I‘d recommend the recent episode of What Matters Now podcast of the Times of Israel. Haviv Rettig Gur argues that the hostage deal is NOT the same as last May. And that there are two important differences: 1. Hamas agreed to it. 2. The IDF remains in Philadelphi during the first phase. He also notes that Netanyahu doesn’t like to take risks without a potential for a significant upside. He points out that the shift in Netanyahu‘s stance came after discussions with the incoming Trump administration. Is there a parallel deal between the US and Israel going on? Also Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth are all very much in favor of strongly discouraging international bad actors from taking US citizens hostage…
Many supporters of Israel have condemned the Gaza ceasefire deal as disastrous. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s opponents have said it is an example of his weak leadership. Not so fast – we shouldn’t underestimate the man who ordered the beeper decapitation of Hezbollah, the elimination of its chief Hassan Nasrallah and even the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran’s capital.
The reality is none of us who are talking about it were in the room when decisions were made and we have no idea what the overall plan is, whatever has been publicly announced, discussed or rumoured. Netanyahu’s objective remains total victory over Hamas and Iran’s terrorist axis that seeks the annihilation of the Jewish state. Gaza is just one part of this conflict, albeit a vitally important one.
Like most wars, this one is not a linear process. A strategy is not necessarily undermined by deviation from what appears to be the obvious route towards achieving the end state. Indeed what we are seeing now may be seen as the application of British military theorist Basil Liddell Hart’s “indirect approach”. Having largely eliminated Hamas’s military capability over the last 15 months we have now reached the stage where the priority is to free the remaining 94 hostages.
That was always a major objective of the Gaza war, but it has so far proven impossible to release more than a handful by direct military force. The presence of the hostages has been a drag-anchor in the campaign and prevented Hamas’s total destruction. The terrorists know this only too well: that was exactly the reason they kidnapped them on 7th October.
So why is Hamas agreeing to release some of the hostages now? The original proposal on which this deal is based was made in March last year. Since then Hamas repeatedly refused to go along with it. But now its situation has deteriorated dramatically. Its betrayal by Hezbollah, which vowed to fight on until the IDF left Gaza then agreed to its own ceasefire, was a body-blow. The fall of Assad was another. But particularly devastating was the failure of Iran to come to the rescue.
Hamas is now isolated and to crown it all Donald Trump is entering the White House next week. They fear that will unshackle Israel from the constraints of Joe Biden who tried his best to prevent Netanyahu’s “total victory”. They also fear that Trump will do what Biden failed to do: force Qatar to expel their political leadership and also reduce the international pressure on Israel on which Hamas depends. There is every likelihood Trump will sanction the International Criminal Court and at the same time put the boot into the Israel haters at the UN.
All that is why Hamas has now accepted Israel’s red line: the IDF will maintain military forces in key strategic areas in Gaza and Israel retains the right to resume the war when the ceasefire ends. The terrorist organisation will meanwhile be planning to utilise its international backers to pressure Israel not to resume hostilities – including the useful idiots who parade on our streets and university campuses every week.
But while any hostages are retained in Gaza and while Hamas continues to represent a threat to its people, Israel can and should go back on the attack. For that they will have Trump’s backing. His nomination for National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, told Fox News: “I’d like to make something very clear to the Israelis, if you need to go back in, we are with you. We are 100 per cent committed to destroying Hamas as a military organisation”.
Meanwhile the focus of the war is likely to shift to the head of the jihadist octopus, Iran. Netanyahu and Trump have almost certainly already agreed on that, and this deal should be seen as one element of their joint strategy. Eliminating the ayatollahs’ nuclear programme and further undermining their regional proxy network is vital. Isolating Iran and strengthening Israel’s security is not a military project alone. Trump is also likely to return to the Abraham Accords, bringing Saudi Arabia into the fold. The prospect of that alarmed Iran so much that it triggered Hamas’s murderous atrocities on 7th October.
Nevertheless, those who are horrified by this deal are right to highlight its grave risks. It seems to involve release of more than a thousand Palestinian terrorists in exchange for 33 Israeli hostages. And a cessation will give Hamas some opportunity to regroup and rebuild its capabilities. Above all it leaves Hamas in a position to maintain its stranglehold on Gaza’s population. That would certainly be disastrous and the eventual eradication or survival of Hamas will be the true measure of the success or otherwise of this ceasefire.
I think this cease fire/hostage deal is a terrible one for a couple of reasons.
Leave aside the political premise that Hamas can claim victory with this.
Leave aside the political premise by journalists that Trump pressured Netanyahu into agreeing the deal--all we have for that are the baldly unsubstantiated claims of those journalists, anyway.
One reason I have for disdaining this arrangement is that it should be the case that a nation never treats with terrorists. Not under any circumstance. In the present case, all this deal does is give Hamas time to rest, refit, rearm, and reattack. It may be true that Hamas is replacing its meat combat losses at the same rate it's incurring those losses. Those replacements, though, are not as trained, experienced, or battle-hardened as those they're replacing. There is no rational reason to back off and give Hamas time and opportunity to satisfy even some of those deficiencies.
