By Philip Klein
Monday, February 10, 2025
Earlier today, I noted that Hamas was testing President Trump’s patience by
declaring it was postponing hostage releases indefinitely due to phony claims
that Israel violated the cease-fire agreement. Well, Trump has responded by
throwing down the gauntlet: If Hamas does not release the hostages by noon on
Saturday, he now says, “all hell is gonna break out.”
Trump, critically, is not saying that Hamas has to agree
to release the next batch of a few hostages under the current cease-fire
agreement. No, he is saying all of the roughly 70 of them who still
remain (a mix of those dead and alive). He declared, “Not in dribs and drabs —
not two, and one, and three, and four, and two.”
While we still don’t know what “hell” is going to mean,
beyond, perhaps, finally allowing Israel to take the gloves off against Hamas,
this tells us some things as well as raises some questions.
One, there was a lot of fear after Steve Witkoff
pressured Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into signing on to phase one of Joe
Biden’s Gaza cease-fire deal that the new administration might push Israel into
agreeing to future phases of the deal, which would essentially mean Israel
giving up on its war against Hamas.
Trump’s comments today should leave little doubt that he
has determined that a deal in which hostages are released gradually, a few a
week, allowing Hamas to play games, is a rotten one. Based on his comments
yesterday, it’s clear that he was moved by the images of the emaciated hostages
who were released over the weekend, and he will no longer confine himself to
the Biden framework.
Two, we finally get to see how strong U.S. support for
Israel will change future stages of the war. Biden’s muddled message —
sometimes claiming he supported Israel, other times playing into Hamas’s hands
by chastising Israel for its conduct of the war — no doubt prolonged the war
and put more lives at risk, because Hamas always believed that it could use
Biden to pressure Israel into more concessions. Now, that dynamic has been
replaced. Trump is saying if Hamas doesn’t turn over the hostages, Israel will get
to take the gloves off with full American backing.
Three, this puts Netanyahu in a tricky position. Since
the beginning of the war, there was always a natural tension between “bring
them home” and “destroy Hamas.” The dream was of course that Israel could
destroy Hamas, and in doing so, rescue all the hostages. But that has proven
difficult in an urban warfare scenario with hostages spread out — kept within a
vast network of tunnels, in civilian apartment buildings, and even in
U.N. facilities. On the other end of the spectrum, prioritizing the release
of hostages over all other war aims risks allowing Hamas to remain in power as
part of some final cease-fire deal.
Now, Trump is essentially saying, this must reach its
natural end point. In a way, it is not only a challenge to Hamas, but to
Netanyahu. Now he finally has the green light that has been denied him since
October 7. But it comes with the risk that Hamas, seeing any path to a
negotiated settlement cut off, will begin shooting ISIS-style execution videos
of the hostages.
It’s possible that Hamas will simply release some
hostages over the weekend and claim that it is abiding by the cease-fire
agreement that was signed with Israel, thus putting pressure on Netanyahu to
keep the cease-fire at least until the current six-week phase expires.
Either way, it’s clear the dynamic that has been playing
out for the past 16 months has now changed.
No comments:
Post a Comment