When we argued that Joe Biden couldn’t have possibly cut this deal, we had no idea how correct we had been.
To some surprise, Hamas actually and finally gave up its last remaining living hostages today. In doing so, they also parted with the last bit of leverage they have in order to come out of the war they launched two years ago with any sort of face-saving concessions. So why did they agree to this capitulation? Donald Trump left them no choice, having cut off every other diplomatic and military option, as the Wall Street Journal reports today:
Egypt and Qatar told Hayya the deal was his last chance to end the war, according to the officials. They pressed Hamas to understand that holding the hostages was becoming a strategic liability, giving Israel a source of legitimacy to keep fighting.
The next day, joined by Turkey, they warned him that if Hamas didn’t approve the plan it would be stripped of all political and diplomatic cover; Qatar and Turkey would no longer host the group’s political leadership, and Egypt would stop pressing for Hamas to have a say in Gaza’s postwar governance, the officials said.
It was enough to get Hamas to agree to release all its hostages in Gaza and sign on to the first part of Trump’s peace deal, giving up what had been its most important bargaining chip to keep a seat at the table. While modifying its acceptance with heavy caveats that reflected its concerns about the deal, Hamas had given Trump an opportunity to declare victory and set the stage for a hostage release early this week.
Trump won this war in June, when he demonstrated an unapologetic decision to intervene with military strikes in Iran. Those strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities completely shook up the order in the region, which had settled into an Iranian track toward dominance. Israel had already done most of the damage by wiping out Hezbollah’s upper echelons and their banking system, which led directly to the fall of Bashar al-Assad and the rise of a new Syrian regime that detests the mullahs in Iran. However, the strikes by Trump on Iran forced everyone to reconsider their assumptions and recalculate for a president who had no problem ordering military force to defend and protect American interests.
However, the strike by Israel on Hamas facilities in Doha played a role here too. Trump claimed to be angry over that attack, and the White House made it known that he supposedly forced Benjamin Netanyahu to apologize to the Qatari emirate. However, that also sent a signal that both US and Israeli impatience over the Hamas Hokey Pokey and the uselessness of the Billionaire Boys Club in Doha had reached a critical moment. With both the US and Israel willing to throw down against terror networks and their sponsors, time ran out for Hamas.
The Biden Regency would never have flexed power in that fashion. Biden’s handlers wanted a Grand Deal with the Tehran mullahs and spent four years attempting to appease them enough to get a re-do of the JCPOA, Barack Obama’s useless Iran deal. Less than five months after taking office, Trump made clear that those days were over, and that message resonated in every capital in the Middle East.
Hamas ran out of friends shortly afterward, and Trump’s 20-point peace plan became a life preserver, whether Hamas liked it or not:
“Hamas themselves have been under a lot of pressure from regional mediators,” said Tahani Mustafa, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Hamas also knows that they’re not probably going to politically survive this if things continue down this route, especially given that their popularity is declining.”
In other words, the music came to an end for the Hamas Hokey Pokey. Finally. The person who ended it is Donald Trump, and at least the partial restoration of a hard American line against terrorism.
Hamas knows it’s been beaten, too. Jewish Insider reports that they tried one last round of psychological torture with the hostages’ families, but skipped the big ceremony that accompanied other hostage releases:
The first images of the men trickled out over the course of the morning: Miran, flanked by his wife and father, wearing a shirt with artwork by his two young daughters; the Berman twins in Maccabi Tel Aviv jerseys; Ohel, pale but smiling and standing on his own, with sunglasses to protect his damaged eyes.
In contrast to previous hostage release[s], as dictated by the agreement, there were no propaganda ceremonies staged by Hamas as they handed over the captive Israelis. Instead, Hamas made video calls to the hostages’ relatives, who spoke to their loved ones as they stood beside their masked and uniformed captors.
Hamas is all but washed up. The October 7 atrocities turned out to be a spectactular backfire in the worst way imaginable. Not only did it result in the wholesale destruction of Gaza rather than Israel, it also took out Iran’s nuclear program, Hezbollah, Assad, and their corrupt UN partnership that solidified their power. Without the hostages, Hamas no longer has much leverage in the rest of the cease-fire talks. With the IDF standing outside Gaza’s major cities and prepared to start the war again, they will have little choice but to comply with Trump’s demands just to survive.
Hamas set out to change the face of the Middle East. Israel fought all of the Islamists long enough to get past the Biden Regency, and then Trump beat Hamas to the mission. It’s that simple.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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