My other reason centers on negotiating for hostages. Again, I think that never should occur. Negotiating to free hostages for any price greater than "release them, and you get to live" does nothing but reward the hostage-takers. It tells them and other potential hostage-takers that the act pays high dividends, encouraging further hostage-taking. Further, such aiding and abetting--aside from the quasi-criminal aspect of that (if not actually so under law)--is selfish to the point of immorality. Such successful demands don't only expose the newly freed to repeated kidnappings--these folks are known to pay up--it exposes others, neighbors and strangers alike, to increased risk of kidnapping: those high dividends.
As most people acknowledge, we just don't know the facts, so so all of us are speculating and indulging our prejudices.
But one fact is clear: Israel was running out of road in Europe.
Certainly doesn't matter today, but with building animosity in Europe, the price of this war kept going up (even pygmies can pull down a lion and the European economies are not pygmies).
(The anger/dislike of Israel in Europe is shocking; and the war gives people the excuse to indulge their antisemitism.)
Hamas is essentially indestructible because Israel won't do what is necessary to defeat them (genocide) and western liberals will always support Hamas. So some remnant of Hamas will always exist.
Israel did as much as it could and now the price of continued war got too high.
Europe has no teeth, and Europe isn't a reliable ally of anyone in the world. When Israel has to choose between its survival and appeasing Europe, it's not even a question.
Everyone can trust Europe to do the wrong thing on defense spending, Russia, Syria, Iran, the Palestinians. In that, they're extremely consistent, extremely spineless, extremely short-sighted.
Spain, Ireland and a few others are not the entire EU. Israeli prime ministers do not need to visit those idiotic countries. As for weapons, please tell me which weapons Israel buys from any European country. I’ll wait. Meanwhile, pay attention to how many European countries are lining up to buy Israeli weapon systems. Who do you think would suffer more from an arms embargo when Russia is a power that the EU has to deal with alone? The EU has no balls, and can't muster the political will to invest even 2% of GDP in their defense while watching a nearly 3 year war on their border. Let's not be too worried about the Europeans - Israel has actual enemies to deal with, not the pathetic EU.
If the Israelis had accepted this deal when Biden originally pressed them to, Sinwar would still be alive and thousands of now dead terrorists wiould still be shooting off missiles. Nasrallah would still be directing terrorism from his bunker. Hezbollah would still be as powerful as ever. Assad would probably still be ruling Syria.
Netanyahu did the right thing in saying no to Biden and the right thing in saying yes to Trump.
Timing is everything.
Hopefully Netanyahu extracted something from Trump about Iran in return for acquiecing to the deal. Either way, Netanyahu’s gamble paid off big time.
This claim that Hamas won is exhaustingly dumb. Netanyahu kept adding contradictory criteria for "total victory" because he's an idiot and needed to keep his coalition together, so maybe _he_ lost, but Israel didn't lose this war - it neutered Hamas, it smashed the Hamas infrastructure all across Gaza, it disabled Hezbollah and as a result Syria collapsed too, it hit the regional master of both (the Islamic Republic of Iran) in a way nobody has ever done before, wiping its air defenses and leaving it open for further attacks. Nobody but Biden held back Israel from destroying Iran's oil industry, the source of the IRGC's revenue. That is still on the menu.
Who in their right mind ever believed in this "all they have to do is survive to win". What boxing match ends that way? What street fight ends that way? Can Hamas attack Israel now as it did in October 7? Not at all. Can Hamas prevent the IDF from taking any part of Gaza the IDF wants? No. Was Hezbollah able to keep the IDF from taking its strongholds in southern Lebanon? No. Did Iran manage to do strategic damage to Israel with its ballistic missile attacks? No. Did Hezbollah invade and hold the Galilee? No. Did Hamas manage to last more than 2 days inside Israel, when it's obvious their goal was to go far deeper and hold ground? No. Did Hezbollah manage to prevent a president hostile to it from being elected? No. So what is this weird hang wringing and believing that because Hamas claims victory it won?
If Hamas remains in control of Gaza, and if Iran can resupply them, it's really just a matter of time before it can stage another very significant attack. Hezbollah seems to have lost the war that Hamas started--and that is unquestionably a victory for Israel--but from the first, Israeli leaders have been very clear about the aim of the war: wiping Hamas off the face of the Earth. Hamas has not been wiped off the face of the Earth. Most wars are fated to end this way: very few end, as the Second World War ended, with the enemy completely vanquished. But how comfortable would you be living along the border with Gaza knowing that the tunnels and Hamas are still on the other side?
More comfortably than the Palestinians knowing just how hard Israel is willing to hit them if they dare invade Israel again. One thing nobody in any democracy but Israel is familiar with is living with risk and deterrence, at least not since MAD was a thing. You think Israel is who needs to be worried about another war with Hamas? Okay.
Do we have any idea what the tactical situation is like on the ground in Gaza? Last I had checked Israel had leveled much of Gaza and occupied more, so I’m not sure why they accept releasing terrorists. Are they being pushed back?
Israel's prisons are overflowing with Hamas terrorists, and Hamas has abducted Israeli citizens (a war crime) to trade. They can have their terrorists, and Israel can kill them later. What's obvious is that Hamas, like any Islamists, don't sign agreements they intend to keep (it's a tenet of Islam to strategically lie). The real issue is to compare the capability of Hamas and Hezbollah now to October 6. Can either of them do strategic damage to Israel, are either of them suicidal enough to try again after this massive of an ass kicking? Nope. Hezbollah is not daring to fire at Israel during this ceasefire. Hamas is welcome to try. Didn't work out that well for them the first time around, while Israel has grown considerably more capable militarily.
