A Cease-Fire, If You Can Keep It

On the menu today: The Biden administration was thrilled to announce a tentative cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that will lead to the release of some hostages, but history instructs us that it’s just a matter of time before Hamas breaks its side of the bargain. Meanwhile White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dismisses State Department press spokesman Matthew Miller as “a random person” and rejects the notion that President-elect Donald Trump and his team deserve any credit for the cease-fire deal. Finally, with Trump returning to power, a lot of Democrats want their representatives in Congress to work 24/7 to thwart Trump’s agenda. Progressive congressional staffers are thinking more of an 8 to 4 sort of deal.

Hamas Is a Bad-Faith Negotiator

I don’t want to rain on the parade for the announced cease-fire between Israel and Hamas; any arrangement that leads to the release of at least some of the hostages, held for 468 days, deserves at least some applause.

But I will remind you that Hamas broke cease-fires with Israel in 2003, 2007, 2008, and nine times in 2014.

During the first short-lived cease-fire between Hamas and Israel after the October 7 attacks, Hamas “later claimed responsibility for [a] deadly shooting in Jerusalem.” Now, lest there be any confusion in the ranks of Hamas, the rules of a cease-fire are right there in the name. You’re supposed to cease firing. If you don’t cease firing, the other guys are not obligated to cease their firing, either.

Just this year, Hamas either rejected cease-fire proposals or hostages-for-prisoners trades, walked away from the table, or refused to restart negotiations in the months of December, January, February, March, April, May, June, and July 2024.

Hamas has proven a bad-faith, bloodthirsty, irrational, and self-destructive negotiator at every step in this process. At the beginning of September, Hamas fighters executed six hostages, including Israeli-American dual citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, as IDF forces closed in on their hideout.

(The American hostages are an astonishingly under-covered and under-discussed topic, most likely because their captivity is a demonstration of President Biden’s impotence and infirmity in foreign policy, unnervingly reminiscent of a recently departed one-term Democratic president.)

Two days later, Hamas announced that its operatives guarding Israeli hostages in the buildings and tunnels of Gaza had “new instructions” to kill the hostages if Israeli troops closed in and had a chance of rescuing them.

The Biden team gets a lot of grief from allies of Israel, but on a regular basis, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller would stand before reporters, many from foreign countries, and remind them of the barbarity and viciousness of Hamas. On September 3, Miller said:

I also can’t let the moment to pass — pass just to comment on that reported order from Hamas. Sometimes we talk about the negotiations between Israel and Hamas and talk about them as two, and people think about them as two equal parties. They obviously are the two parties to these negotiations. But I think when you see an order like that, it shows just what a depraved group we are dealing with in Hamas, when they made clear that they will execute innocent human beings rather than let them be rescued — people who in many cases aren’t even citizens of Israel. Recall that there are citizens of other countries who continue to be held, countries with whom Hamas supposedly has no complaint, and Hamas’s position is that it will execute those hostages rather than let them be released. I think that shows what a depraved organization Hamas actually is.

On October 17, 2024, Miller laid out what Israel’s killing of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, meant for the region:

The chief obstacle to reaching that ceasefire and bringing an end to the war has been Sinwar, who has refused to negotiate at all in recent weeks and has said no time and time again. That obstacle has obviously been removed. Can’t predict that that means that whoever replaces Hamas will agree to a ceasefire, but it does remove what has been in recent months the chief obstacle to getting one.

Later that month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken took a weeklong trip through the Middle East, only to find that the post-Sinwar Hamas wasn’t any more conciliatory:

“What we really have to determine is whether Hamas is prepared to engage,” Blinken said. But Hamas’ political representatives have not so far signaled a softer stance.

“There is no change in our position,” senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told Al Mayadeen, a Lebanese broadcaster.

Blinken, in an interview with the New York Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro, published January 4:

Q: Did you have a partner in Benjamin Netanyahu? Because it was reported that he blocked a cease-fire deal in July that would have led to the hostages being released. Is that true?

