Israel and Hamas reportedly reached a ceasefire deal that will theoretically see an exchange in its first stage of women, children, and wounded Israelis held by Hamas in exchange for hundreds of Hamas members held in Israeli prisons. In the second stage, Israel would release an even greater number of Hamas members, including those arrested for murder, in exchange for military and military-age male prisoners it holds.
President-elect Donald Trump may celebrate. He can say both his promise to “unleash hell” if Hamas did not release American hostages and the threats conveyed privately by his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff forced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire he was long reluctant to embrace. President Joe Biden and his team will also likely claim credit for the persistence of their own diplomacy leading up to the last-minute deal.
The Ceasefire Deal Is No Deal for Israel
The deal is a disaster. Families of the hostages may feel otherwise if their goal was only to get their loved ones home, but releasing murderers and unrepentant terrorists to do so only guarantees more violence. The October 7, 2023 attacks—the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust not only occurred during an ongoing Israel-Hamas ceasefire but was also planned and led by Yahya Sinwar, a prisoner released in a previous hostage swap. In effect, to release one Hamas hostage, Gilad Shalit, Netanyahu—who was prime minister during that swap as well—not only freed more than 1,000 Hamas prisoners but, in hindsight, set Israel down a course that led to the slaughter of more than 1,200 Israelis. Hamas tortured and broadcast hostage videos as information warfare; Netanyahu rewarded their strategy.
Netanyahu now goes down in Israeli history not only as the man who enabled October 7, 2023, through misguided negotiations with terrorists and poor supervision of the military and intelligence in the run-up to the October 7 attacks but also as the man who caved to pressure to throw Hamas a lifeline effectively.
Make no mistake, with Israel striking a deal, not only will Hamas claim victory, but it will also likely scuttle the final release to continue its leverage and buy time to rebuild.
Nor will Biden and Trump have long to bask in their alleged success. Consider Ronald Reagan: The arms-for-hostages scheme that he implemented to free American hostages not only created a scandal that paralyzed his second term, but it also failed: As soon as Iran and its proxies got their ransom, they seized new hostages. Repeatedly. The Reagan dynamic continues to the present day, with Iran’s hostage diplomacy now leading to billions of dollars in payment to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a dynamic that arguably has kept the regime afloat.
Reagan’s surrender, however, was far more deadly for Americans. While he ordered U.S. Marines into Lebanon as peacekeepers to support a tenuous ceasefire, his subsequent decision to leave after the October 1983 Marine Barracks bombing directly inspired Al Qaeda leader Usama Bin Laden to believe that the United States lacked staying power and that terrorism worked.
Today, Netanyahu follows Reagan’s trajectory, not for good but for evil. When the broader history of the period is written, it will be hard not to conclude that Netanyahu’s decisions throughout his career encouraged, rewarded, and catalyzed terrorism against the Jewish state.
He may win the release of some hostages, but at what cost?
About the Author: Dr. Michael Rubin
Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. A former Pentagon official, Dr. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, and both pre- and postwar Iraq. He also spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. For more than a decade, he taught classes at sea about the Horn of Africa and Middle East conflicts, culture, and terrorism, to deployed US Navy and Marine units. Dr. Rubin is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of several books exploring diplomacy, Iranian history, Arab culture, Kurdish studies, and Shi’ite politics. The author’s views are his own.
Jim
January 15, 2025 at 5:27 pm
The ending of the Philadelphia Corridor is a rightful demand of Israel to insure no weapons of any kind get into Gaza.
A “cease fire” of any kind must insure no new weapons reach Hamas… a new cycle of violence would be ruinous for the people of Gaza. (And, disarming, as well.)
Perhaps, this is the time to say actions (Oct. 7th) which bring on catastrophic reactions… do no service to your people..
Gaza is destroyed.
The Philadelphia Corridor (or other means of smuggling weapons) must be ended… solved & enforced if a durable peace is to be achieved.
This event should never be repeated for the sake of the people of Gaza… and the Israeli People.
Many people are concerned… there are no guarantees this will be successful… there never is, but human agency can work it out if both sides want peace.
I hope so.
Zhduny
January 15, 2025 at 5:34 pm
The reported deal is sealed with the blood of innocent humans, especially innocent women, children, babies and even unborn ones.
Who are the authors.
They are of course hamas, Israel, the UN and most especially joe biden, biden’s officials, western countries like germany and the big arms manufacturers.
History should note the bloody acts and foreign policies of all those people, many of them who often like to lecture the world on subjects like human rights and rules-based order.
But will the alleged deal last into the weekend and for How long.
Despite the so-called ceasefire in Lebanon, Israel has been conducting regular strikes in the local area.
Joe biden, whose arms are stained with blood, human blood, has been fully silent.
He needs to be condemned by history.
NewYear2025
January 15, 2025 at 9:29 pm
Nobody loses except joe biden, in this latest round of middle east drama. Which is full of sneaky snraky twists and turns, thanks to asmodeus joe.
Asmodeus joe is directly responsible for the mess (real terrible bloody mess) in the middle east becuz as a loyal servant of the deep state, he’s aware Israel is the west’s military-political beachhead in the arab world.
Thus it is no surprise that joe was constantly sending weapons and ammo to over there in continuous non-stop dribs and drabs fashion even as the rest of the world screamed genocide.
