Hamas has finally given up and agreed to a Gaza ceasefire agreement and to start releasing the remaining hostages it kidnapped from Israel 467 days ago. This happened because they have lost the war that they started on Oct. 7.
The remnants of the Hamas leadership will have to relinquish their grip over Gaza when the war ends. Their brutal reign brought overwhelming destruction to the impoverished Strip. With aid from the Arab states and beyond to the new government, perhaps aligned with the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank, Gaza will have to be rebuilt from ruins. But Hamas has forfeited any claim on power. Terror has failed. Palestinians must head to the negotiation table.
While the final decision was for Hamas, the U.S. was instrumental in getting here. Although the agreed plan is exactly what President Biden presented in May, these last few weeks since Donald Trump’s election have been a joint effort. And as Biden said yesterday: “There was no other way for this war to end than with a hostage deal.”
Both Biden and Trump want credit, but the ownership is shared.
Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has been in tandem with Trump’s incoming NSA, Mike Waltz. Secretary of State Tony Blinken has been talking to Marco Rubio, who sailed through his confirmation hearing yesterday. On the ground in Qatar, have been Biden’s Middle East envoy Brett McGurk and Trump’s new guy, Steve Witkoff, both attending the negotiations mediated by Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.
The guns grow quiet on Sunday, Biden’s last day in office, when the first hostages start coming out. And, as Biden said, since the hostage deal is here, so the war’s end is hopefully in sight.
Hamas began this war on Oct. 7, 2023, with a pogrom against Israel, murdering, raping, burning, kidnapping. Israel’s military response brought ruin to Gaza and misery to Palestinians suffering under Hamas.
More than 1,200 Israelis were intentionally murdered on Oct. 7 and another 251 dragged back into Gaza. Thousands of Palestinians have died in the war that followed, many thousands of them Hamas combatants and sadly, many thousands of civilians, whose loss is to be mourned as Hamas burrowed into civilian areas and hid their fighters in hospitals and schools and mosques, all of which are war crimes, as is seizing hostages.
Among the dead are the men who started it, Hamas chiefs Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif in Gaza, and Ismail Haniyeh, who thought he was safe in the Persian Gulf until Israel got his number during his visit to Tehran.
The Hamas war also saw the downfall of Hezbollah, which joined the assault against Israel on Oct. 8. Hezbollah has been decapitated and defanged by Israel allowing Lebanon to finally elect a new president after years of being blocked by Hezbollah. The crushing of Hezbollah then caused the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, as the main sponsor, Iran, has been neutered by Israel. Everywhere in the Mideast the bad guys have lost or are on their backs. All because of the war that Hamas started.
And when Trump takes office next week, he’ll be able to expand the circle of peace between Israel and its neighbors he began with the Abraham Accords.