Let the world celebrate these hostages’ return. Let Israel embrace them, heal with them, and honor their survival. But no one should mistake this tactical success for strategic victory. Israel is purchasing today’s relief with tomorrow’s security, saving current hostages while creating conditions for future ones.
The families waiting at border crossings deserve their reunions. But other families—not yet formed, children not yet born—deserve more than becoming the next generation’s hostages. They deserve the permanent peace that comes only through Hamas’s complete defeat.
Israel’s hostages are coming home, and for that the world rejoices. But until Hamas is eliminated as a military and political force, we are merely pausing between tragedies. The question isn’t whether Israel should bring its people home—of course it must. The question is: will the international community learn from history, or condemn Israel to repeat it?
Today brings celebration. Tomorrow must bring the resolve to finish what October 7 started—not with negotiations, but with victory. Anything less guarantees that today’s joy will become tomorrow’s grief.
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Hamas will change its name. And there are DOZENS of other Muslim terrorist organizations.
Trump seems to be looking toward Qatar as one of the main funders that will rebuild Gaza. If Qatar’s ruling family accepts this role, they will doubtless expect a role just as important in governing it, which could well include appointing who else might share that privilege. Candidates include the Palestinian Authority, the 2,000 returning terrorists, and, if not precisely Qatar’s longtime client, Hamas, then “Son of Hamas,” or “Hamas 2.0,” or “Hamas the Sequel.” One could call the enclave the “Democratic Republic of Gaza,” but it would still be home to genocidal terrorist groups, committed to destroying Israel for the glory of Islam, smuggling in as many weapons as before the October 7 massacre. That is just what Qatar is – reportedly with aspirations of someday replacing Saudi Arabia as the keeper of Islam’s holy sites.
Yes, Trump is making a mistake to trust Qatar for anything. And yes, if we know anything from history, this deal will simply be another pause between tragedies.
And I won’t be surprised if Hamas comes up with some excuse to reneg on the deal before Monday.
If so, I hope Israel finishes the job of annihilating them for good.
Roger Simon has a Substack piece on the cease fire announcement in Gaza, to which he has added this sobering update:
This is a time when I don’t particularly like being prescient. Just a few days ago, I posted “Gaza–Genuine Peace or a Hudna? ” A hudna, for those who missed it, is a tactical pause to allow Islamic forces to regroup.
Minutes ago, the following was posted by Amir Tsarfati on Instagram: Hamas publishes “God, let the ceasefire be like the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah—followed by conquest, like the conquest of Mecca.”
The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah was a temporary peace agreement signed by Mohammed with the Quraysh tribe, which he later broke before conquering Mecca. The statement implies that Hamas views the ceasefire as a tactical pause before a future “victory” or takeover.
No one who pays attention will be surprised. The cease fire agreement contemplates that the remainder of President Trump’s peace plan, which calls for an end to Hamas rule and an international coalition to supervise Gaza on an interim basis, will be negotiated in good faith. But of course Hamas has never done anything in good faith, and it is hard to imagine that the remainder of the peace plan will actually be implemented.
The real question, I think, is whether Hamas still speaks for Gaza. By rights, given the disasters they have spawned, the leaders of Hamas should be strung up like Mussolini at the end of World War II. But if there is a movement among the people of Gaza to leave fanaticism behind and become a normal polity, I am not aware of it.
Exactly -
“Hamas has never done anything in good faith”.
That’s the most reliable factor to count on in every deal with them. And they’re already declaring it to be a “hudna” themselves!
I think the best we can hope for is that we get the remaining hostages back, and then - as soon as they (predictably) break the treaty - Israel will finish the job of ridding the world of these terrorists.
