As of this writing, the terms of the cease-fire with Hamas to which the Israeli government is expected to agree are still coming into view.
The specifics may still be in flux, but the outlines of the deal as it is described by Israeli sources are firmer. In exchange for a four-day cessation of hostilities, Hamas will release a number of hostages, most of whom are expected to the women and children in its custody. Reciprocally, Israel will release an even greater number of Palestinian women and minors from its prisons, and it will allow hundreds of aid trucks to enter Gaza through Egypt. Barring complications, the deal could include a second phase in which Hamas releases even more October 7 captives so long as Israel extends the cease-fire. According to Axios reporter Barak Ravid, the first tranche of hostages Hamas plans to release will “only be Israelis or Israeli dual nationals.” The foreign nationals in Hamas’s custody come later, if at all.
Perhaps the benefits of this temporary pause in Israel’s war against Hamas outweigh the downsides. Maybe the release of these hostages, if Hamas follows through with its obligations, frees Israel from some of the constraints it has had to observe, such as the understanding that Israeli civilians serve as human shields. Perhaps delivering as many hostages to safety as possible is its own reward, even if the exchange allows Hamas to regroup and rearm. But what Israel cannot and should not expect is for anyone who has been calling for a cease-fire to give Jerusalem any credit for its forbearance.
“Sympathy for Israel has evaporated,” the Hindi publication the Wire insisted. Presumably, then, there was not much in the way of sympathy for Israel in the first place. If the unspeakable barbarism that inaugurated this war, and the tactics Hamas employs that have rendered it such a bloody affair, produced only a few weeks’ worth of “sympathy,” then we can assume the old adage still applies: “People love dead Jews,” but their patience runs thin when the Jews fight back.
The progressive lawmakers, campus activists, and indifferent editorialists who demanded, even prior to the invasion of Gaza, that Israel halt its war against the genocidal death cult on its borders barely concealed their hostility to the exercise of Israel’s right to defend itself. Indeed, the 10/7 attack — this war’s casus belli — doesn’t seem to factor into their analyses.
The cease-fire is designed to satisfy their agony over having to witness Israel’s response to the murder of its citizens. It might “allow Israel to pause and reflect” on its mission objectives and contemplate “the price it could pay over the long haul,” New York Times writer Paul Krugman advised, if it defends its own existence with a tad too much enthusiasm. Maybe it would demonstrate that Israel is still subject to the verdicts rendered by the international community. After all, “if diplomacy and international relations can acquiesce to this kind of war, then what is the point of diplomacy and international relations?” Times contributor Megan Stack bemoaned.
If Israel’s security interests weren’t relevant to those who have been calling for a cease-fire from the start, we can safely assume that Israeli interests won’t be a consideration when hostilities resume. And if the Israeli public has anything to say about it, hostilities will resume. But at that point, it will be Israel that is violating a preferred status quo.
The Jewish state will be blamed for not deferring to the elementary logic of hostage-taking and extending the cease-fire indefinitely. Israel will be blamed for retaliating against trigger-happy terrorists, who can’t be expected to observe the terms of the cease-fire at all operational levels. It would be surprising if the protesters in the streets and their ideological compatriots in the corridors of power in the West even acknowledge the strategic sacrifice Israel is making by taking the pressure off Hamas. And if that basic fact of this war doesn’t register, the logic that will compel Israel to resume its effort to neutralize the threat of Hamas once and for all will surely elude them too.
The only saving grace today is that the 10/7 massacre was so traumatic, and the consensus in favor of neutralizing Hamas so broad, that Israelis are no longer paying much attention to the international community’s finger-wagging.