It's not really a tenet of Islam to strategically lie, although it is very much a human tendency to strategically lie, and terrorists have already renounced all other common norms of human behavior, so it isn't surprising that they often lie as well. But I think what you're referring to is the notion of taqiyyah, which I've seen translated as "prudence.' That's a Shia doctrine, not a Sunni one, as is the related kitman, or "action of covering, dissimulation." As I understand it, both terms emerged because Shia were reviewed by Sunni as heretics, and the doctrine specifies that one may dissimulate if your life and property is under threat. The only reference to this in the Quran--as far as I know, if anyone knows better, please correct me--is in Surah Al Imran: "Believers should not take disbelievers as guardians instead of the believers—and whoever does so will have nothing to hope for from Allah—unless it is a precaution against their tyranny. And Allah warns you about Himself. And to Allah is the final return." That is pretty far from an injunction to lie. (In fact, I can't really make sense of it, as is so often true when I read the Quran.)
The prohibition *against* lying is much more clear in the Quran:
“Only they forge the lie who do not believe in Allah’s communications, and these are the liars.” (Surah an-Nahl 16:105).
“Surely Allah does not guide him aright who is a liar, ungrateful.” (Surah az-Zumar 39:3).
“... and pray for the curse of Allah on the liars.” (Surah Ali- Imran 3:61).
“... the curse of Allah be on him if he is one of the liars.” (Surah an-Nur 24:8).
Lying in Islam is considered a major sin. There's a ton of Hadith about it, too. See:
This is quite an important point. Hamas and ISIS and the like style themselves as the purest of all Muslims, but they very clearly aren't. They're just murderous scum.
Oh, I stand corrected - Islam is the religion of peace. No doubt they’re murderous scum. When it comes to lying every single far-leftist in the Free Palestine cult is as big of a liar or bigger than Hamas, and every spineless progressive standing for genocide and the “right” of Islamists to commit terrorism isn’t much better.
Here’s the point - Hamas will violate every agreement, as will Hezbollah. Obama paid millions for the Islamic Republic of Iran to *wink wink* stop enriching uranium in 2015. Progressives in the Democratic Party administrations are nothing more than obsequious appeasers of Iran, and we can only hope that the US rediscovers its balls and hits Iran. It was quite amusing watching Biden remember that the biggest Air Force and most professional navy in the world can be used for something other than purely defense when dealing with Iran’s proxies - the illiterate zero GDP Houthis. That only happened when Israel proved that nothing much happens when you slam bombs into their ports. It is a joke how spineless Democrats are when given the presidency. We’ll have to see what comes next, but it literally cannot be more pathetic than Obama and Biden.
I agree, it can get dumber. However neither Obama, Biden or a hypothetical president Harris would ever attack Iran, no matter what Iran did. If hundreds of ballistic missiles in two separate attacks had the US only play defense? If dozens of cruise missiles shot at US navy and international shipping had them only play defense? The Democratic Party is literally incapable of using force. Iran can drop a nuke on a US ally and the Democrats would do absolutely zero. With Trump there’s at least a non-zero chance of anything other than “how many billions do you need to not develop nukes, Mr Ayatollah, Sir?”.
I have no idea what a hypothetical President Harris would have done. I agree that it would probably have taken an immense provocation to exact anything but a fearful, equivocating, measured, proportional, and telegraphed response from the Biden administration. Although I think you're speaking hyperbolically for effect, I don't think it's true that Iran could've dropped a nuke on the US ally without the Democrats lifting a finger. They did, after all, have a complex plan in place in the event Russia used nuclear weapons in Ukraine. This plan, they announced, did not involve massive nuclear retaliation--which was an utterly idiotic thing to announce. But it did involve a plan, and Russia was warned, according to a number of reasonably credible reports, that if they used nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the US would, through conventional means, reduce the Russian military to ashes. (Why we didn't do this, right from the start, I don't know: If you invade a US ally, that should be the least penalty you suffer.)
I agree with you that the Biden administration was lamentably disconnected from the basic and primal principles that govern interstate relations and the effective use of power. I also agree that this gravely harmed our deterrence. And yes, I agree that there is a non-zero chance Trump will respond to Iran more productively than Biden did.
However, I think there's something like a 50 percent chance (it can't really be quantified, but I'm certain the number isn't trivial) that Trump hands Ukraine to Russia, South Korea to the North Koreans, Taiwan--and thus the Pacific--to China, pulls out of NATO, and tells Israel, "Do what you want, but we don't want to be involved." (You'll recall that this was how JD Vance answered the question, "What should the United States do to help Israel if Iran races for the Bomb?")
I don't know whether, absent American involvement, Israel is capable of deterring Iran from developing the Bomb or taking out its nuclear program if deterrent fails. I suspect it probably is, but I've heard mixed accounts of this, and clearly it would be a lot harder, riskier, and more likely to fail without our help.