From the long article by Gregg Roman at Gatestone:
The governance vacuum created by Hamas’s agreed departure from formal administration creates opportunities for alternative power centers to emerge. Criminal gangs already filled vacuums in areas Hamas lost with the “fear barrier eroding” among Gaza civilians. Rival extremist groups more radical than Hamas compete for influence. Family clans and tribal structures reassert traditional authority. The Palestinian Authority, weak and corrupt, commands no respect. Into this chaos, the Trump plan injects a “technocratic Palestinian committee” overseen by an international “Board of Peace” that Hamas has already rejected. Even if established, what exactly does this committee govern? They control no armed forces, command no popular loyalty, possess no institutional depth, and depend entirely on external protection and funding. They are authorities whose legitimacy derives from foreign sponsorship rather than domestic consent.
It sounds like what the palestinians need would be more akin to zookeepers than technocrats.
They’re the ultimate example of what you get when you combine barbaric ignorance with abject corruption and extremely radical religious/political brainwashing.
It’s no wonder that it has produced terrorists on a grand scale, which, of course, was the whole point.
They’re the ultimate example of what you get when you combine barbaric ignorance with abject corruption and extremely radical religious/political brainwashing. It’s no wonder that it has produced terrorists on a grand scale, which, of course, was the whole point.
All hostages should have been returned within 72 hours of Israel accepting the agreement, and only at that point should Israel have released 250 life sentence prisoners plus 1700 Gazans who were detained after October 7th 2023.
But the terror group reportedly did not follow through as of yet with the return of deceased hostages, releasing only four out of the 28 expected.
Not a surprise at all. I’m just glad they gave all the ones still alive back. That’s better than what I expected.
In another positive turn of events, different factions of Palestinians are already killing each other!
On the negative side - why does Israel have to release so many terrorists?
So they are executing “collaborators” with Israel.
And clans are murdering each other. They really don’t know any other way to exist besides violence and murder.
Trump says that if Hamas doesn’t disarm, “we will disarm them". If he means us–the United States–I seriously doubt it. The only plausible candidate, it seems to me, is the Israelis. But with no compelling objective immediately in sight, it is hard to see why they would re-start the war that finally ended a few days ago. For the near future, at least, the people of Gaza will continue to get what they signed up for when they elected Hamas to lead them.
Yes, Gazans are “getting what they signed up for”.
But I disagree that the Israelis don’t have a “compelling objective” for going back to war with Hamas - I think getting rid of terrorists who still plan to kill you is a pretty compelling objective!
And now that they have the remaining hostages back (the living ones, at least) Hamas has lost it’s “bargaining chips”.
Israel should take advantage of that and finish them off.
In a crucial White House meeting with Netanyahu, Trump insisted on the Israelis agreeing to all 20 points [of his deal]. That included both the ones that were clearly in line with the Jewish state’s war goals on the hostages and the surrender of Hamas, as well as the ones about which they were skeptical. The Netanyahu government took a dim view of the points about mythical non-political Palestinian technocrats running postwar Gaza. They are equally leery about the creation of an international body that would supervise the reform of the corrupt Palestinian Authority, in addition to the Strip’s rebuilding and a peaceful transition to what might eventually become a path to statehood.
But at Trump’s insistence—and with him bluntly telling them their international isolation was a problem they needed to address—Netanyahu gave an enthusiastic “yes” to all of it.
But despite what Trump is saying, that wasn’t Hamas’s response. Their answer to his demands was “yes, but … ,” not a blanket agreement.
They agreed to release all of the living hostages right away. But they said that the terms of their disarmament and surrender of power would have to be subject to later negotiations.
That gave away what most observers thought was their only leverage to stay in place. But they appear to have come to the conclusion that holding onto the hostages was an impediment to their survival rather than a guarantee of it.
By essentially satisfying the most urgent and emotional of the American and Israeli demands, they have put themselves in a much stronger diplomatic position. [? - J.B.]
Equally important, the ceasefire and the partial Israeli withdrawal give them a lifeline to rearm and retake control of those parts of the enclave that are no longer in the hands of the IDF.
Without the U.S. decision to treat that ambivalent reply as good enough to sell as both sides agreeing to the deal as a whole, the hostages would not have been freed, and the shooting would have continued.
Hamas has no intention of being disarmed, let alone giving up Gaza to some sort of theoretical technocratic and international government.