Thus genocide joe will forever be remembered as the eternal enabler of middle east genocides.
The fuhrer of genocides.
Letsgobrandon
January 16, 2025 at 12:01 am
Joe biden is trying to claim credit for the deal that comes into effect on jan 19 2025.
But does biden deserve any credit for it.
HELL, no.
Biden repeatedly vetoed numerous proposals for a ceasefire despite well-documented massive bloodletting.
The ceasefire deal comes only after donald trump won the recent presidential contest.
Had the democrats won on nov 5 2024, 2025 would be just a year of endless Massacre Days.
Jim
January 16, 2025 at 11:53 am
It turns out Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, came into the discussions and apparently made the needed encouragements to the parties for a ‘cease fire.’
This is encouraging, it suggests continuity between administrations (one of the few instances) on a peaceful Middle East policy.
For a plethora of reasons, it’s in the interest of the United States to have stability in the Middle East, see Israel is secure and the larger region is peaceful with robust commercial opportunities for all the various countries of the region, including Israel.
I submit this is also in Israel’s interest.
It’s not in Israel’s interest to be isolated politically & economically, not just in the region, but on the larger international world stage.
Israel’s supporters here in America and at home should see this as an opportunity for stability and regeneration of an economy which has suffered mightily in the last year or so.
Getting Israel’s economy back on track should be one of the highest priorities of Israel’s government.
Maybe, I missed something, but it seems all things are political in Israel, but a thriving economy is the foundation for a healthy & strong polity.
This has been left unattended for too long.
There are a thousand steps… each step on a political tightrope. But peace is better than war.
Let’s be encouraging, not throwing stones.
There are tremendous opportunities for President Trump’s administration to play a constructive role in the Middle East.
We need it… Biden has been a disaster.
oakhill1863
January 18, 2025 at 9:22 am
This article lacks perspective and is premature.
Rubin fails to recognize Israel’s inherent weaknesses, which as PM Netanyahu had was responsible to consider. While Israel is surely the modern Sparta militarily, Sparta could not survive without allies and Israel is at least at severe disadvantages without them. Israel is small and it is narrow at the waist. Israel has many enemies within its borders and other land it controls. While its tech is first rate and it can even improve upon the weapons it obtains from abroad, its ability to make necessary weapons is limited. Furthermore, on the principle that on an island of two Jews, there would be 3 synagogues–one for the first person–one for the second person–and one that neither of them would ever belong to–is true domestically. Although Israel was largely united in the current war, it is not an easy enterprise to hold together. Most of Netanyahu’s “mistakes” were to give into pressure from the U.S., Diaspora Jews, and his internal opposition to be less hawkish. Netanyahu did not generally sacrifice the good for the perfect, and that is true both before and during the war.
While mounting a sort of protest against it, Rubin himself continues to fall into a media trap of who appears to have won the war, as if all wars are the Tet Offensive. No, most wars are to be analyzed on what did the war bring to one’s side. Israel lost people, but there was only one mission–to disarm Hamas. The war was not fought for a peace treaty or cultural exchanges or to dissuade Hamas or Gazans in general of their National Socialism whose highest cultural acheivement was the constuction of the largest underground torture chamber in history–Gaza’s tunnels. The object of the war was to limit or eliminate Hamas’s ability to carry out offsensive warfare, period. That mission is not complete, but it is largely complete and may be made complete yet. Recovering the hostages was a reason to take on the mission; it was not the mission itself.
I gave Biden a C+ on the war. Thanks for the weapons, spare me the Jell-O speeches and recriminations. For intance, in his farewell address, Biden said Netanyahu is his friend but they don’t agree on a whole lot these days. What in Hades does that even mean when today there is only one thing to agree upon, which is that Hamas’s barbarism must be exposed, opposed, deposed, and its members reposed in eternity. But Netanyau was not free to argue with Biden.
This leads to the Trump question.
Some comments to the article already scream, “Trump has already/will screw Israel, he is SO evil!” I have always pointed out that Trump’s isolationism (“America is too good for the world”) can often end up in the same place as Obama’s (“America is not good enough for the world”). So, we have to wait and see.
But exclamations of Trump being bad for Israel are a theory not yet, and very possibly never will be, proved. We all know the positive results of Trump’s first term with moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem and the Abraham Accords. Trump’s position on the hostages was entirely consistent with his long-ago advice to Netanyahu that Israel was right but get the war over quickly, and may be ascribed to Trump’s belief that the war–rightly or wrongly–hurt Israel’s international reputation, not that Trump wanted to harm Israel or was insincere in his support of Israel.
Trump has surrounded himself with the most pro-Israel advocates I can remember, such as, but not limited to, Mike Huckabee as Ambassador, and Mike Waltz at National Security who the other day gave a speech against Hamas that Ze’ev Jabotinsky might have thought too far right, thank you, Mike Waltz. The fact that Trump is also advised by one of his daughter’s father in law, Massad Boulos, who was born in Lebanon, does not trouble me, and adds perspective for Trump, himself the grandfather of Orthodox Jewish children.
For now, my guess is that Trump and Netanyahu have a number of off the record understandings as to “the day after” in Gaza that do not include Hamas and I believe that Trump will make good on his promises in that regard.
The bottom line regarding Netanyahu is that no other known Israeli, bar none, could have accomplished the wonders in the war that Netanyahu has.