If the US abandons its other allies--as Trump has indicated, many times, that he wishes to do, and indeed, as he tried to do (he was only barely dissuaded from this by his advisors; in the case of our Kurdish allies, he wasn't dissuaded at all: this is why Mattis resigned)--it will gravely harm Israel. It will harm Israel irrespective of his willingness to take action, or credibly threaten to take action, to prevent Iran from getting the Bomb.
The US, at that point, would no longer be a superpower. It would be a regional power. An enormous amount of Israeli deterrence is owed to having a true superpower patron with influence in every part of the world. If we voluntarily transform ourselves into something more like the Brazil of North America, it will revive the idea, throughout the Middle East, that Israel is an alien and temporary phenomenon. It will also reinforce the idea that you can vanquish even the most powerful adversary by committing a spectacular act of terrorism that lures him into a long war of attrition, dividing his society and fundamentally demoralizing him. The jihadi narrative is that they forced us out of Afghanistan and Iraq this way--and they take credit for our isolationist turn.
In many ways, they're right to take credit. Had we not suffered such humiliating defeats in an Iraq and Afghanistan, I doubt Trump would have been elected. I'm sure we wouldn't be debating whether it made sense to arm Ukraine, or even stay in NATO.
The same people would interpret our global retreat as proof that a superpower can be slowly bled until it packs up and goes home. An essential part of their narrative is that Israel is an alien Western colonial outpost. Hamas and their ideological kin are certain that if they make the Jews miserable enough, for long enough, they will leave; or enough of them will leave that they can readily kill the rest.
They're very aware that the first to leave will be the ones Israel can least afford to lose: the highly skilled, highly educated Israelis who are rapidly becoming a minority in Israel, and who feel growingly oppressed by the religious right. This group can easily take their talents elsewhere.
If secular, educated Israelis come to believe there is no hope of peace--no hope that they won't have to send their kids to die in endless wars, no hope that they won't have to live with the fear that their kids will be blown up every time they go out to go to a pizzeria or a disco--and if they *also* become convinced that the rights they've enjoyed as citizens of a secular democracy have been irreversibly eroded, many of them, probably, will leave. That will leave Israel struggling to feed a growing cohort of uneducated and unemployable men who don't know which end of the gun to shoot from. This is a very real prospect, and Israel's enemies know this all too well. It is a threat to Israel's existence as grave as that of Iran's nuclear program.
Their strategy is not stupid, and not to be underestimated. Look how many Israelis are already leaving because of the violence, fear, displacement, and misery Hamas (and Hezbollah, and Iran, and the Iraqi PMUs, and the Houthis) have managed to inflict.
This may have gone very badly for Gazans and for Hezbollah (and for Iran, and certainly for Assad), but it has gone really really well for Hamas. They've succeeded in making Israel an international pariah. They've gravely attenuated support for Israel even in the United States. They've run rings around Israel in the global battle to shape the narrative. (Netanyahu can't even go to the commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz in Poland, for God sake.)
If Trump withdraws from our alliances--and again, I think the odds of this are somewhere around 50 percent--a good part of the Middle East will interpret this to mean that al Qaeda, in the end, defeated the Great Satan. and the Little Satan is now just a mopping-up operation. It's impossible to imagine the region would, under these circumstances, reconcile itself to Israel's permanence.
This is why, even though I too found Biden's foreign policy unforgivably feckless and weak, I'm persuaded that people who voted for Trump "because of Israel" were conned. Or perhaps that they just didn't think this problem through.
Its not true that the defeat of Assad isn’t a strategic victory for Israel. As a result of his downfall, Israel has unimpeded access to Syrian airspace which is quite useful if Israel plans to launch an attack on Iran.
Speaking of Iran, who knows what Trump promised Israel in return for the cease-fire when it comes to Iran. If Iran is defeated or put in a box, Hamas becomes virtually irrelevant. Without arms supplied by Iran or Iranian funding, Hamas, like Hezbollah, is a paper tiger.
Far and away Netanyahu’s biggest priority should be keeping the PA out of Gaza
I think these analyses are remarkably credulous toward Trump’s narrative. It seems very clear to me that Netanyahu knows exactly what he can and can’t get from Biden and Trump respectively. He was betting on and hoping for a Trump win because he has traditionally gotten everything he could ever want from Trump. Defunding Palestinian aid, Golan Heights recognition, embassy move, the Abraham Accords (which removed Palestinian sovereignty as a precondition for Arab states’ recognition of Israel). And now he gets a government that’s sending Mike Huckabee to Israel. Netanyahu wants to annex swaths of the West Bank and to bomb Iranian nuclear sites. It’s clear that he felt he would get much less pushback from a Trump admin than a Biden admin on these fronts. That is why this deal is being signed now. To hand Trump a political win and reap the benefits thereof. I expect Israel to violate the ceasefire as soon as phase one is over, and I don’t expect Trump et al to do a damn thing about it.
I‘d recommend the recent episode of What Matters Now podcast of the Times of Israel. Haviv Rettig Gur argues that the hostage deal is NOT the same as last May. And that there are two important differences: 1. Hamas agreed to it. 2. The IDF remains in Philadelphi during the first phase. He also notes that Netanyahu doesn’t like to take risks without a potential for a significant upside. He points out that the shift in Netanyahu‘s stance came after discussions with the incoming Trump administration. Is there a parallel deal between the US and Israel going on? Also Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth are all very much in favor of strongly discouraging international bad actors from taking US citizens hostage…
Super good essay Claire, thank you.
