Australia / Israel and Jewish Affairs Council May 30, 2025
Freed hostage Agam Berger, held by Hamas for 473 days, made this clear to French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot during a meeting in Paris.
Diplomatic solutions, she said, won’t work because “it’s us or them.”

No one in Israel — not its citizens, not its soldiers and despite conspiratorial claims to the contrary, not the Government — wants this war to continue.

Day 602 War is hell. It costs lives, shatters families, and permanently scars nations.
Yet it is notable that no viable alternative has ever been proposed that would bring home the hostages and end Hamas’ violent rule.

That’s because Hamas continues to reject every deal that does not leave it in control of Gaza, ready to prepare the next October 7 a reality that the international community ignores.

It’s easy for leaders in distant capitals to sit comfortably and pass moral judgment when it’s not their children being held in tunnels or their civilians racing to bomb shelters. And let’s not pretend any of these countries would show more restraint if terror on the scale of the October 7 attacks came to their doorsteps.

Still, their obsession with a two-state solution in the short term persists, as outlined in their statement.

They talk as if it’s a magic elixir that will solve all the region’s problems.
But statehood has been offered to the Palestinians numerous times, and turned down.

And Hamas actually ruled the closest thing to a Palestinian state that has ever existed for more than 16 years and used it to prepare October 7.
Israel let them — asleep at the wheel