Hamas Defies Trump, Demands Israel End War for Hostage Deal

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It’s been a while since we last looked at the status of Hamas’ disastrous war with Israel and the negotiations to free the hostages. And that’s because … nothing much has changed. The Biden White House keeps telling reporters that a deal is nearly complete, and the Iranian proxy keeps doing the Hamas Hokey Pokey by putting a concession in just to take it back out.

So what’s happening now? We’re back to Square One, of course:

Hamas stood by its demand on Tuesday that Israel fully end its assault on Gaza under any deal to release hostages, and said U.S. President-elect Donald Trump was rash to say there would be “hell to pay” unless they go free by his Jan. 20 inauguration.

Officials from the Islamist group and Israel have been holding talks with Qatari and Egyptian mediators in the most intensive effort for months to reach a ceasefire in Gaza. …

Hamas says it will free its remaining hostages only if Israel agrees to end the war and withdraw all its troops from Gaza. Israel says it will not end the war until Hamas is dismantled and all hostages are free.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose. Reuters reports this as though it’s a new development, and it is, but only in the most immediate sense. Hamas negotiators had let it be known that they would accept more intermediate concessions from Israel in the first phase of a hostage-for-prisoners exchange, which got the Biden foreign-policy team to salivate at the prospect of the opportunity to claim some small win in a debacle largely over their own making. 

In fact, they’re still trying to claim that an agreement is just around the corner. The Times of Israel reports that this claim is landing with a thud in Jerusalem, for obvious reasons. They prefer to drive home the “hell to pay” leverage:

Incoming US envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff announced Tuesday that he will travel to Doha later this week, saying a hostage deal being mediated by Qatar is on the verge of completion, as US President-elect Donald Trump again warned “all hell will break loose” in the region if an agreement between Israel and Hamas is not reached by his January 20 inauguration.

“We’re making a lot of progress, and I don’t want to say too much because I think they’re doing a really good job back in Doha. I’m leaving tomorrow to go back to Doha, but I think that we’ve had some really great progress, and I’m really hopeful that by the inaugural, we’ll have some good things to announce on behalf of the president,” Witkoff said, after Trump called on him to provide an update on the negotiations during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. …

Earlier Tuesday, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi told officers during a visit to northern Gaza’s Jabalia that the military was working to bring Hamas “to the point where it will understand that it needs to [release] all the hostages, otherwise the very professional work you are doing will continue and continue, and it means more prisoners and more dead operatives.”

“I look at the situation that Hamas is in, they see every day what you are doing to them and they understand that this thing is close to being unbearable,” Halevi said.

In other words, the outgoing Biden team isn’t making any appreciable progress at all with their diplomacy, which makes the Hamas response even more risible. After Donald Trump warned Hamas a couple of times in the past few days that there will be “hell to pay” if they still hold Americans hostage on January 20, the genocidal terrorists replied that Trump should try being a little less violent in his rhetoric:

Hamas official Osama Hamdan, who held a news conference in Algiers, said Israel was to blame for undermining all efforts to reach a deal.

While he said he would not give details about the latest round of negotiations, he reiterated the Hamas conditions of “a complete end to the aggression and a full withdrawal from lands the occupation invaded”.

Commenting on Trump’s threat that there would be “hell to pay” unless all hostages were freed before the inauguration, Hamdan said: “I think the U.S. president must make more disciplined and diplomatic statements.”

Yes, we should all take a page from the degenerates that slaughtered unarmed civilians and conducted mass rapes in Israel — and sometimes in that order, according to witnesses — about civility. How well has Hamas responded to the Biden’s teams “diplomatic” approach in openly criticizing Israel and holding back weapons shipments? Did they release even one American over the last year in response to that “disciplined” approach?

Hamas only understands one thing: hell. Donald Trump has their number, and Hamas has 12 days to figure that out.