President Trump’s Worst Deal

With every passing day the agreement in respect of Gaza is starting to look like President Trump’s worst deal. The 47th president isn’t the only one to bear some responsibility for what is shaping up as a fiasco. President Biden claims that it follows a structure he proposed in May. Mr. Trump played a role in bringing the deal about, though, and has sought to claim some, if not all, of the credit. It’s about a deal that he could all too soon regret.The moment reminds us of a famous editorial issued by the Wall Street Journal the day the Mullahs in Iran released the 53 hostages they were still holding at the American embassy they had taken over at Tehran. That deal saw the all remaining hostages released to be flown to Wiesbaden, West Germany, as President Reagan was being sworn in on January 20, 1981. That day the Journal issued an editorial under the headline “Renounce the Deal.” That, however, is going to be hard to do in respect of the Gaza deal. Reagan, after all, got all remaining hostages. This deal has left Prime Minister Netanyahu facing ever more concessions while Hamas is still holding more than 90 hostages. As Israelis rejoice when four women are released from Gaza’s dungeons tomorrow, hearts will be broken, too. Hamas will also declare on Sunday how many of the 33 people it is to release in the first phase are dead. That kind of cruelty is built into a deal that allows the phased release of innocents dragged to Gaza on Israel’s darkest day. Four women will be hugged by their loved ones tomorrow. Israel will then free 200 convicted terrorists, including some who have been convicted of mass killing and sentenced to life in prison. A list has been posted by Palestine Media Watch. Some of these terrorists could be, as was Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s future leadership.Today’s last minute snag demonstrates the pitfalls of the deal. Hamas’s list of women to be released tomorrow was supposed to contain civilians. Today’s list, though, contains four female soldiers, but not 29-year-old Arbel Yehud, a civilian. Hamas’s interest is to maximize its torture of Israeli families. Israel will take any four living women, but what about the violations? Should Israel renege, too? At any point, this Rube Goldberg contraption could collapse. “It’s a very tricky place,” Mr. Trump acknowledged Thursday, adding that if a deal falls apart “they will not be happy.” At whom was that directed? And what is the world supposed to make of the role of Mr. Trump’s Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff? He has been kvelling about the role of Qatar, to which Mr. Witkoff recently sold a hotel for more than $600 million. What are the Israelis supposed to make of that?To get hostages back, Israel was forced to lose some strategic assets it has gained with the blood of soldiers since the start of the war. Gazans who were moved to the south of the Strip early in the war will start trickling back north over the weekend. That population move could see terrorists returning to positions they had held at the launch of the October 7 massacre. No wonder it was one of Hamas’s top demands in negotiating the deal. The deal negotiated by President Biden last May forces Israel to give away assets quickly while its gains — the release of hostages — materialize slowly. Why would a man that literally wrote the book on how to make deals agree to his predecessor’s process that insisted on snatching defeat from Israel’s Gaza victories? After Hamas lost most of its assets, it got, with Washington’s help, the gift of humanitarian aid that became a tool to regain its power in Gaza. Now more aid will pour into Gaza as part of the deal. Hamas will confiscate trucks and use the aid to recruit new terrorists and replenish its dwindling coffers. That Mr. Netanayahu agreed to such a deal is up to Israelis. Yet the failure to insist that no Israeli concessions would be granted until the last hostage is home is the deal’s worst feature. We may yet find out what Mr. Trump was intending when he warned there’d be “hell” to pay.Correction: 200 is the number of terrorists to be freed by Israel under the terms of the Gaza ceasefire. An earlier edition misstated the number

President Trump’s Worst Deal

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