Dangerous Hours Ahead in the Mideast

Are we the only newspaper that does not entirely share the sense of jubilation that is emerging in the wake of the hostage deal that has been reached with Hamas? The deal is not what we have thought of when, these past two years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others have spoken of the war aim of the destruction of Hamas. Americans know what unconditional surrender looks like — the deck of United States Ship Missouri.There is no question that the return of the hostages is paramount and a moral necessity. For their families — and for all of Israel— it is unalloyed relief. Yet there is the undeniable reality that the Jewish state is negotiating their release — of the living and the dead, all of them — with Hamas. That terrorist syndicate and backers like Qatar are responsible for taking those hostages in the first place and for all the horrors of October 7.The cost of the war is entirely attributable to Hamas’s bloody ledger. That’s why destroying Hamas was, along with returning the hostages, deemed by the Jewish state to be a primary aim of the war. Israel insisted on this point even as the world pressured Jerusalem to let up. And as European nations — including even France, for crying out loud — rewarded Hamas with recognition of a Palestinian state.President Trump appears to grasp that Hamas can have no future at Gaza. His 20-point démarche vows that “Hamas and other factions agree to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form.” The plan also calls for Hamas to disarm and for the coastal enclave to be rebuilt as a “deradicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors.” Those provisions have yet to be agreed on. Now comes word from the Times that Arab mediators are coalescing around “partially” disarming Hamas, a far cry from the total disarmament that the plan suggests. In exchange for the return of the hostages, Israel has agreed to withdraw — not fully, though every inch gives Hamas room to breathe and regenerate. That Israel is halting, under American pressure, means that Hamas lingers at Gaza City and also in the warrens of Gaza’s refugee camps.Most concerning of all, to our mind, is the outsized role that Turkey and Qatar appear to be playing in the resolution of the war. Both countries enjoy cozy relations with Hamas and antagonistic ones with Israel and America. Istanbul has veered in an Islamist direction, and Doha hosts Hamas’s political elite. That’s why Israel bombed it in the first place. Now Qatar is playing firefighter when the country played a starring role in lighting the region on fire.As part of the negotiations, it seems, Qatar secured both a species of apology from Mr. Netanyahu and, more shocking, a promise, in the form of a letter from Mr. Trump, that America would defend Qatar if it were ever attacked again. All this while Qatar funds anti-Zionist activities the world over — not least on college campuses. The closeness of some members of the Trump administration to Doha is a cause for concern, not comfort. Israel’s achievements in the war are not to be gainsaid. On every front, it is more secure now than it was two years ago. The strategic savvy and the courage with which Israel has fought — not the dickering at Doha — is what brought the possibility of the return of the hostages. The end of the hostage nightmare will, if it happens, be a triumph that many doubters could not have imagined. After that it looks like dangerous hours ahead.

Dangerous Hours Ahead in the Mideast

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