Trump’s plan to train “Palestinian security forces” revives a dangerous Oslo-era delusion, arming potential terrorists under the guise of peacekeeping.
“It’s like déjà vu all over again,” Yogi Berra once quipped — a phrase that perfectly captures the tragic loop of Western naivety toward Palestinian terrorism.
Decades after Israel’s catastrophic Oslo Accords and now amid reports that Qatar is building a military base in Idaho, the U.S. State Department, under orders from President Donald Trump’s 20-Point Peace Plan, has introduced a surreal new initiative: SWAT-style combat training for Palestinian “security forces.”
According to the proposal, American instructors will teach “advanced tactical courses, live-fire drills, and urban combat simulations” to these so-called “peacekeepers” in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) — the very region from which countless terror attacks against Israel have been launched.
Even more astonishingly, the U.S. tender specifies that training contractors must provide liability insurance and ensure compliance with anti-human-trafficking laws. As the Roman philosopher Tertullian once said, Credo quia absurdum — I believe it because it is absurd. Israelis now face the bitter irony that future terrorists may be fully insured and certified against human trafficking.
The absurdity deepens when one considers the recent October 7 massacre, in which Hamas terrorists slaughtered civilians — some of whom were reportedly trained under previous “security coordination” programs. Washington’s plan, cloaked as “peace,” risks arming another generation of killers and legitimizing a terrorist infrastructure in suits.
To avoid repeating this pattern of peril, Israel must understand that genuine peace cannot emerge from politically choreographed “training programs” but from intellectual clarity and strategic realism. Security threats from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Palestinian Authority are not separate — they are intersecting, force-multiplying threats born from the same genocidal ideology that long predates the 1967 borders.
Legally, Hamas’s and the PA’s use of human shields constitutes perfidy — a “grave breach” under Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Protocol I (1977). These violations place full legal and moral responsibility on the perpetrators, not the defenders. When Hamas embeds weapons in schools and hospitals, it is committing war crimes — not Israel, whose precision strikes adhere to the doctrines of distinction, proportionality, and military necessity.
In this context, Trump’s so-called peace initiative dangerously blurs the moral line between defender and aggressor. As Plato’s Republic reminds us, justice is a contract neither to do nor to suffer wrong. By empowering “rebranded” Palestinian militants, Washington is undermining both justice and security.
The Abraham Accords, though celebrated, did not change this core reality — they improved ties with states that were never real belligerents. Meanwhile, the existential threats — Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PA’s militant wings — remain alive, funded, and ideologically driven to destroy Israel.
Ultimately, the idea of training “good terrorists” to fight “bad terrorists” is not diplomacy; it is strategic suicide wrapped in bureaucratic language. Once again, the world is arming those who seek Israel’s annihilation — and calling it peace.
In Yogi Berra’s immortal words, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”
