ATLANTA—Israel can’t make peace until Hamas is defeated, and when it is, prospects will be better for Israelis and Palestinians alike, an Israeli diplomat said.
“The war in Gaza is not a choice for us,” Anat Sultan-Dadon, Israel’s Consulate General to the Southeastern United States, told The Epoch Times.
“Hamas opened this war with its unprecedented attack on Oct. 7. And we have no choice but to remove this threat from the Gaza Strip. To destroy Hamas. To ensure there is no terror threat emanating from the Gaza Strip.
“And to ensure that, contrary to what Hamas leaders claim they want to achieve—which is the destruction of the state of Israel and repeating Oct. 7 again and again and again—it is on Israel to ensure that they will never be able to carry out such an attack again.”
In a wide-ranging, hour-long interview on Dec. 27, Ms. Sultan-Dadon touched on the war, Gaza’s future, United Nation’s complicity in stoking Palestinian hostility to Israel and in remaining silent on Hamas’ shocking war crimes, and prospects for getting Abrahamic Accord peace talks back on track.
That was a theme she returned to during the interview: that ousting Hamas serves the interests of Palestinians as well as Israelis.
The terror group has diverted billions of dollars in foreign aid, she said, to line its leaders’ pockets and to build military infrastructure such as the elaborate tunnel system underneath the Gaza Strip.
Many were built with tunnel-boring machines, lit, ventilated, and high enough for adults to walk upright. Some were big enough for vehicles to drive through.
Demilitarizing means ensuring the means of terror can’t enter the Gaza Strip, including over its Egyptian border, she said.
Deradicalizing, she said, means the Palestinian leadership must stop “educating their children to hate, glorifying terror, death, and destruction, rather than teaching their people to accept the state of Israel and to invest in building their future peacefully alongside the state of Israel.”
Ms. Sultan-Dadon expressed confidence that the Abraham Accords, which have brought up to six the number of Arab nations to make peace with Israel, can get back on track after the war.
“Many have speculated that the growing likelihood that Saudi Arabia would strike a peace deal with Israel was what prompted Hamas to attack in desperation on Oct. 7.
“I think that in the long run we will continue to see a circle of peace growing, as more leaders choose a path of peace and a better future for their peoples,” she said.
“These accords, the Abraham Accords, make us stronger. They make our countries and our society stronger economically. We are better able to fulfill our potential together, as well as address common challenges.”
Ms. Sultan-Dadon was asked about the possibility of another ceasefire, like the one in late November in which some Israelis taken hostage on Oct. 7 were exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.
Israel, she said, had been willing to continue that ceasefire.
“It is Hamas that decided not to release any further hostages and not to continue the humanitarian pause,” she said.
“We have made it clear that we are committed to the release of all of our hostages and that we will be willing to have a humanitarian pause for that purpose. And that remains the case.”
But she qualified that an unconditional ceasefire “would only go towards strengthening Hamas and emboldening other terror organizations globally. It would imperil Israeli lives on a regular basis, and it would allow for the Palestinian people to remain under a regime that oppresses them and abuses them.”
Israel’s invasion of Gaza to finish off Hamas has drawn thousands of protesters in many cities.
A minority of protesters are driven by anti-Semitism and hatred toward Jews and Israel, she said.
“I think the larger majority who are taking part in these demonstrations are not aware of what it is that they are supporting.
“Were they generally concerned for the Palestinian people? Then they would be standing with Israel in the call to destroy Hamas because Hamas is not only a threat to Israel.
“They are committing war crimes against Israel. They are committing war crimes against their own people, using them as human shields.”
The Israeli army has reported numerous instances of terror tunnels and arms caches under or near hospitals and schools, not only in this war but going back years.
Hamas, since 2007, when it took over Gaza following Israel’s unilateral 2005 pullout, has “invested heavily in their terror agenda, rather than in the residents of the Gaza Strip,” Ms. Sultan-Dadon said.
“[They chose] death and destruction, prioritizing their hatred toward Israel, over the needs of the population, over the possibility to develop Gaza into what it could have been.”
They should have been investing instead in health care, infrastructure, technology, and economy generally, she said.
She was asked what the American public should be hearing about the war.
“It is important to understand that Israel is fighting a war against terror and for all the values the free world holds dear,” she said.
It is, at its core, she said, a war “against the fundamentalist Islamist agenda emanating from Iran.”
That agenda, she said, “is a threat not just to Israel, it is a threat to the stability of the region and a global threat to the entire free world.”
It also threatens the global economy, she said, as attacks from Iranian territory and Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen against merchant shipping have shown.
Some oil tankers and freighters are now opting to sail the long way around Africa rather than risk the much shorter Red Sea and Suez Canal routes.
That threat, she said, ought to be addressed by “a coalition of partners who share the concern.”
She declined to be specific about who should be in that coalition.
“Oct. 7 has changed Israel as we knew it,” she said. “Unimaginable atrocities were committed against our people on Oct. 7.
“As we continue fighting this war, we are suffering painful losses of our soldiers who are fighting in Gaza. But we also know we will win this war. We have no alternative but to win this war.
“The Israeli people are united in that determination, in their resilience, and in the knowledge that Israel is here to stay. We will remain committed to our future,” she said.
She dismissed criticism from leftist academics and politicians that Israel is an “apartheid state.”
“The state of Israel and apartheid have nothing to do with one another,” she said. “Israel’s Arab citizens have full rights in every walk of life. Israel’s Arab citizens were also among the victims of Oct. 7.
“They are also among those who have been treating the wounded, who have been fighting Hamas. They vote in Israeli elections and they get elected in Israeli elections. There are Arab parties in the Israeli parliament, in Israel’s Knesset.”
“There are Arab elected officials. There are Arab judges. It is an Arab Supreme Court judge who sent a former Israeli president [Moshe Katzav] to prison.”
“Using the term ‘apartheid’ just because it serves a false narrative does not make it true.”
She condemned the United Nations and other international organizations for their failure to condemn Hamas’s apparent use of rape on Oct. 7 as a weapon of war, which is a war crime.
“U.N. organizations are supposedly dedicated to ensuring women’s rights and safety across the world. Yet when it comes to Israeli women, to a large extent they have remained silent.”
She decried “the gender-based violence and the crimes against humanity that were committed on Oct. 7 by Hamas terrorists, [which] were systematic, deliberate and perpetrated against women, young girls and the elderly. They need to be held accountable.”
Ms. Sultan-Dadon said the phrase “pro-Palestinian” was too often used when “anti-Semitic” or “pro-Hamas” would be more accurate.
It should be used, she said, “in supporting the Palestinian people’s ability to build a better future alongside the state of Israel.
“Many Israelis and their leaders are, by this definition, pro-Palestinian,” she said.
“If pro-Palestinian equates with calls for the destruction of the state of Israel, then that is not choosing a better future for the Palestinians. Because there will never be self-determination for the Palestinian people at the cost of the destruction of the state of Israel.”
