A ceasefire agreement in Gaza is, we are told, imminent. Well, given Hamas’ track record, I wouldn’t hold my breath. But then, they’re well aware that a new, meaner sheriff is about to be in town. So, maybe they’ll git while the gittin’s good.
Because, when Donald Trump promises ‘hell to pay’, it’s wise to listen.
Vice president-elect JD Vance explained what President-elect Donald Trump meant when he threatened “all hell to pay” if the almost 100 hostages, including 7 Americans, still held by Palestinian terrorists are not released by Inauguration Day on January 20.
During an interview with FOX News on Sunday, Vance said “It means enabling the Israelis to knock out the final couple of battalions of Hamas and their leadership. It means very aggressive sanctions and financial penalties on those who are supporting terrorist organizations in the Middle East.”
Since Trump issued his threat, the Jerusalem Post reports ‘a new flexibility from Hamas leadership’. But you’d be a fool to believe anything Hamas says. Much of the reason they were able to pull October 7 off at all was because they’d successfully fooled the Israelis into thinking they were ready to talk peace in exchange for a two-state solution deal.
In reality, it was all smoke and mirrors to create a false sense of security while they prepped for the worst massacre of Jews in 80 years.
It’s almost certain they’ll use any ceasefire as an opportunity to regroup. Israel may have pasted most of their senior leadership and turned Gaza into dust, but Palestinians, with an average IQ in the low 70s, are not the world’s fastest learners. There’s always another terrorist rat ready to scurry out of the sewers.
Hamas suffered a severe blow last fall when Israel killed Yahya Sinwar, the group’s leader and strategist behind the Oct 7 attacks.
But now the US-designated terrorist group has another Sinwar in charge, Yahya’s younger brother Mohammed, and he is working to build the militant group back up.
These are a people who need the rest of the world to build the hospitals and schools they subsequently turn into military installations. All they build for themselves are rockets and tunnels.
And they’re not giving up in a hurry. At least 20 Hamas rockets have been fired into Israel in just the past fortnight. Worse, Hamas is busily running a successful recruiting campaign to sign up ever-more terrorists.
Mohammed Sinwar is at the center of Hamas’s revival effort […]
Sinwar is believed to be about 50 and has long been considered close to his older brother, who was more than 10 years his senior. Like Yahya Sinwar, he joined Hamas at an early age and was considered close to the head of the movement’s armed wing, Mohammed Deif.
Unlike his brother, who spent more than two decades in an Israeli prison, Mohammed hasn’t spent a significant amount of time in Israeli jail and is less understood by Israel’s security establishment. He has operated largely behind the scenes, according to Arab officials, earning him the nickname “Shadow.” “We are working hard to find him,” said a senior Israeli official from the Southern Command, which runs the battle in Gaza.
Israel has killed about 17,000 of the estimated 30,000 pre-war Hamas fighters. But, like the Russians at Stalingrad, Hamas commanders are always ready to throw more cannon-fodder into the fray.
[Israel’s] military has battered the group in Gaza, but for months has had to return to areas it previously cleared of militants to take them on again in new fighting. That cycle points to the difficulty of ending a war that has exhausted Israel’s troops and continues to imperil hostages still held in Gaza […]
The recruiting drive is extending a war that was triggered by the Hamas-led attacks on Oct 7, 2023, which left around 1,200 people dead and about 250 taken hostage. About 400 Israeli soldiers have died fighting in Gaza. More than 46,000 people have been killed in Gaza during the war, according to Palestinian health authorities, who don’t say how many were combatants.
This is classic asymmetric warfare, where the military stronger side can still lose, especially if it’s a democracy and its enemy is not. As the US learned in Korea, where a democratic government has to answer to a war-weary voting public at home, brutal dictators can just herd wave after wave of untrained and badly armed fighters into battle.
The only realistic way forward is a permanent occupation – with no role for the vile, corrupt UN – and de-Hamas-ifying of Gaza, as happened in post-war Germany and Japan. The only problem is that Germans and Japanese are smart and learned their lesson quickly.
Palestinians, on the other hand…
