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By Jonathan S. Tobin
(JNS) For the last year and a half, it has been a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those who have claimed that Hamas couldn’t be defeated were right—but only because the rules of engagement of the war that the terrorists launched on Oct. 7, 2023, were set up to ensure that it survived. Those rules may now be about to change. Or at least they will if the Jewish state takes advantage of two factors that could alter the balance of power between it and the genocidal terrorists it seeks to destroy.
The change in power in Washington and the shocking exploitation of the ceasefire deal on the part of Hamas that so outraged the Israeli public has given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an opportunity to reset that agreement in a way that could either free all the hostages or lead to Hamas’s demise. The question is: Does he have sufficient support from his own people to do it?
That’s the context for the announcement this past weekend that Israel was halting the entry of humanitarian goods and supplies into the Gaza Strip until Hamas agrees to the framework for a second-phase deal along the lines proposed by the Trump administration. The goal is to set up a negotiation that would achieve at least one of Israel’s two main war goals: freeing all of the remaining hostages taken by the Palestinians on Oct. 7 and eradicating Hamas.
The only way to get all the hostages back is by assenting to an accord that will mean full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. In spite of the various plans being floated for what will happen in the Strip after fighting truly ends, that means Hamas will emerge from the war not only alive but still in control of its ruined fiefdom.
At the same time, the only way to completely defeat Hamas—something difficult but not impossible—involves a decision on the part of Jerusalem that its war effort cannot be held hostage along with the Israelis still held by the terrorists.
This is glaringly obvious, though not being acknowledged by Netanyahu or the Trump administration. Yet the aid cutoff is a sign that Israel’s government is finally starting to act as if it is not committed to fighting Hamas with one hand tied behind its back.
An incomplete victory
The Israel Defense Forces destroyed Hamas’s organized military formations, killed much of its leadership and demolished a sizeable portion of its infrastructure—both above ground and in the hundreds of miles of tunnels it had built in the coastal enclave. But when a ceasefire/hostage release deal halted the fighting in January, it was also clear that the Islamist group that had ruled Gaza as an independent Palestinian state in all but name since 2007 was far from eradicated.
The constant admonitions of the Biden administration demanding that Israel avoid civilian casualties in Gaza, even if it meant letting the terrorists escape, was one part of the problem. Those warnings couldn’t be entirely ignored because they were backed up by threats of halting the supply of vital arms shipments, as well as the slow-walking of deliveries of those shipments that were allowed to be sent to Israel.
The other was that even while it was fighting the Islamist group, in addition to its allies and collaborators, Israel was forced to do something unprecedented in the history of warfare: aiding the civilian population under the control of its enemies. Moreover, it did so while knowing that much of the food, fuel and other supplies being shipped into Gaza daily were winding up in the hands of the very same group that started the war with unspeakable atrocities on Oct. 7.
Despite being falsely accused of war crimes and even committing “genocide” in Gaza, the IDF conducted urban combat in a situation in which its foes deliberately tried to get its own people killed. They did this by fighting around and even underneath them in tunnels and bunkers under hospitals, schools, mosques and civilian homes. Even when taking into account that the casualty statistics supplied by Hamas were wild exaggerations, roughly half the number of those killed in Gaza included Hamas and combatants of other terrorist groups. More than that, when realizing that approximately 80% of fatalities were Hamas members or their families, it’s clear that the charges against the IDF were utter falsehoods.
A dangerous ceasefire
Nevertheless, the ability of Hamas to maintain its much-diminished numbers is the result of pressure exerted on Israel by a Biden administration that was primarily interested in ending the war at any cost, even if it meant that the terrorists emerged triumphant.
Just as important, the terms of the ceasefire/hostage deal that President Joe Biden’s foreign-policy team crafted with their duplicitous Qatari partners seemed to lead to that same outcome. And though President Donald Trump was opposed to Hamas’s continued existence and threatened to unleash “all Hell” on the region if all the hostages weren’t released by his inauguration on Jan. 20, his desire to have the shooting stop in time for his swearing-in led his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to accept those same terms as he pushed the deal over the goal line in the days before Trump 2.0 took power.
That agreement did lead to the release of 30 hostages. But even as Israelis and every decent person celebrated their return home, their condition and the humiliating ceremonies that Hamas staged for their release, including a celebration when the bodies of the Bibas children were handed over, has also transformed the situation.
Netanyahu is under enormous domestic pressure to try to ransom the remaining living hostages, which may number no more than two dozen. He has also been empowered by the outrage against Hamas to not accept the same terms for a second phase of the ceasefire that would simply drag out the same process. That would further empower the terrorists and encourage them to believe they can continue to hang on amid the ruins of a war they started.
The Trump factor
The aid stoppage represents a fundamental change in the way Israel is treating an enemy that makes no secret of its desire to destroy the Jewish state and commit the genocide of its population. It puts Hamas on notice that the gloves may soon be coming off in the war unless it stops playing for time.
That has only been made possible by Trump’s victory last November.
Europe and much of the world still act as if Israel is the only country in the world not allowed to fight to win a war forced on it. But unlike Biden, Trump isn’t worried about international opinion about Gaza. Nor is he constrained to avoid whole-hearted support of the war on Hamas by a faction of his party as Biden was by the left-wing base of the Democrats, where hostility to Israel has gone mainstream. Trump wants the hostages freed, but he’s also floated a plan for not just ousting the terrorists but resettling Gazans elsewhere and turning the Strip into a resort. If Israel chooses to resume the war—the only way to make that or any other postwar plan that is predicated on a non-Hamas government there—he won’t protest or continue advocating for the fantasy of a Palestinian state as Biden did. Indeed, it’s likely that Trump will be cheering on an Israeli offensive.
The next days and weeks will be something of a game of chicken as Hamas and Israel go right up to the brink of war, with both sides daring each other to take responsibility for blowing up the ceasefire talks. The question of which of them has more to lose from such an outcome is open for debate. Netanyahu can’t let Hamas survive, but he also can’t be seen as writing off the lives of any remaining living hostages. Hamas wants to hold onto the hostages because so long as they do, they think they are safe. But they also know an Israel unfettered by American pressure could mean their doom.
Netanyahu now has far more weapons to pressure Hamas than he did before January. By having a partner in Washington who doesn’t believe that Hamas is an “idea” that can’t be defeated but a terror group that can and should be eradicated, he can finally start waging war on it in a way to accomplish that goal.
Such a decision will bring down more opprobrium on Israel than before. And it will likely further fuel the surge of antisemitism spreading across the globe from those who believe that one Jewish state on the planet is one too many. But if anything is certain, it’s that Hamas won’t give up the remaining hostages unless it retains its power and arms. And that is something neither Israel nor the Trump administration should accept.
It remains to be seen if Netanyahu can resist the pressure on him to throw away the sacrifices made by Israel’s soldiers to secure the lives of the hostages. If he does, the primary reason won’t be an American ally that doesn’t think an evil terrorist organization should be allowed to get away with mass murder.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