I'm so pleased it was helpful. Thank you.
I appreciated this particular take:
Colonel Richard Kemp in The Telegraph:
Many supporters of Israel have condemned the Gaza ceasefire deal as disastrous. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s opponents have said it is an example of his weak leadership. Not so fast – we shouldn’t underestimate the man who ordered the beeper decapitation of Hezbollah, the elimination of its chief Hassan Nasrallah and even the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran’s capital.
The reality is none of us who are talking about it were in the room when decisions were made and we have no idea what the overall plan is, whatever has been publicly announced, discussed or rumoured. Netanyahu’s objective remains total victory over Hamas and Iran’s terrorist axis that seeks the annihilation of the Jewish state. Gaza is just one part of this conflict, albeit a vitally important one.
Like most wars, this one is not a linear process. A strategy is not necessarily undermined by deviation from what appears to be the obvious route towards achieving the end state. Indeed what we are seeing now may be seen as the application of British military theorist Basil Liddell Hart’s “indirect approach”. Having largely eliminated Hamas’s military capability over the last 15 months we have now reached the stage where the priority is to free the remaining 94 hostages.
That was always a major objective of the Gaza war, but it has so far proven impossible to release more than a handful by direct military force. The presence of the hostages has been a drag-anchor in the campaign and prevented Hamas’s total destruction. The terrorists know this only too well: that was exactly the reason they kidnapped them on 7th October.
So why is Hamas agreeing to release some of the hostages now? The original proposal on which this deal is based was made in March last year. Since then Hamas repeatedly refused to go along with it. But now its situation has deteriorated dramatically. Its betrayal by Hezbollah, which vowed to fight on until the IDF left Gaza then agreed to its own ceasefire, was a body-blow. The fall of Assad was another. But particularly devastating was the failure of Iran to come to the rescue.
Hamas is now isolated and to crown it all Donald Trump is entering the White House next week. They fear that will unshackle Israel from the constraints of Joe Biden who tried his best to prevent Netanyahu’s “total victory”. They also fear that Trump will do what Biden failed to do: force Qatar to expel their political leadership and also reduce the international pressure on Israel on which Hamas depends. There is every likelihood Trump will sanction the International Criminal Court and at the same time put the boot into the Israel haters at the UN.
All that is why Hamas has now accepted Israel’s red line: the IDF will maintain military forces in key strategic areas in Gaza and Israel retains the right to resume the war when the ceasefire ends. The terrorist organisation will meanwhile be planning to utilise its international backers to pressure Israel not to resume hostilities – including the useful idiots who parade on our streets and university campuses every week.
But while any hostages are retained in Gaza and while Hamas continues to represent a threat to its people, Israel can and should go back on the attack. For that they will have Trump’s backing. His nomination for National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, told Fox News: “I’d like to make something very clear to the Israelis, if you need to go back in, we are with you. We are 100 per cent committed to destroying Hamas as a military organisation”.
Meanwhile the focus of the war is likely to shift to the head of the jihadist octopus, Iran. Netanyahu and Trump have almost certainly already agreed on that, and this deal should be seen as one element of their joint strategy. Eliminating the ayatollahs’ nuclear programme and further undermining their regional proxy network is vital. Isolating Iran and strengthening Israel’s security is not a military project alone. Trump is also likely to return to the Abraham Accords, bringing Saudi Arabia into the fold. The prospect of that alarmed Iran so much that it triggered Hamas’s murderous atrocities on 7th October.
Nevertheless, those who are horrified by this deal are right to highlight its grave risks. It seems to involve release of more than a thousand Palestinian terrorists in exchange for 33 Israeli hostages. And a cessation will give Hamas some opportunity to regroup and rebuild its capabilities. Above all it leaves Hamas in a position to maintain its stranglehold on Gaza’s population. That would certainly be disastrous and the eventual eradication or survival of Hamas will be the true measure of the success or otherwise of this ceasefire.
I think this cease fire/hostage deal is a terrible one for a couple of reasons.
Leave aside the political premise that Hamas can claim victory with this.
Leave aside the political premise by journalists that Trump pressured Netanyahu into agreeing the deal--all we have for that are the baldly unsubstantiated claims of those journalists, anyway.
One reason I have for disdaining this arrangement is that it should be the case that a nation never treats with terrorists. Not under any circumstance. In the present case, all this deal does is give Hamas time to rest, refit, rearm, and reattack. It may be true that Hamas is replacing its meat combat losses at the same rate it's incurring those losses. Those replacements, though, are not as trained, experienced, or battle-hardened as those they're replacing. There is no rational reason to back off and give Hamas time and opportunity to satisfy even some of those deficiencies.
My other reason centers on negotiating for hostages. Again, I think that never should occur. Negotiating to free hostages for any price greater than "release them, and you get to live" does nothing but reward the hostage-takers. It tells them and other potential hostage-takers that the act pays high dividends, encouraging further hostage-taking. Further, such aiding and abetting--aside from the quasi-criminal aspect of that (if not actually so under law)--is selfish to the point of immorality. Such successful demands don't only expose the newly freed to repeated kidnappings--these folks are known to pay up--it exposes others, neighbors and strangers alike, to increased risk of kidnapping: those high dividends.
