On the North River

There are no living hostages…

What a deal! Hamas has a new proposal for a cease-fire, disguised as the former US-negotiated hostage deal, but with a new twist. Now that the Israelis have made it clear that Joe Biden won’t stop them from destroying the remaining Hamas brigades in Rafah, they want to go back to the deal they rejected … as long as the Israelis aren’t too picky about body temperature:

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Furthermore, what will happen to aid in Gaza if Hamas remains in control? The same as happened for the last 17 years — Hamas will use it to rebuild its military capabilities and tunnel defenses, amass weaponry, and use it as a spoils system to ensure loyalty to their radical Islamist agenda. Why would we want to let that happen? For that matter, why would Egypt and the other Sunni nations allow that to happen? It would create the conditions for another all-out war in Gaza under the frozen-conflict conditions that Hamas has created all along.

That’s not a peace plan. It’s a plan for perpetual war, at the expense of our ally and the West in general. It’s sheer idiocy, which is why it sounds like a Joe Biden strategy. And one has to wonder whether the Israelis think so too, and decided to launch the Rafah op after the Keren Shalom attack to checkmate Biden’s appeasement plans.