Barry Shaw | The View from Israel | Oct 07, 2026
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The 7th of October will be etched eternally in the history books of Israel in grief and sorrow.
The 7th of October showed us Israelis, proved to us, how foolishly wrong we were to put our hope and faith into an enemy that had no intention of ever living in peace and prosperity alongside a Jewish State.
7/10 exposed Israel’s gross naivety in peace-making.
Look at what we left them when we dragged out every last Jew out of Gaza in 2005. Even the dead ones were exhumed to be reinterned in what was left of a geographical and strategically diminished Israel. We gifted them not just territory but rich orchards, a blooming tourist industry, beautiful homes.
All sacrificed in a generous but foolish gesture of hope and peace.
And how was that gesture received by the Palestinians? They went to war against themselves.
Even with the Fatah-PLO attempting to kill Jews in more spectacular fashion than Hamas, the Munich Olympic Games being just one example, they still lost an election to Hamas who promised to murder more Jews.
Even with their gunmen and suicide bombers, the Palestinian voter found the Fatah-PLO terror organization too docile, so they voted for Hamas, and still do today.
Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. The implication of that victory proved that the majority of Palestinians rather than vote for peace voted instead for the party that promised to kill more Jews and destroy Israel.
Hamas rejects recognition of Israel. Truth be told, so do the Fatah-PLO wing of the Palestinian Authority. Just look at their map of Palestine. It’s the map of Israel.
Even as they tell the outside world in English, they want peace, they tell the exact opposite to their own people in Arabic and actively reject the notion of a Jewish State anywhere by killing Jews.
Both sides of the Palestinian divide promote deadly terror attacks which they call “armed resistance.”
They are not resisting violence. They are “resisting” the existence of a Jewish State.
After Israel’s June 2007 withdrawal from Gaza a full-scale war broke out in Gaza proving that when Palestinians are not killing Israelis, they kill each other.
Hamas killers systematically overran Fatah-affiliated security compounds and government installations in Gaza. Days of heavy fighting left over 100 dead. Hamas seized total control of the Gaza Strip.
In Ramallah, Mahmoud Abbas dismissed the Hamas-led government leaving the Palestinian territories politically and geographically divided.
The last legislative election was held in January 2006. Hamas, standing as the Change and Reform list, won 74 seats and defeated Fatah. Palestinian democracy is acceptable only when it produces the desired result.
Hamas governed Gaza and Fatah operated in the areas negotiated to them by the international community despite their minority standing in the Palestinian Authority.
As for Gaza, post-Palestinian civil war, Israel allowed Qatar to funnel over a billion dollars in aid money to Hamas in Gaza. Half of the money went into developing the Gaza infrastructure which turned Gaza into an above-below ground terror metropolis constructed by and with the full knowledge, support, and labour of the Gazan population. The rest of the money went into indoctrination and military training.
Truth be told, Israel encouraged this money channel between Qatar and Hamas without adequately auditing how this money was being spent.
Israel was unable to visibly inspect what was being developed in Gaza, except by inadequate intelligence.
Israel also failed to adequately check the involvement of UN officials in both the indoctrination and the military preparedness that was taking place both in and below their various facilities.
This exposed the naivety of peace-making. You trust your enemy to do the right thing. They rarely do, especially when wedded to a radical Islamic cause.
Israel allowed into Gaza several thousand tons of cement mainly paid for by permitted Qatari-Gaza money for construction purposes and wages to Gazans according to Hamas book-keeping without the foresight to inspect if that material was not being used to construct the longest underground tunnel system in the history of mankind with entrances and exits under homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, and United Nations facilities.
Israel did not employ a necessary hands-on approach to the end use of funding. Going forward, Israel must insist on a strict verification approach to funding Gaza even if it is forced to accept a Trump Board of Peace administration.
Trust and verify must become singularly Verify.
One thing is absolutely certain. The deceptive nature of the Palestinian psyche does not allow Israel to trust. The Palestinian tore that word out of the Israeli vocabulary. Even today I am getting information on how the Palestinian Authority, in its schools still named after murderous terrorists, paid for by the international community, is still indoctrinating its children to a future in which Israel does not exist and they school summer camps still indoctrinate the kids to take up arms against the Jews, and conduct training exercises and pantomimes of glorious Palestinian heroes kidnapping and killing Jews. This is taking place in schools in Ramallah and under the control of Mahmoud Abbas, not in Gaza.
Further Palestinian deception takes place in its police force which has, for the last few years, developed into a military sized army with military styled attack forces using military equipment. This goes against not only signed agreements and obligations but also all international conventions relating to police forces.
Today, both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are dedicated to an end game that leaves no room for Israel to survive.
It began with Arafat’s disclosure to a congregation in a Johannesburg Mosque that his signature on the Oslo Accord agreement was a deception, nothing more than the paper that Mohammad signed with the Quraish tribe that he would leave them in peace for at least ten years, but then he returned in force when the tribe had dropped their guard.
One significant outcome of Mohammad’s deceptive behaviour was the triumphant beheading of 700 Jewish men and boys in Mecca.
In Johannesburg, Arafat was telling the Muslim world that he was the new Mohammad against the Jews. His legacy lives on both with Hamas, with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, under Fatah and the PLO and the Palestinian police-military force.
The Palestinian Authority set 28 November 2026 as the date for electing the 132 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, with voting due to take place in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The central question, however, is not simply whether the elections will take place, but whether Palestinians will be free to choose their representatives — including those who promote “resistance” a cute word meaning endless terror attacks against Israelis.
To this end, a Palestinian poll was taken by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip between 5 and 8 August 2026 that found 82 % wanting Mahmoud Abbas to resign as Palestinian president.
Although support for Hamas has declined over the last year it did not swing in favour of the Fatah-PLO block but to the notorious mass murdering terrorist, Marwan Barghouti who, according to the poll, would receive 54% among likely voters.
Barghouti is the head of the Tanzim terror organisation and founder of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade which carried out the largest number of deadly terror attacks killing scores of Israelis and wounded hundreds more until the arrival of Hamas.
He is serving five life sentences plus 40 years for organising multiple terror attacks against Israelis.
If anyone is deserving of the new Israeli approved death sentence for the murder of Israelis, he is the man. Instead, he has become and even bigger hero to regular Palestinians.
Under imprisoned Barghouti, Tanzim is preparing to be the Hamas of Judea and Samaria, planning to do a Hamas but across our central Green Line which overlooks the Mediterranean coastal plain of Israel.
Personal confession. I live in Netanya. I am a ten-minute walk to the Mediterranean beach, as in “from the River to the Sea.” Except, for me, its not the river I see but the high ground in which Palestinians look down on me. That’s how narrow, how fragile, how exposed, the coastal metropolis of Israel is to the danger that are the Palestinians.
As Israel commemorates the national disaster of 7/10, Palestinians are even more radical today than they were before their invasion of Israel in late 2023.
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