Blinken: No, that’s not accurate. What we’ve seen time and again is Hamas not concluding a deal that it should have concluded. There have been times when actions that Israel has taken have, yes, made it more difficult. But there’s been a rationale for those actions, even if they’ve sometimes made getting to a conclusion more difficult. . . .

One of the things that I found a little astounding throughout is that for all of the understandable criticism of the way Israel has conducted itself in Gaza, you hear virtually nothing from anyone since Oct. 7 about Hamas. Why there hasn’t been a unanimous chorus around the world for Hamas to put down its weapons, to give up the hostages, to surrender — I don’t know what the answer is to that. Israel, on various occasions has offered safe passage to Hamas’s leadership and fighters out of Gaza. Where is the world? Where is the world, saying, Yeah, do that! End this! Stop the suffering of people that you brought on! Now, again, that doesn’t absolve Israel of its actions in conducting the war. But I do have to question how it is that we haven’t seen a greater sustained condemnation and pressure on Hamas to stop what it started and to end the suffering of people that it initiated.

Well, Mr. Blinken, how about this answer? It’s because most of the world press chooses to believe Hamas, no matter how outlandish or nonsensical its claims are.

Set your stopwatch, because history indicates it’s not a question of if what’s left of Hamas will break the cease-fire; it’s a question of when.

Trump’s Role in the Cease-Fire Deal

Here’s State Department spokesman Miller, yesterday, discussing the cease-fire deal:

Now, when it comes to the involvement of President-elect Trump’s team, it has been absolutely critical in getting this deal over the line. And it’s been critical because, obviously, as I stand here today, this administration’s term in office will expire in five days . . . so it’s critical that all of the parties to the agreement and the other mediators see that when the United States is in the room making commitments, those are lasting commitments that extend beyond this administration into the next one. . . .

I don’t know if it’s unprecedented to have envoys from an outgoing and an incoming administration sitting at the same table negotiating a ceasefire agreement of this kind, but if it’s not unprecedented, it’s certainly unusual, and we of course thank the Trump team for working with this, on this ceasefire agreement. We think it’s important that they were at the table, and I think it shows that when Americans are worked – are willing to work together across partisan lines as we were willing to do on this occasion because it’s in the national interests of the United States, there’s a lot that we can get done.

Gracious, magnanimous, and let’s face it, honest. There’s no point in Blinken or anybody else in the Biden administration making any offer to any party that the Trump team isn’t willing to honor.

But that wasn’t the message from the entire administration. Karine Jean-Pierre, later in the day:

Q: Do Donald Trump and his team deserve any credit for this?

Jean-Pierre: I mean, look, everyone is going to want some credit. Everybody’s going to want some credit. Get that? That’s how this goes, when something good happens. Not unusual. It is not unusual at all. What I can say is the president got it done. Right? That’s what I can say.

A bit later in the briefing:

Q: Your colleague at the State Department briefed our colleagues that President Trump was critical in getting this deal over the line. Do you not agree with that statement?

Jean-Pierre: I, I mean, look, I’m not going to speak to a random person.

Q: He’s literally your colleague.

Jean-Pierre: I don’t know who this person is. I’m not going to–

(an incredulous noise from the White House press corps)

Jean-Pierre: –what I what I can say is uh look, obviously Matt Miller will speak for himself.

It is a really, really, bad look for the White House press secretary to be dismissing the State Department’s chief spokesman as “a random person.”

Progressive Hill Staffers Want to Adopt the Biden Work Schedule

The Congressional Progressive Staff Association writes to congressional leadership, asking for a 32-hour work week, without a reduction in pay.

Imagine being some progressive activist, and you learn that right as Donald Trump is about to come back into town, with 53 Republicans in the Senate and 219 Republicans in the House, itching to remake the federal government from top to bottom . . . the staffers for your members want to work just four days a week.

ADDENDUM: A line I wish I had written, from Christian Schneider: “Simply put, you can’t be a governing party if everyday Americans need racial and gender Duolingo to understand what the hell you’re talking about.”

Reprinted with permission from the National Review by Jim Geraghty.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.