Eric Hines
As most people acknowledge, we just don't know the facts, so so all of us are speculating and indulging our prejudices.
But one fact is clear: Israel was running out of road in Europe.
Certainly doesn't matter today, but with building animosity in Europe, the price of this war kept going up (even pygmies can pull down a lion and the European economies are not pygmies).
(The anger/dislike of Israel in Europe is shocking; and the war gives people the excuse to indulge their antisemitism.)
Hamas is essentially indestructible because Israel won't do what is necessary to defeat them (genocide) and western liberals will always support Hamas. So some remnant of Hamas will always exist.
Israel did as much as it could and now the price of continued war got too high.
Time to fold with Israel's pot intact.
Europe has no teeth, and Europe isn't a reliable ally of anyone in the world. When Israel has to choose between its survival and appeasing Europe, it's not even a question.
Everyone can trust Europe to do the wrong thing on defense spending, Russia, Syria, Iran, the Palestinians. In that, they're extremely consistent, extremely spineless, extremely short-sighted.
Can Netenyahu go to any European capital without fear of arrest?
Can Israel buy European weapons?
And the Europeans are just getting started.
I repeat my point - the price of the Gaza war was getting steeper.
Spain, Ireland and a few others are not the entire EU. Israeli prime ministers do not need to visit those idiotic countries. As for weapons, please tell me which weapons Israel buys from any European country. I’ll wait. Meanwhile, pay attention to how many European countries are lining up to buy Israeli weapon systems. Who do you think would suffer more from an arms embargo when Russia is a power that the EU has to deal with alone? The EU has no balls, and can't muster the political will to invest even 2% of GDP in their defense while watching a nearly 3 year war on their border. Let's not be too worried about the Europeans - Israel has actual enemies to deal with, not the pathetic EU.
In the immortal words of Kenny Rogers, “you got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away, know when to run. “
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7hx4gdlfamo
If the Israelis had accepted this deal when Biden originally pressed them to, Sinwar would still be alive and thousands of now dead terrorists wiould still be shooting off missiles. Nasrallah would still be directing terrorism from his bunker. Hezbollah would still be as powerful as ever. Assad would probably still be ruling Syria.
Netanyahu did the right thing in saying no to Biden and the right thing in saying yes to Trump.
Timing is everything.
Hopefully Netanyahu extracted something from Trump about Iran in return for acquiecing to the deal. Either way, Netanyahu’s gamble paid off big time.
This claim that Hamas won is exhaustingly dumb. Netanyahu kept adding contradictory criteria for "total victory" because he's an idiot and needed to keep his coalition together, so maybe _he_ lost, but Israel didn't lose this war - it neutered Hamas, it smashed the Hamas infrastructure all across Gaza, it disabled Hezbollah and as a result Syria collapsed too, it hit the regional master of both (the Islamic Republic of Iran) in a way nobody has ever done before, wiping its air defenses and leaving it open for further attacks. Nobody but Biden held back Israel from destroying Iran's oil industry, the source of the IRGC's revenue. That is still on the menu.
Who in their right mind ever believed in this "all they have to do is survive to win". What boxing match ends that way? What street fight ends that way? Can Hamas attack Israel now as it did in October 7? Not at all. Can Hamas prevent the IDF from taking any part of Gaza the IDF wants? No. Was Hezbollah able to keep the IDF from taking its strongholds in southern Lebanon? No. Did Iran manage to do strategic damage to Israel with its ballistic missile attacks? No. Did Hezbollah invade and hold the Galilee? No. Did Hamas manage to last more than 2 days inside Israel, when it's obvious their goal was to go far deeper and hold ground? No. Did Hezbollah manage to prevent a president hostile to it from being elected? No. So what is this weird hang wringing and believing that because Hamas claims victory it won?
https://open.substack.com/pub/arrrbee/p/hamas-the-greatest-military-victory?r=1mebvk&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
If Hamas remains in control of Gaza, and if Iran can resupply them, it's really just a matter of time before it can stage another very significant attack. Hezbollah seems to have lost the war that Hamas started--and that is unquestionably a victory for Israel--but from the first, Israeli leaders have been very clear about the aim of the war: wiping Hamas off the face of the Earth. Hamas has not been wiped off the face of the Earth. Most wars are fated to end this way: very few end, as the Second World War ended, with the enemy completely vanquished. But how comfortable would you be living along the border with Gaza knowing that the tunnels and Hamas are still on the other side?
More comfortably than the Palestinians knowing just how hard Israel is willing to hit them if they dare invade Israel again. One thing nobody in any democracy but Israel is familiar with is living with risk and deterrence, at least not since MAD was a thing. You think Israel is who needs to be worried about another war with Hamas? Okay.
Do we have any idea what the tactical situation is like on the ground in Gaza? Last I had checked Israel had leveled much of Gaza and occupied more, so I’m not sure why they accept releasing terrorists. Are they being pushed back?
