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.
