Hamas Manufactures a Crisis

Hamas’s threat to stop releasing hostages under phase 1 of the current ceasefire has little to do with Israel’s behavior or compliance with ceasefire terms. It’s a transparent effort, perhaps coordinated with Qatar, to assess the current state of its leverage over Israel’s government.

They may be psychopathic and genocidal, but Hamas isn’t stupid. The entire three-phase ceasefire was structured to its benefit. The agreement explicitly contemplates Israel’s complete departure from Gaza and does not preclude continued Hamas rule.

The ceasefire architects surely understood that the initial round of hostage releases would excite a national frenzy. The Israeli public would – as it has following previous conflicts – accept the inevitability of Hamas’s survival as the price of getting its captive citizens back. Hamas would help things along by parading itself in force for the cameras, flaunting its survival. Starving and torturing the hostages may well have been a deliberate strategy as well, their frail appearance ensuring public demands to pay any price before it’s too late.

Any hint of capitulation will convince Hamas that it has control of Israel’s government via its people, prompting exorbitant demands for the next phase that, in normal circumstances, would be duly met, though with great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Sagacious ex-leaders and “security chiefs” would remind everyone of their prior assurances the terms would be unbearable but necessary.

Should the government risk the wrath of the protest movement and stand firm, Hamas could falsely claim victory anyway and continue with the deal – which they have every incentive to do unless and until it becomes clear that their ultimate objectives are in doubt. Those objectives are survival and emergence, through Israel’s release of enough terrorist murderers, as the unquestioned leaders not only of the Palestinians but throughout the Sunni umma. The released terrorists will furnish glory and new leadership to replenish Hamas’s now-decimated ranks.

In a normal world, then, Hamas would have nothing to lose by precipitating this crisis. But the world of Donald Trump is not normal. His sudden threat to “cancel” the ceasefire unless all hostages are released by Saturday, though he says the next steps are up to Israel, upend Hamas’s expectations and Israel’s resignation.  Combined with his previously stated vision of a Gaza Strip emptied of Palestinians, Trump’s latest challenge has fired up the government’s right-wing parties and rhetorically vindicated them. The war drums are beating again.

Having previously shoved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into a deal he’d rejected and which, if completed, would forfeit every war aim he’s forcefully articulated for months, Trump is now yanking him out of that deal despite its grudging approval by a majority of Israelis. How Netanyahu must have pleaded, just a month ago, with Trump’s envoy for more time in Gaza; unencumbered by the moralizing threats of Trump’s predecessor, he surely thought he could win the war decisively. How tragic that the green light arrives with the Israeli public exhausted by protracted, inconclusive fighting and horrified at the physical conditions of some released hostages. Desperation to see the remaining hostages released has reached a fever pitch.

What now? I think a return to fighting is ultimately inevitable for the simple reason that the deal terms ensure restoration of the unacceptable status quo ante. Those terms were negotiated by Joe Biden’s team last May without Israel’s participation.  They reflect the exigencies of a US president running for re-election against strong anti-Israel headwinds and “mediators” who advocated on behalf of Hamas.

Of course, Trump could reverse course again. Perhaps Qatar can convince him to pursue a real-estate deal in Gaza that leaves its inhabitants in place and Hamas in power. Or maybe the extravagant unworkability of displacing an unwilling population shifts Trump’s attention to other ways of coming out a winner, such as personally overseeing hostage releases, and he starts talking about Gaza in terms of aspiration rather than action.

But Netanyahu was in charge during the catastrophe of October 7, 2023 and loudly, and repeatedly, promised salvation through “total victory.” He cannot survive politically should he preside over the implementation of victory’s opposite, especially on terms that were on offer many months ago. And despite its fervent desire to see its hostages returned, Israel recognizes Hamas as an implacable, unappeasable, deadly threat – one that will not turn over its last captives until it and Gaza are rehabilitated, if ever. Punchy from Trump’s sudden policy lurches and despite the certainty of an angry public backlash, Netanyahu will likely try to turn Hamas’s manufactured crisis into its doom after extricating as many hostages as possible.