Israel's prisons are overflowing with Hamas terrorists, and Hamas has abducted Israeli citizens (a war crime) to trade. They can have their terrorists, and Israel can kill them later. What's obvious is that Hamas, like any Islamists, don't sign agreements they intend to keep (it's a tenet of Islam to strategically lie). The real issue is to compare the capability of Hamas and Hezbollah now to October 6. Can either of them do strategic damage to Israel, are either of them suicidal enough to try again after this massive of an ass kicking? Nope. Hezbollah is not daring to fire at Israel during this ceasefire. Hamas is welcome to try. Didn't work out that well for them the first time around, while Israel has grown considerably more capable militarily.
It's not really a tenet of Islam to strategically lie, although it is very much a human tendency to strategically lie, and terrorists have already renounced all other common norms of human behavior, so it isn't surprising that they often lie as well. But I think what you're referring to is the notion of taqiyyah, which I've seen translated as "prudence.' That's a Shia doctrine, not a Sunni one, as is the related kitman, or "action of covering, dissimulation." As I understand it, both terms emerged because Shia were reviewed by Sunni as heretics, and the doctrine specifies that one may dissimulate if your life and property is under threat. The only reference to this in the Quran--as far as I know, if anyone knows better, please correct me--is in Surah Al Imran: "Believers should not take disbelievers as guardians instead of the believers—and whoever does so will have nothing to hope for from Allah—unless it is a precaution against their tyranny. And Allah warns you about Himself. And to Allah is the final return." That is pretty far from an injunction to lie. (In fact, I can't really make sense of it, as is so often true when I read the Quran.)
The prohibition *against* lying is much more clear in the Quran:
“Only they forge the lie who do not believe in Allah’s communications, and these are the liars.” (Surah an-Nahl 16:105).
“Surely Allah does not guide him aright who is a liar, ungrateful.” (Surah az-Zumar 39:3).
“... and pray for the curse of Allah on the liars.” (Surah Ali- Imran 3:61).
“... the curse of Allah be on him if he is one of the liars.” (Surah an-Nur 24:8).
Lying in Islam is considered a major sin. There's a ton of Hadith about it, too. See:
https://islamqa.info/en/answers/233891/authenticity-of-hadith-about-lying
This is quite an important point. Hamas and ISIS and the like style themselves as the purest of all Muslims, but they very clearly aren't. They're just murderous scum.
Oh, I stand corrected - Islam is the religion of peace. No doubt they’re murderous scum. When it comes to lying every single far-leftist in the Free Palestine cult is as big of a liar or bigger than Hamas, and every spineless progressive standing for genocide and the “right” of Islamists to commit terrorism isn’t much better.
Here’s the point - Hamas will violate every agreement, as will Hezbollah. Obama paid millions for the Islamic Republic of Iran to *wink wink* stop enriching uranium in 2015. Progressives in the Democratic Party administrations are nothing more than obsequious appeasers of Iran, and we can only hope that the US rediscovers its balls and hits Iran. It was quite amusing watching Biden remember that the biggest Air Force and most professional navy in the world can be used for something other than purely defense when dealing with Iran’s proxies - the illiterate zero GDP Houthis. That only happened when Israel proved that nothing much happens when you slam bombs into their ports. It is a joke how spineless Democrats are when given the presidency. We’ll have to see what comes next, but it literally cannot be more pathetic than Obama and Biden.
I'm afraid it literally can be more pathetic. Much more pathetic. Remember that Trump's idea of "a good deal" was Doha.
God knows, I hope you're right, but I am not optimistic.
I agree, it can get dumber. However neither Obama, Biden or a hypothetical president Harris would ever attack Iran, no matter what Iran did. If hundreds of ballistic missiles in two separate attacks had the US only play defense? If dozens of cruise missiles shot at US navy and international shipping had them only play defense? The Democratic Party is literally incapable of using force. Iran can drop a nuke on a US ally and the Democrats would do absolutely zero. With Trump there’s at least a non-zero chance of anything other than “how many billions do you need to not develop nukes, Mr Ayatollah, Sir?”.
I have no idea what a hypothetical President Harris would have done. I agree that it would probably have taken an immense provocation to exact anything but a fearful, equivocating, measured, proportional, and telegraphed response from the Biden administration. Although I think you're speaking hyperbolically for effect, I don't think it's true that Iran could've dropped a nuke on the US ally without the Democrats lifting a finger. They did, after all, have a complex plan in place in the event Russia used nuclear weapons in Ukraine. This plan, they announced, did not involve massive nuclear retaliation--which was an utterly idiotic thing to announce. But it did involve a plan, and Russia was warned, according to a number of reasonably credible reports, that if they used nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the US would, through conventional means, reduce the Russian military to ashes. (Why we didn't do this, right from the start, I don't know: If you invade a US ally, that should be the least penalty you suffer.)
I agree with you that the Biden administration was lamentably disconnected from the basic and primal principles that govern interstate relations and the effective use of power. I also agree that this gravely harmed our deterrence. And yes, I agree that there is a non-zero chance Trump will respond to Iran more productively than Biden did.
However, I think there's something like a 50 percent chance (it can't really be quantified, but I'm certain the number isn't trivial) that Trump hands Ukraine to Russia, South Korea to the North Koreans, Taiwan--and thus the Pacific--to China, pulls out of NATO, and tells Israel, "Do what you want, but we don't want to be involved." (You'll recall that this was how JD Vance answered the question, "What should the United States do to help Israel if Iran races for the Bomb?")
