made, not his own, and which Hamas has not accepted. But to acknowledge that would let the facts get in the way of a false narrative casting Israel as the problem.”
Shaheen also said America needs to pressure Israel into providing humanitarian aid to the citizens of Gaza, implying that the Jewish state would not do so otherwise.
“Well, I think it’s important for us to continue to pressure Israel,” Shaheen said. “We have, I believe, a responsibility to continue to pressure them to behave in a way that provides for humanitarian assistance for the Palestinians who have been displaced, many of them several times, and who are under constant attack.”
According to media reports, Hamas likes what it’s hearing from the West.
A spokesperson for the militant group said it “views positively” what was included in Biden’s speech, NBC News reported, “particularly his call for a permanent cease-fire, withdrawal of occupation forces from Gaza, reconstruction, and prisoner exchange.”
