Ceasefires Will Only Hinder Getting the Hostages Released
by Con Coughlin • November 10, 2023 at 5:00 am
[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] argued that the more that 240 Israelis held hostage by Hamas should be released first. Letting up the military pressure on Hamas, rather than forcing Hamas to concede, will only delay the hostages' release by enabling the terrorists to keep moving them around and re-hiding them.
The other important consideration the Biden administration has failed to grasp is that, by ensuring Israel achieves its goal of destroying Hamas, Washington would be sending a strong signal to hostile states such as Iran, Russia and China that any attack against the US and its allies would receive a similarly robust response.
At the very least the Biden administration should be urgently reviewing its Iran policy and, instead of obsessing about the prospects of reviving the "nuclear deal" with Tehran... concentrating its efforts on targeting top IRGC commanders, as well as imposing tough banking sanctions against Tehran to limit its ability to fund terrorist groups such as Hamas.
The White House has just announced that there will be daily "four-hour pauses", with eight hours' notice, in northern Gaza.
As Israel maintains its military offensive to destroy Hamas's terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, the biggest threat to the operation achieving its stated objective of wiping Hamas from the face of the earth comes not the Islamist fanatics desperately defending their network of underground tunnels but from the Biden administration's obsession, possibly after seeing so many staged demonstrations, with having "ceasefires."