I don't know whether, absent American involvement, Israel is capable of deterring Iran from developing the Bomb or taking out its nuclear program if deterrent fails. I suspect it probably is, but I've heard mixed accounts of this, and clearly it would be a lot harder, riskier, and more likely to fail without our help.
If the US abandons its other allies--as Trump has indicated, many times, that he wishes to do, and indeed, as he tried to do (he was only barely dissuaded from this by his advisors; in the case of our Kurdish allies, he wasn't dissuaded at all: this is why Mattis resigned)--it will gravely harm Israel. It will harm Israel irrespective of his willingness to take action, or credibly threaten to take action, to prevent Iran from getting the Bomb.
The US, at that point, would no longer be a superpower. It would be a regional power. An enormous amount of Israeli deterrence is owed to having a true superpower patron with influence in every part of the world. If we voluntarily transform ourselves into something more like the Brazil of North America, it will revive the idea, throughout the Middle East, that Israel is an alien and temporary phenomenon. It will also reinforce the idea that you can vanquish even the most powerful adversary by committing a spectacular act of terrorism that lures him into a long war of attrition, dividing his society and fundamentally demoralizing him. The jihadi narrative is that they forced us out of Afghanistan and Iraq this way--and they take credit for our isolationist turn.
In many ways, they're right to take credit. Had we not suffered such humiliating defeats in an Iraq and Afghanistan, I doubt Trump would have been elected. I'm sure we wouldn't be debating whether it made sense to arm Ukraine, or even stay in NATO.
The same people would interpret our global retreat as proof that a superpower can be slowly bled until it packs up and goes home. An essential part of their narrative is that Israel is an alien Western colonial outpost. Hamas and their ideological kin are certain that if they make the Jews miserable enough, for long enough, they will leave; or enough of them will leave that they can readily kill the rest.
They're very aware that the first to leave will be the ones Israel can least afford to lose: the highly skilled, highly educated Israelis who are rapidly becoming a minority in Israel, and who feel growingly oppressed by the religious right. This group can easily take their talents elsewhere.
If secular, educated Israelis come to believe there is no hope of peace--no hope that they won't have to send their kids to die in endless wars, no hope that they won't have to live with the fear that their kids will be blown up every time they go out to go to a pizzeria or a disco--and if they *also* become convinced that the rights they've enjoyed as citizens of a secular democracy have been irreversibly eroded, many of them, probably, will leave. That will leave Israel struggling to feed a growing cohort of uneducated and unemployable men who don't know which end of the gun to shoot from. This is a very real prospect, and Israel's enemies know this all too well. It is a threat to Israel's existence as grave as that of Iran's nuclear program.
Their strategy is not stupid, and not to be underestimated. Look how many Israelis are already leaving because of the violence, fear, displacement, and misery Hamas (and Hezbollah, and Iran, and the Iraqi PMUs, and the Houthis) have managed to inflict.
This may have gone very badly for Gazans and for Hezbollah (and for Iran, and certainly for Assad), but it has gone really really well for Hamas. They've succeeded in making Israel an international pariah. They've gravely attenuated support for Israel even in the United States. They've run rings around Israel in the global battle to shape the narrative. (Netanyahu can't even go to the commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz in Poland, for God sake.)
If Trump withdraws from our alliances--and again, I think the odds of this are somewhere around 50 percent--a good part of the Middle East will interpret this to mean that al Qaeda, in the end, defeated the Great Satan. and the Little Satan is now just a mopping-up operation. It's impossible to imagine the region would, under these circumstances, reconcile itself to Israel's permanence.
This is why, even though I too found Biden's foreign policy unforgivably feckless and weak, I'm persuaded that people who voted for Trump "because of Israel" were conned. Or perhaps that they just didn't think this problem through.
Its not true that the defeat of Assad isn’t a strategic victory for Israel. As a result of his downfall, Israel has unimpeded access to Syrian airspace which is quite useful if Israel plans to launch an attack on Iran.
Speaking of Iran, who knows what Trump promised Israel in return for the cease-fire when it comes to Iran. If Iran is defeated or put in a box, Hamas becomes virtually irrelevant. Without arms supplied by Iran or Iranian funding, Hamas, like Hezbollah, is a paper tiger.
Far and away Netanyahu’s biggest priority should be keeping the PA out of Gaza
I think these analyses are remarkably credulous toward Trump’s narrative. It seems very clear to me that Netanyahu knows exactly what he can and can’t get from Biden and Trump respectively. He was betting on and hoping for a Trump win because he has traditionally gotten everything he could ever want from Trump. Defunding Palestinian aid, Golan Heights recognition, embassy move, the Abraham Accords (which removed Palestinian sovereignty as a precondition for Arab states’ recognition of Israel). And now he gets a government that’s sending Mike Huckabee to Israel. Netanyahu wants to annex swaths of the West Bank and to bomb Iranian nuclear sites. It’s clear that he felt he would get much less pushback from a Trump admin than a Biden admin on these fronts. That is why this deal is being signed now. To hand Trump a political win and reap the benefits thereof. I expect Israel to violate the ceasefire as soon as phase one is over, and I don’t expect Trump et al to do a damn thing about it.