(Day 725) Swords of Iron – “Holding Our Breath”

Chaim starts by saying that he feels like he’s been walking a long, dangerous and lonely road for a long time to bring the hostages back home and restore security to southern Israel, and now because of the plan that President Trump has proposed and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to, he sees some light at the end of the tunnel.

However, there are some aspects of the plan that Chaim says he’s not so sure about. Of particular concern is how much this plan depends on the participation of Arab governments who have historically not been reliable partners of Israel and the West. But there are many other moving parts and aspirational goals in this plan that Chaim is skeptical about. It all sounds really good, but he has his doubts about how practical some of the points in this plan are.

Of personal concern, he has been heavily involved in demolishing Hamas terror tunnels in Gaza and clearing mines and other explosives, and he wonders if he will have to continue doing that or if this work will be handed off to someone else, and if so, will that someone else be capable of doing it, motivated to do it, etc.

In any case, the ball is now in Hamas’s court to either accept the proposal or not and if they don’t, the IDF will simply continue doing what they’ve been doing until the job is complete.

Another concern Chaim has is that the general direction of all this is that the Palestinian people are being set up to have a state of their own next to Israel, and Chaim begs to point out that they have never said that’s what they want and they have none of the institutions necessary for accomplishing this goal. Chaim laments that the Western governments, which still have a great deal of power, don’t have much wisdom, and they have talked themselves into believing many things which are observably untrue, particularly about the Middle East. Chaim says that these governments are engaging in wishful thinking instead of facing the facts, and it’s causing them to make a lot of mistakes that the ordinary people in their countries and in many other countries will suffer from.

In any case, we’re now waiting to see what Hamas will do, and Chaim says its time to pray and in this context, he concludes by quoting Psalms 91:7; A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; But it shall not come near you.