Symbolic? Maybe, maybe not. If true, Hamas leaders didn’t just get a soft ultimatum from Donald Trump this week.
Yesterday, Trump warned Hamas that the final deal for a cease-fire in Gaza was on the table, and that all other options would get “MUCH WORSE.” Qatar may have decided to raise the stakes to something more personal for Hamas’ billionaire clique in Doha:
Doha-based senior Hamas leaders have been told to lay down their arms as part of the efforts to reach a ceasefire deal with Israel, according to a Thursday morning report from The Times newspaper. …
The Times stated that those told to lay down their weapons were “the most senior Hamas leaders outside Gaza, including the lead negotiator Khalil al-Hayya and other key figures.”
One of the key figures reportedly included Hamas political bureau member Zaher Jabareen, “a founder of the group’s military wing in the West Bank.”
An additional bureau member told to lay down weapons was Muhammad Ismail Darwish, who had “met the leaders of Iran and Turkey this year while shuttling between Cairo and Doha for indirect negotiations with Israel,” the report said.
The Times credits this as a “symbolic reflection of Hamas’ interest in the ceasefire proposal,” but that doesn’t make much sense. If Hamas wanted to send that kind of signal, their Qatar contingent would have voluntarily and unilaterally disarmed. They wouldn’t have needed the Qataris to order them to disarm.
That makes this sound like a much different kind of signal. The Qataris are likely as tired of playing the Hamas Hokey Pokey as everyone else, for one thing, while their leadership fattens up on “aid” meant for Palestinians. However, it may mean more than that, especially after the strike on Fordow by Trump and the B-2 bombers. That didn’t just send a signal to Tehran, but to Doha as well — and the rocket fire on Qatar afterward probably didn’t help, either.
Up until now, Qatar has basically played all sides against the middle. Their regime plays footsie with the radical Islamists of both Shi’ite and Sunni natures; they also fund a lot of it, including the porcine Hamas leadership parked in their backyard. They cozy up to the West as problem-solvers, especially problems that they stir up for their own purposes. Up until Fordow, it hedged its bets between the West and Iran, too. The emirs of Doha only have one overriding concern: not to end up on the losing side when the **** goes down.
The 12 Day War and the strike on Fordow presumably changed the calculus for Qatar. First off, Iran turned out to be a paper tiger, despite the decades the regime had to build up the IRGC. The Israelis only needed a couple of hours to strip them of their air cover, and then relentlessly pounded the regime into utter humiliation — apparently without ever losing a plane. Trump then stripped them of their nuclear-weapons ambitions after that ultimatum got unanswered, making it clear that American policy and attitude had undergone a massive change.
So when Trump says or even implies or else, at least the Qataris are listening.
Reportedly so is Hamas, perhaps mindful of what might happen to unarmed billionaire terrorists without arms or Qatari protection in a continuing war with Israel. The new proposal from Steven Witkoff will stretch out the hostage releases over the entire 60-day period:
But according to an Israeli defense official and a Palestinian close to Hamas, the deal would entail the release of 10 of the remaining living hostages and the return of 18 bodies still held by Hamas in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Both were briefed on details of the evolving agreement and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
The release of the hostages and the return of the bodies would be staggered, with five groups over the 60-day period, they said. That was a change from what was outlined in a U.S. proposal in May, under which all captives would have been released by the seventh day of the cease-fire.
Hamas would also refrain from holding televised handover ceremonies like those it staged when releasing hostages during the two-month truce that began in January, the two sources said. The events — in which Israeli hostages were often made to give speeches thanking their captors — drew international criticism.
But what happens to Hamas? Hamas wonders that too, and says it won’t enter into the deal without guarantees that the war will come to an end after the hostage exchanges:
But Hamas’s response, which emphasized its demand that the war end, raised questions about whether the latest offer could materialize into an actual pause in fighting.
Hamas official Taher al-Nunu said the terror group was “ready and serious regarding reaching an agreement.” He said Hamas was “ready to accept any initiative that clearly leads to the complete end to the war.”
Netanyahu insisted that the end goal remains the same — “no Hamas” at the end, and no “Hamastan” either:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed Wednesday evening that Israel’s aims of both defeating Hamas and freeing the hostages are still both attainable: “I am telling you, there will be no Hamas,” he said during a visit to the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company headquarters in Ashkelon. “There will be no Hamastan. We are not going back to that. It is over. We will release all our hostages.”
Any suggestions that those two goals are in opposition are “nonsense,” he added, saying that “it works together. We will complete this together, contrary to what they say. We will eliminate them to the end.”
And so we’re at the same point here as before. Hamas wants Gaza and another chance to launch a war of annihilation against Israel. Israel wants the hostages and the permanent ejection of Hamas from Gaza. The two positions are irreconcilable — but the environment has changed dramatically over the past month, too. Saudi Arabia reportedly wants Hamas ejected as a condition of joining the Abraham Accords, Iran has just been absolutely depantsed and unable to send meaningful support, and the Qataris seem just about ready to tee up Hamas leadership for the Mossad. The only real option left for any sort of survival of Hamas leadership would be to accept exile and lament their life choices while spending the money they filched from Western saps.
As Trump warns, all the options are about to get worse. And probably in a hurry.
