Hamas Achieves Pyrrhic Victory With Ceasefire Agreement

Barring last-minute breakdowns, a complicated ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is expected to result in the release of some Israelis held hostage in Gaza as early as Sunday. Additional releases are possible as the agreement takes hold.

Coming on the cusp of a U.S. presidential transition, both incoming and outgoing administrations can—and do—claim credit. President Joe Biden’s team, led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, has been working on the “contours” of the current deal since May. Biden credits “many months of intensive diplomacy” for the apparent success of the multiphase arrangement. Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump said his pending inauguration and stern promise to Hamas of “hell to pay” shook the hostages loose.

In actuality, both teams were apparently working closely behind the scenes to make the deal happen. Officials credit “unprecedented” cooperative efforts by Biden’s Middle East negotiator Brett McGurk and Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff for bringing the meandering negotiations in Qatar to a successful conclusion. However venomous the public relationship is between Biden and Trump, their teams worked together like Americans with no daylight between them.

As reassuring as this is, certainly the pending return of Trump to the White House provided the opportunity for Hamas and Israel to accede to a ceasefire agreement. There likely would have been no impetus for an agreement without Trump’s ascendence. Arab officials have been quoted as saying Witkoff did more to bring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over in a single meeting than the Biden administration did in a year.

Certainly, the Israeli government has been resisting calls for a ceasefire that have been coming essentially since the war began 15 months ago. Nobody wanted a ceasefire more than Hamas. It took the combined efforts of Biden and Trump, together with mounting pressure at home, to make Netanyahu yield.

Napalm in the Morning

That Hamas has achieved a ceasefire may be counted as a victory of sorts. There will be the trappings of victory in Gaza and friendly cities throughout the world from London to Paris to Manhattan, with crowds loudly celebrating the persistence and righteousness of the resistance. As my colleague and intelligence expert Michael Ard and I observed in Discourse early in the conflict, Hamas was winning the information war. This was puzzling given the ghastly nature of the October 7, 2023 attack, lurid promotion of atrocities and the carrying off of captives.

Yet the taking of hostages was the master stroke that made a victory of sorts possible. Hamas’ victory conditions were to successfully carry out a raid into Israel proper and then sustain itself under retaliation to rally support from abroad. This it has accomplished specifically through the taking of hostages. Paradoxically, the seizure of innocents as bargaining chips did not produce enough revulsion in the civilized world to overshadow Hamas’ electrifying display of boldness and strength to its supporters. Moreover, on cue, Western media outlets such as the BBC remained dutifully and daily focused on the sufferings of the people of Gaza under Israeli bombardment.

There was no countdown of days for people—including Americans—held hostage; only civilian body counts helpfully supplied by Hamas health officials. The United Nations condemned Israel. Netanyahu is wanted for war crimes. Smells like victory.

However, the current situation cannot be what Hamas’ largely deceased leadership had been striving for when it retired to its Gaza warrens after the October 7 raid. Netanyahu declared war and put Israel on a war footing. In over a year of fighting, Israel has implacably reduced Hamas’ forces to a remnant, crushed its Hezbollah allies and left its Iranian sponsor contemplating the destruction of its offensive missile arm and air-defense network and the downfall of its puppet Assad regime in Syria. All of this has made Hamas’ victory smell like burning gasoline.

Out of the Ashes

Only the holding of hostages has kept Hamas in the game. This is the one constant in warfare against Western powers, of which Israel must be counted. Westerners will always bargain for hostages, even agreeing to seemingly ridiculous exchange rates, such as 30 or 50 or 100 enemy prisoners released for every Western captive. Hundreds of millions of dollars may be transferred as well.

Sometimes dead bodies count as hostages. One wonders what the incentive is for keeping captives alive if Israel will allow bodies to count among the 33 hostages it expects to receive in exchange for releasing 1,300 (live) Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, who are likely to fight again, as part of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement. The fate of at least 60 additional captives Hamas holds—alive and dead—remain to be determined in subsequent phases of the deal.

Despite its leaders’ rhetoric, the West does negotiate with terrorists. This makes the taking of hostages an imperative in warfare against the West, more important than the latest drones or ballistic missiles. Hostages are the war-winning weapon. It is perplexing that the Houthis have not seized captives from ships they attack in the Red Sea.

The taking of hostages incurs no public relations penalty. A regime or organization that takes hostages will continue to receive support from those opposed to its enemy. When President Jimmy Carter’s completely justified if overdue effort to rescue American hostages in Tehran came to grief in the Iranian desert, I remember a Soviet cartoonist depicted the thwarted rescuers as waving the Jolly Roger.

There was to be no triumphant Entebbe raid (Netanyahu’s brother was killed commanding that mission) in the tunnels of Gaza. Military pounding would not induce Hamas to let Israel’s people go. Indeed, the Israeli response was baked into Hamas’ successful plan to drum up international support. In addition, the existence of the hostages created a political bloc of their family, friends and supporters to petition the Israeli government for a ceasefire—the very thing Hamas wanted most. Even the indomitable Bibi eventually had to bend.

It is very difficult to ignore the distress of the hostages’ families, particularly if they are chanting and banging drums outside your office. Policy is great until it runs into genuine grief and anxiety. If walking a mile in another’s shoes seems cliche, consider the wearer is agonizing over her child being held in a hole. The fact that the hostage-takers are able to generate political opposition against the government of the people they victimize seems maddening and unjust. But there it is.

Biden had wanted a ceasefire from early on. Trump wanted the war over, and practically, that means a deal. A majority of Israelis support a deal that brings the hostages home. Hamas and their supporters, of course, are now gleeful to have a ceasefire in the offing. If it unravels before the final phases are completed, they are no worse off than they are now and Israel will no doubt get the blame.

More strategy-minded Israelis can take solace in the fact they have achieved remarkable, almost undreamed-of destruction of their enemies on all fronts. Israel remains in a commanding position over what is left of Hamas. Iran is facing the end of a (somewhat) friendly face in the White House. Trump will cut off the Mullahs’ funds and Hamas, at the very end of the drip, is not likely to see a reconstitution of its fighting force anytime soon, let alone its arsenal of rockets. If this is a victory for hostage-takers, it is one Israel can live with for now.