Trump and the Israel-Hamas Hostage Deal. Will he break from the Biden script to end Hamas’s rule of Gaza?
Wall Street Journal
By The Editorial Board
Jan. 15, 2025 5:34 pm ET
When a President elects to use it, American power is something to behold. That’s one lesson from the Israel-Hamas hostage deal reached Wednesday, with only days to spare before Donald Trump’s inauguration. It’s an echo of the U.S. hostages freed from Iran in the Reagan Presidency’s first minutes.
Naturally, President Biden took credit. “I laid out the precise contours of this plan on May 31, 2024,” he said in a statement. So why is it happening now instead of then, when Hamas rejected it? For a year his Administration pushed this rock up the hill, only to see it roll back down each time.
Then the U.S. election changed the regional calculus. Threatening “all hell to pay” if hostages weren’t freed by Jan. 20, Mr. Trump—and American power—changed the incentives for the parties.
Israel’s cabinet will meet Thursday to approve the deal, which is expected to begin Sunday and free 33 of the 94 remaining hostages held by Hamas, dead or alive. This will be in the deal’s first six-week phase. We hope the seven Americans are among them. The abuse hostages have suffered is heartbreaking, and their emancipation from their tormentors will be cause for celebration.
To an Israeli society holding its breath since Oct. 7, 2023, this comes as a relief. But the next breath must take in the deal’s steep cost: First, the release of about a thousand Palestinian terrorists, including more than a hundred serving life sentences. Some of the murderers are sure to return to the fight and cost innocent lives in the future, Palestinian and Israeli. This makes the deal a hard choice, but one that is for Israelis to make.
Second, Israel will withdraw from most of Gaza, including the Netzarim corridor that bisects the strip, and retreat to the buffer zones it created. Such strategic, territorial concessions go far beyond the usual prisoner releases common to most hostage deals. Israeli withdrawal has been part of Mr. Biden’s plan all along, pressed as well by Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.
No surprise, then, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under heavy fire from the Israeli right for accepting the deal, including many in his own party. They accuse him of surrendering the military gains in Gaza, for which 400 soldiers have given their lives, and abandoning the Strip to Hamas.
But Hamas made concessions too, including on the Philadelphi corridor that blocks its supply route from Egypt and on inspections of Gazans returning to the Strip’s north. Most important, Hamas gave up its demand that Israel agree to a permanent end to the war at the start of the deal’s first phase.
This means that if negotiations fail after the first phase, Israel can resume fighting to pursue Hamas’s defeat and the freedom of the rest of the hostages. Those who count out Mr. Netanyahu’s determination to do so haven’t been paying attention.
The alternative is to negotiate indefinitely, as Mr. Biden proposed Wednesday, or move to the deal’s next phase, which includes a permanent end to the war that would likely doom Gaza to remain a Hamas jihadist state. This would be a phony peace that prepares the way for the next Hamas attack against Israel—perhaps on President Trump’s watch.
***
The key variable will be Mr. Trump’s willingness to back Israel if Hamas refuses to return the rest of the hostages, disarm and agree to a non-terrorist government in Gaza. Six weeks from now, will Mr. Trump give Israel the backing to exit from the deal and finish Hamas? He pledged Wednesday to “work closely with Israel and our Allies to make sure Gaza NEVER again becomes a terrorist safe haven.”
That sounds closer to the remarks of his national-security adviser Mike Waltz and the rest of the prospective team. On Tuesday Pete Hegseth told Senators, “I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas.” On Wednesday Marco Rubio said, “How can any nation-state on the planet coexist side by side with a group of savages like Hamas?”
Israel always had to fear that the Biden Administration would try to force it to stop short of destroying Hamas, which held out hope that Mr. Biden would force Israel into a premature deal. That’s why talks went nowhere until Mr. Trump’s election victory.
If Mr. Trump were to go back on his word and seek to stop Israel from ending Hamas rule in Gaza, this deal’s legacy will likely sour as emotions fade. If he stands by Israel, it will be a signal to Iran & Co. that the Biden appeasement is over and American power is beginning its comeback.
