Daily Briefing with Daniel Rubenstein | Hamas wants to turn West Bank into another Gaza

Hamas wants to take over the West Bank and turn it into another Gaza. Daniel Rubenstein explains in this Daily Briefing.

Transcript

Hamas wants to take over the West Bank and turn it into another Gaza.

That’s the main thing you need to understand about what’s happening now in the West Bank.

I’m Daniel Rubenstein.

It’s February 4, 2025.

And this is the Daily Briefing of the Israeli Citizen Spokespersons’ Office.

This morning,

a Palestinian terrorist in Samaria, in the northern West Bank, opened fire on an IDF checkpoint. Two IDF reservists were killed and eight were wounded. The attack was well-planned. The soldiers were ambushed.

The Palestinian terrorist who carried out this attack would have loved to make his way down to the Jordan Valley and attack Israeli civilians on Road 90, along the Israel-Jordan border. The terrorist couldn’t reach this road, because a checkpoint was in the way.

Hamas has been clear: Its war against Israel is not confined to Gaza. Hamas wants to turn the West Bank into Gaza. Hamas wants to turn the West Bank into a launching point for attacks against central Israel. Hamas is popular in the West Bank, where the population was hugely supportive of the October 7 Massacre.

Israeli soldiers are operating in the West Bank NOW rather than waiting for Hamas to do to Tel Aviv what it did to the Gaza border communities on October 7.

If Palestinian terrorists are not stopped where they are now, in their own cities, then they will open fire on Israeli cars, as they have done many times, and if they are not stopped there on the roads where they can ambush Israeli cars, they will threaten all of Israel’s population centers and Ben Gurion Airport.

While many are focused on Hamas never being able to carry out another invasion of Israel from Gaza, Hamas already has its eyes on a bigger prize: It wants to take over the West Bank and destroy any cooperation that exists today between Israelis and Palestinians. This is Hamas’s goal – and the Iranian regime completely supports Hamas in this goal.

Israel will counter the Iranian axis wherever it extends its reach, whether in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, or the West Bank.

All eyes are on Washington today ahead of the meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump.

Regarding the ceasefire in Gaza, Trump said on Monday: “I have no guarantees that the peace is going to hold.”

He’s right. There is no guarantee. The idea of a “permanent ceasefire” – of peace – with Hamas – is an insult to Hamas. Hamas’s central organizing principle – and the reason for its popularity – is that it will use violence at a time and place of its choosing until Israel ceases to exist.

Something must change if Gaza is going to have a better future, and that something is that Hamas cannot be the government of Gaza.

Right now we are in phase 1 of the hostage ransom deal. It’s a delicate time. Hamas is releasing a few Israeli hostages every week in exchange for a huge ransom payment in the form of the release of huge numbers of convicted Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons.

I am sure that what Trump and Netanyahu will discuss today is how phase 2 is supposed to look. Phase 2 calls for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in exchange for the remaining Israeli hostages, who at this point will be all the male IDF soldiers.

A full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza while Hamas remains in power in Gaza is a return to the reality that existed on October 6. It is going to take some creative and powerful diplomacy from the Trump administration to find an appropriate solution to this problem – and also the problem of phase 3, which calls for the reconstruction of Gaza.

Gaza cannot be reconstructed if the government of Gaza is calling for more war. That would just be an opportunity for Hamas to rebuild its military infrastructure and plan the next war.