Looks like the Banned on the Run finally got the message. With the IDF closing in on Hamas’ Gaza leadership in a Khan Younis bunker and their international sheiks now on the run from the Mossad, it has begun to dawn on them that October 7 really did change everything. The Israelis clearly intend to either drown or shoot Hamas dead to the last man, and this time the US will not be able to restrain them. Even their hostaging strategy hasn’t worked.

And just like that, from the river to the sea has changed to Let’s Join the PLO. Al-Monitor reported last night that a “top” Hamas official has floated an offer to recognize Israel’s right to exist and to fold itself into the Palestinian Authority in exchange for an end to the war (via Noah Rothman):

A senior Hamas official suggested the Gaza-based militant group would recognize Israel as a step toward ending the long-running divisions between the Palestinian factions.

Speaking to Al-Monitor in his Doha office on Monday, Mousa Abu Marzouk struck a careful tone on Israel some two months after his group carried out the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

“You should follow the official stance,” Abu Marzouk said. “The official stance is that the [Palestine Liberation Organization] has recognized the state of Israel.”

The internationally recognized umbrella grouping of most Palestinian factions, excluding Hamas and Islamic Jihad, formally recognized Israel’s right to exist and renounced terrorism in 1993. In exchange, Israel accepted the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people.

Well, that certainly would be a change. Six weeks ago, another “top” Hamas official made their aims very clear, which was the annihilation of Israel and every Jew in the region. Ghazi Hamad declared in Lebanon two weeks after Hamas’ massacres of men, women, and children that they would repeat those atrocities as often as necessary to achieve it:

Hamas Official Ghazi Hamad: We Will Repeat the October 7 Attack Time and Again Until Israel Is Annihilated.

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So what’s changed for Hamas since then? Probably the fact that they are about to get annihilated in Gaza and humiliated everywhere else by the Israelis. Hamas has treated Fatah (the PLO, which controls the Palestinian Authority) as an enemy too. Their sudden desire to join up with the PA is not predicated on brotherly love, but the dawning realization that a crushing defeat in Gaza will end their political influence in the West Bank as well.

Will their proclaimed alliance and merger with the PA work? That seems unlikely at best. Hamas has tried for over two months to get Fatah into a war with Israel on their behalf. Now Hamas wants Fatah to give them cover to extricate themselves from the consequences of their own barbarity. Mahmoud Abbas may oppose the war in Gaza, but he’s not suicidal; he knows that Hamas would use that alignment to seize power in the PA and West Bank, and murder Fatah officials just as Hamas did in 2006-7 when seizing total control of Gaza.

Besides, a permanent surrender on these terms would create all sorts of embarrassment for Hamas’ sponsors in Tehran, and for that matter, its Muslim Brotherhood allies in Cairo too. Hamas has been their proxy explicitly in the mission to eliminate Israel. Are we to believe that the mullahs of Iran have suddenly adopted a peaceful-coexistence policy? It’s possible that Tehran got a view of a fully united Israel and its military might and quailed at the prospect of armed conflict, but that would assume they act on sheerly rational goals. Their goals are non-rational (not irrational) based on religious extremism, as are Hamas’. They still want Israel’s destruction, and that means their proxies do too.

This sounds more like hudna and taqiyya than it does an honest conversion to political reality.

At any rate, the Israelis are unlikely to bite on this offer anyway. No one will believe that Hamas has abandoned its annihilationist goals, nor should they. The only way to secure southern Israel and its crucial agricultural center is to eliminate Hamas from Gaza, and preferably from the planet.

Hamas could at least achieve the former by surrendering in Khan Younis and returning the rest of the hostages, a move that Marzouk himself rejects at this time. In fact, Marzouk still defends the October 7 atrocities as an acceptable way to get the world’s attention on the Palestinians:

Over the course of the hour-long interview, Abu Marzouk defended the Palestinian militant group’s cross-border incursion in which Hamas fighters killed 1,200 people in Israel, most of them civilians, and took some 240 people hostage.

Abducting women and children was a mistake, he said. Then why not immediately release them? “Israel is relentlessly shelling Gaza.” When pressed on the atrocities, Abu Marzouk claimed falsely that only “Gaza civilians and other Palestinian factions” who breached the border fence were to blame. He dismissed the overwhelming evidence of Hamas’ sexual violence during the operation as “mere lies.” …

When asked what Oct. 7 achieved for the people of Gaza, Abu Marzouk said, “Many goals,” including putting the Palestinian cause back on the international agenda. “Everyone is talking about a Palestinian state,” he said.

Hudna and taqiyya again come to mind with these comments from Marzouk. More importantly, it demonstrates the folly of the two-state solution while the Palestinians are still justifying terrorism and annihilation as the basis for gaining their own state. Still, Marzouk’s attempt to wave a white flag shows just how effective the Israelis have been in their efforts to destroy Hamas.

Update: Marzouk is already hitting reverse on his offer to recognize Israel, according to my friend Israel Matzav:

It's okay. Marzouk has already said he was misunderstood. pic.twitter.com/fji24xSLpF

— (((IsraelMatzav))) (@IsraelMatzav) December 14, 2023

How could those quotes be taken “out of context”? Marzouk literally said that Hamas should follow the PA’s “official stance” recognizing Israel. There’s no context for that which equates to not recognizing Israel. This sounds as though Marzouk got out over his skis with the home office, or that the trial balloon didn’t go over very well in Tehran. Or perhaps both.

At any rate, Marzouk now confirms that Hamas won’t stop until Israel is annihilated, so … game on.