By The Editorial Board
Jan. 15, 2025 5:34 pm ET
When a President elects to use it, American power is something to behold. That’s one lesson from the Israel-Hamas hostage deal reached Wednesday, with only days to spare before Donald Trump’s inauguration. It’s an echo of the U.S. hostages freed from Iran in the Reagan Presidency’s first minutes.
Naturally, President Biden took credit. “I laid out the precise contours of this plan on May 31, 2024,” he said in a statement. So why is it happening now instead of then, when Hamas rejected it? For a year his Administration pushed this rock up the hill, only to see it roll back down each time.
Then the U.S. election changed the regional calculus. Threatening “all hell to pay” if hostages weren’t freed by Jan. 20, Mr. Trump—and American power—changed the incentives for the parties.
Israel’s cabinet will meet Thursday to approve the deal, which is expected to begin Sunday and free 33 of the 94 remaining hostages held by Hamas, dead or alive. This will be in the deal’s first six-week phase. We hope the seven Americans are among them. The abuse hostages have suffered is heartbreaking, and their emancipation from their tormentors will be cause for celebration.
To an Israeli society holding its breath since Oct. 7, 2023, this comes as a relief. But the next breath must take in the deal’s steep cost: First, the release of about a thousand Palestinian terrorists, including more than a hundred serving life sentences. Some of the murderers are sure to return to the fight and cost innocent lives in the future, Palestinian and Israeli. This makes the deal a hard choice, but one that is for Israelis to make.
Second, Israel will withdraw from most of Gaza, including the Netzarim corridor that bisects the strip, and retreat to the buffer zones it created. Such strategic, territorial concessions go far beyond the usual prisoner releases common to most hostage deals. Israeli withdrawal has been part of Mr. Biden’s plan all along, pressed as well by Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.
No surprise, then, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under heavy fire from the Israeli right for accepting the deal, including many in his own party. They accuse him of surrendering the military gains in Gaza, for which 400 soldiers have given their lives, and abandoning the Strip to Hamas.
But Hamas made concessions too, including on the Philadelphi corridor that blocks its supply route from Egypt and on inspections of Gazans returning to the Strip’s north. Most important, Hamas gave up its demand that Israel agree to a permanent end to the war at the start of the deal’s first phase.
This means that if negotiations fail after the first phase, Israel can resume fighting to pursue Hamas’s defeat and the freedom of the rest of the hostages. Those who count out Mr. Netanyahu’s determination to do so haven’t been paying attention.
The alternative is to negotiate indefinitely, as Mr. Biden proposed Wednesday, or move to the deal’s next phase, which includes a permanent end to the war that would likely doom Gaza to remain a Hamas jihadist state. This would be a phony peace that prepares the way for the next Hamas attack against Israel—perhaps on President Trump’s watch.
***
The key variable will be Mr. Trump’s willingness to back Israel if Hamas refuses to return the rest of the hostages, disarm and agree to a non-terrorist government in Gaza. Six weeks from now, will Mr. Trump give Israel the backing to exit from the deal and finish Hamas? He pledged Wednesday to “work closely with Israel and our Allies to make sure Gaza NEVER again becomes a terrorist safe haven.”
That sounds closer to the remarks of his national-security adviser Mike Waltz and the rest of the prospective team. On Tuesday Pete Hegseth told Senators, “I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas.” On Wednesday Marco Rubio said, “How can any nation-state on the planet coexist side by side with a group of savages like Hamas?”
Israel always had to fear that the Biden Administration would try to force it to stop short of destroying Hamas, which held out hope that Mr. Biden would force Israel into a premature deal. That’s why talks went nowhere until Mr. Trump’s election victory.
If Mr. Trump were to go back on his word and seek to stop Israel from ending Hamas rule in Gaza, this deal’s legacy will likely sour as emotions fade. If he stands by Israel, it will be a signal to Iran & Co. that the Biden appeasement is over and American power is beginning its comeback.
