Terrorism as religious sacrifice: What the Trump deal ignored

Peloni:  The same lack of clairvoyance among Trump’s peace processors, who were apparently surprised by Hamas’ return to the practice of Jihadi values of slaughter and public executions, will provide poor guidance in establishing a board of peace or its attempt to bring peace to Gaza or the region.  This insanity is due to the folly of pretending that the lack of peace in the region is due to a lack of economic potential, rather than the presence of Jihadi tribal values which are endemic in both the social and religious establishments of Gaza and the region, and neither of these real sources of Jihadism are recognized or addressed in the 20Point plan.

In essence, for Hamas, terror is a form of sacred violence oriented toward the “sacrifice” of enemies and martyrs.

Prof. Louis Rene Beres | Oct 18, 2025

Hamas 25th Anniversary celebration.  Photo by Fars Media Corporation, CC BY 4.0, Wikipedia

The problem is straightforward. President Donald Trump’s 20-Point plan for peace is drawn from verifiably false premises. Even now, in the midst of steadily escalating Hamas violations, supporters of the agreement refuse to understand the core motivators of Palestinian Arab terrorism.

Naively projecting their own views of Western history on present-day Middle East, these supporters have imprisoned themselves within simplistic frameworks of political explanation. Clinging stubbornly to clichés, they steadfastly ignore what is taking place before their eyes.

In the final analysis, jihadi terrorism (Hamas, et. al) is an expression of religious sacrifice. For these criminals (terrorism is always a codified crime), violence against Israel represents fulfillment of obligations that are “sacred.”

For Hamas terrorists, violence and the sacred are one and the same. They are logically inseparable. To overlook or misunderstand this point would doom any so-called “Board of Peace.”

History deserves pride of place. Earlier Israeli policy supported Hamas against Fatah. At that time, Fatah’s policy direction was most directly articulated by Othman Abu Gharbiya, deputy chief of the National and Political Guidance Bureau (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida): “We must always be prepared to sacrifice our blood, as in the beginning….and as we will continue to sacrifice. Fatah is a movement of blood sacrifice…. Our people gave the world a chance, and unless the world takes this opportunity, violence and havoc will come.”

These same primal sentiments quickly came to dominate Hamas, aka the Islamic Resistance Movement.

For Hamas and its jihadi allies, diplomatic settlements are always narrowly tactical or transactional. For these self-described “lovers of death” there is only one correct path. Regarding Israel, this is a path of “Holy War” and “Religious Sacrifice.”

Speaking to Palestinian Arab security forces in Gaza back in 2001, Yasser Arafat pledged: “We will fight for Allah, and we will kill and be killed, and this is a solemn oath…. Our blood is cheap compared with the cause which has brought us together…. but shortly we will meet again in heaven….” Central to understanding this rallying call is the duality of sacrifice. The fighters, all were told, “will kill and be killed….”

The message was and remains unambiguous. True victory for the Palestinian Arabs will come when both Israelis and Arab “martyrs” suffer force-multiplying death. But while death for “The Jews” will allegedly be final and unheroic, death for the Palestinian Arabs will be just a temporary inconvenience on the way to immortality.

For all jihadists, not just Hamas, it is both by killing Jews and being killed by Jews that freedom from death can be granted. This is the core meaning of Islamist terrorism against Israel, its “bottom line” rationale, its raison d’etre. In essence, terror is a form of sacred violence oriented toward the “sacrifice” of enemies and martyrs.

Quite pleasingly, we may learn from pertinent history, it is through the intentional killing of Jews that a Palestinian Arab embarked upon jihad can buy himself/ herself free from the ultimate “penalty.”

Even if it is scientific nonsense, Israeli policymakers need to acknowledge, “eternal life” is no small reward.

There is more. Once Israel has finally understood that terrorism as an activity expresses sacrifice, it will be much better positioned to counter terror-crimes. Lacking such understanding, caricatural “20 Point” peace plans could never accomplish anything of tangible significance.

Prima facie, the Trump plan lends itself to failures of insubstantial thought. More purposefully, Palestinian Arab terrorism should be approached, at least in part, as a sacred act of mediation between Arab sacrificers and religious obligation. With such a newly-informed approach, Jerusalem could finally begin to fashion its counterterrorist strategy on serious intellectual foundations.

Years ago, Yasser Arafat pledged: “The Palestinian people are prepared to sacrifice the last boy and the last girl so that the Palestinian flag will be flown over the walls, the churches, and the mosques of Jerusalem.” The then-PLO Chairman was not speaking of political sacrifice. Rather, by situating personal death in the context of jihad, it was a literal flesh-and-blood sacrifice wherein “the last [Palestinian] boy and girl” could discover immortality.

For Palestinians who regard terrorism as sacrifice, it is a sacred violence that rewards doubly. Killing the despised Jew while simultaneously killing death for the Islamic faithful, sacrificial terror always reveals the optimal fusion of religion and politics. Such violence also fulfils a timeless but generally overlooked function of sacrifice; that is, to quell violence within the community and prevent intra-communal conflicts from erupting or overflowing.

Unsurprisingly, post-agreement Hamas violence against Palestinian Arab “collaborators” (multiple executions by Hamas have been seen on major television news programs) are linked to temporary halts of sacrificial terror against Israelis.

What counter-terrorism lessons can be learned from all this? To summarize, Hamas jihadi terrorism is a form of religious sacrifice. This egregious criminality will never cease in response to Israeli “redeployments” commanded by an American president. It will assuredly not end if a Palestinian Arab state is declared in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. It will end only when the religiously-despised Jew has left every inch of “Palestine” (an area which includes the entire State of Israel) or when Israel learns that no neatly-delineated “20-Point” program for peace could outweigh the palpable attractions of “martyrdom” and “power over death.”

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Prof. Louis René Beres (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) lectures and publishes widely on terrorism and counterterrorism. His articles appear often in major American, European, and Israeli newspapers. The author of twelve books on international relations, he is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue.